Gone are the days when America fought from sprawling command posts with overwhelming air superiority. Now faced with adversaries toting long-range fires and drones, the U.S. military is relearning a basic principle: how to hide.

As services adopt new strategies, the Army’s Combined Arms Command, or CAC, an outfit responsible for overseeing the service’s leadership and doctrine development, is changing how it teaches troops about concealment.

“Hiding in plain sight has become an imperative on the modern battlefield,” Lt. Gen. James P. Isenhower, the commanding general of CAC, told reporters during a Pentagon briefing on Thursday.

“We think very differently about how we employ ourselves [and] how we remain dispersed” compared to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, he explained, pointing, in particular, to the size of command posts. “We have to work really hard to look like that which we are not.”

Isenhower’s remarks come as details begin to emerge about the true scale of destruction wrought by an Iranian strike on a major forward base in the Middle East.

On Feb. 28, the Islamic Republic struck Naval Support Activity, or NSA, Bahrain with missiles and one-way attack drones following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. Initially, the Pentagon reported no major impacts to military operations. However, the Wall Street Journal later reported that damages amounted to approximately $400 million.

In one of the most stark official disclosures about the war thus far, acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao told an Epoch Times reporter that Iran “blew the hell out of Bahrain.”

Far from isolated, America’s sprawling — and easy-to-find — Middle East footprint has been repeatedly subjected to assault since the start of the Iran war. In July, three U.S. soldiers were killed when an Iranian ballistic missile and drone attack penetrated air defenses around Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. Six U.S. soldiers were killed in March when an Iranian drone struck a tactical operations center at Port Shuaiba, Kuwait.

While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan saw bases attacked with mortars and rockets, U.S. forces did not have to contend with precise, long-range missile and drone assaults.

“For 20 years we didn’t have to worry about anything coming out of the sky, and we lost proficiency that I think we had trained in the Cold War era — through the 80s and 90s — where we were worried about adversaries who had fixed-wing aircraft and the capability to send long-range precision fires at us,” Isenhower said during the briefing. “That wasn’t the case in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Over the course of the Global War on Terror, air dominance allowed American bases to be havens, according to Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, where the U.S. could concentrate supplies, personnel and command centers without facing constant surveillance and threats from above.

“These bases were sanctuaries,” she told Military Times, calling the installations “an aberration, historically.”

The U.S. is now returning to a “period of warfare where the base itself is a vulnerability and something an adversary can attack,” she said, which can lead to the scattering of resources.

Exacerbating that susceptibility has been the U.S. military’s reliance on costly interceptor munitions to combat Iranian ballistic missiles and cheap, one-way attack drones, actions that have significantly depleted interceptor stocks.

A recent CSIS report estimated that between February and July, the U.S. had expended approximately 65% of its Patriot interceptor inventory. The number of THAAD ballistic missile interceptors, meanwhile, decreased by 38% since the start of the war, according to the report.

Grieco said that dispersing troops to account for these new vulnerabilities comes at a cost. Instead of funneling fuel, ammunition, food and other supplies through large hubs, the military must spread across more locations, potentially further apart.

“We’re now trading efficiency for survivability,” she said.

After the damage to NSA Bahrain, U.S. ships were forced to rely on a logistics hub at Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that sits more than 2,000 miles away from the service’s carrier strike groups in the Middle East.

The distance required personnel to place food orders 30 days in advance, which proved challenging due to the unpredictability of frenzied military operations.

Isenhower noted that as a division commander, meanwhile, he watched command posts shrink smaller and smaller during training because opposing forces — soldiers meant to act as the enemy during exercises — kept finding and precisely attacking them by using electronic signatures.

Units responded by dispersing and employing deceptive tactics to make it harder for the enemy to determine what they were seeing.

“We’ve got to create the benefits of mass without presenting the vulnerabilities of concentration,” he said. “It affects the squad differently than it affects a battalion, but we’ve seen in current combat operations: the vulnerabilities of a large, distinct signature, whether it’s physical, visual or something on the electromagnetic spectrum.

“It fundamentally changes how we operate.”

That vulnerability extends from command posts to moving equipment and aircraft.

In April, Iran downed a U.S. fighter jet after deploying a swarm of drones that were able to identify the aircraft’s GPS location, speed and direction, then feed that data to Iranian commanders, The New York Times reported.

Education about electromagnetic and drone warfare has been incorporated into all levels of the Army, Isenhower said.

Soldiers are learning to use electromagnetic data “to try to get a bearing or pinpoint a fix on the enemy,” he said, while learning “how to operate in that environment so they don’t do the same to us.”

The Pentagon now wants artificial intelligence that can cut through the confusion.

It’s seeking “AI-based software tools to turn fragmented sensor data into a continuously updated understanding of space and missile threats fast enough to drive operational decisions,” according to the Defense Innovation Unit solicitation, which is due Sept. 24. “Existing tools struggle to distinguish closely spaced objects, track emerging threats, and keep threat models current.”

The project, known as the “Space Threat Intelligence Synthesis Engine,” will leverage AI’s greatest strength: the ability to quickly analyze reams of data. The software will fuse “massive streams of multi-source data, including live video, satellite imagery, radar and sensor feeds, geospatial data, and classified intelligence reports.”

“By automating advanced cross-data correlation, the architecture aims to uncover hidden patterns, complex operational relationships, and predictive threat behaviors far beyond the capabilities of human analysis alone.”

Ultimately, the system should “generate actionable, confidence-scored alerts supporting analyst-in-the-loop, human-on-the-loop, or automated workflows.”

The AI will help human operators — and other machines.

It will provide “intuitive, human-readable visualizations for frontline operators and low-latency, machine-to-machine APIs to drive automated command-and-control (C2) workflows.”

DIU is aiming for an open-source system with a latency delay of no more than five seconds — and preferably no more than two seconds — between the arrival of data and the results being displayed. Throughput should be 20 to 30 megabytes per minute, with bursts of up to five gigabytes.

Contractors should demonstrate that their products show “significant speed and accuracy improvements in event detection, characterization, and attribution compared to existing baseline systems.”

As skies fill with missiles and drones in conflicts like the ones with Ukraine and Iran, AI is increasingly being seen as an indispensable partner to overworked human operators. In particular, with a perpetual shortage of expensive interceptors, such as the Patriot air-defense system, operators must quickly decide when and where to allocate them.

Defense contractors and AI firms are teaming up to incorporate AI into missile defense.

For example, Northrop Grumman announced in July that it was partnering with AI firm Camgian to incorporate artificial intelligence into integrated air and missile defense systems. BAE and Scale AI have also teamed up for AI-enhanced missile defense.

The Thursday Anthropic report covers the time period between December 2025 and August 2026 and highlights the misuse of its large language model Claude, which it says the threat actor used to make targeting recommendations against U.S. Navy forces in the region.

“The threat actor used Claude to compile targeting handbooks…to identify and track naval positions based on open-source information,” the report said.

The bad actor used the AI software to collect information that included a list of U.S. service members it had sourced from public military photographs, ship and aircraft transponders — which broadcast a specific code that identifies them — commercial satellite-imagery query scripts that help locate exact geographic visuals, and a breakdown of public websites that track U.S. Navy movements.

The Iranian threat also used Claude to learn more about weaknesses in U.S. Navy shipboard systems that could be exploited.

Anthropic said it banned the account after it learned what it was doing, created safeguards to prevent similar activity in the future and shared the information with the appropriate government agencies to address the problem.

The report detailed a litany of other misuses of its Claude program, including a cell of Yemeni bad actors that used the program to develop targeting software for guided missiles.

The concerns over inappropriate misconduct involving Anthropic have grown to include individuals within the company too.

A researcher named Jacob Coxon from Anthropic and OpenAI resigned Tuesday, calling into question the ethics of the company in a lengthy X post.

“Neither company is acting responsibly,” said Coxon. “They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

The U.S. military previously used Anthropic but severed ties with the AI platform after it refused to agree to Pentagon terms that it said would open up Claude’s use for mass surveillance or use in fully autonomous weapons.

In New York, family members of the victims, many carrying pictures of their loved ones, joined Vice President JD Vance and four former U.S. presidents at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. The ceremony began, as always, at 8:46 a.m. Eastern Standard Time with a moment of silence to remember the shocking instant when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center’s North Tower.

Shortly after, victims’ family members began reading aloud the names of all 2,977 people who died on September 11, as well as the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a somber recitation that lasts for hours. In a reminder of the time that has passed, some readers were children who had never met the relatives they lost in 2001.

Other moments of silence followed, marking when the other three airplanes crashed and the two towers collapsed. For the first time, a seventh moment of silence was set to honor the thousands who have died since 2001 from illnesses tied to the toxic dust that poisoned the air for months afterward.

Gregory Carafello attended the ceremony to honor the memory of his lifelong friend James Martello, who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial firm that lost more than 650 employees in the attacks. Carafello was on the 18th floor of the South Tower but managed to evacuate.

“Everyone should realize that it was a very bad, catastrophic day for many families,” he said. “These were not warriors. These were people like you and me going to work.”

At the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, where American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building’s west flank, killing 184, President Donald Trump chronicled some of the stories of those aboard who perished in the crash: a woman pregnant with her first child, a family of four headed to Australia, three sixth-graders on a field trip.

The president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who also delivered remarks, both used their speeches to make the case for the Iran war, which they have defended as necessary to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

“We salute our first responders and law enforcement, and we love them,” Trump said. “And we salute the service members working right now to ensure the world’s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never ever have a nuclear weapon.”

Mourners were also gathering in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at the crash site where passengers brought down one of the four hijacked jetliners, United Airlines Flight 93, that had been headed for Washington.

Generational pain

The attacks shaped generations of Americans who lived through the day or grew up in its aftermath, influencing U.S. foreign policy, domestic politics and public attitudes toward security.

But for many whom the attacks directly affected — the victims’ families and friends, first responders and rescue workers — the anniversary is a tribute to the lives lost on a clear blue day a quarter century ago and the heartbreak that followed.

Caroline Ogonowski’s father, John, was the captain of Flight 11, which took off from Boston 47 minutes before striking the North Tower.

Ogonowski, now 39, had her first baby this year and named him after her father. She brought him to her father’s grave last week and attended a memorial ceremony in Boston on Friday.

“This year, there’s this new sadness in knowing that they won’t ever get to know each other,” Ogonowski, who has worked in disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, said in a phone interview. “My father will never know his grandson. And my son will never know his grandfather.

“We owe it to my father and all the others that we lost on that day to make sure that we continue to teach future generations about what happened, about who these people were, who these heroes were, how our country came together and became stronger because of it,” she added.

Lasting legacy

A generation of Americans has grown up since 2001 who are too young to remember the attacks but whose lives were fundamentally altered by them.

The attacks initiated the War on Terror, which led to the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that lasted years. The resulting public backlash helped fuel Trump’s rise a decade ago, when he vowed not to start new foreign entanglements — a promise being tested by the Iran war.

At home, Americans expressed deep solidarity and patriotism, as well as sorrow, in the immediate wake of the attacks.

At the same time, however, Muslim Americans and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries faced a rise in prejudice and hate crimes. Public polls have found 9/11 colors Americans’ perceptions of Muslims to this day. Zohran Mamdani, New York’s first Muslim mayor, faced calls from some Republicans to skip Friday’s ceremony, which he rejected.

Casualties were not limited to those who perished on September 11. Many rescue workers who spent weeks or months at the site afterward, as well as nearby residents and others, were sickened by toxins in the air and eventually died.

The New York City Fire Department lost 343 members on September 11. More than 600 additional firefighters, including some retired members who took part in the rescue effort, have died of 9/11-related illnesses since then, department figures show.

Twenty-six have died this year alone.

U.S. officials disputed that claim.

“All of our Saildrones are accounted for and fully operational,” an official told Military Times.

The IRGC has released footage of its forces attacking an American Saildrone USV in/near the Strait of Hormuz today.

The unmanned Saildrone can be seen burning. pic.twitter.com/hALY030MOe

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) September 10, 2026

The video comes on the heels of another incident in which an Anduril Dive-LD autonomous underwater vehicle — designed for long-range surveillance and other undersea missions — was captured on Sept. 8.

U.S. Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins of U.S. Central Command told Reuters that the “defective drone was an older model that neither collected sensitive data nor carried any classified sonar or radar equipment.”

“Of course Iran will take every opportunity as a propaganda win,” Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the outlet. “It can help the (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) make better versions of their own designs.”

The Navy recently awarded Saildrone Voyager a $16.3 million task order to extend operations of the Voyager fleet in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, according to an August release.

Since 2023, Saildrone’s USVs have worked in coordination with the U.S. Navy, supporting the Joint Interagency Task Force South, or JIATF-S, and U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command/U.S. Navy Fourth Fleet, per the release.

The 33-foot-long Voyager is designed for persistent surface and subsurface surveillance and can also conduct nearshore mapping missions and seafloor characterization.

Able to remain “on mission and on station” for months at a time, the USVs are “both a deterrent and an alarm” along the U.S.’s expansive southern maritime border, according to the company.

The reactor’s deployment helps carry out President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order calling for the swift integration of nuclear power within the military, with a goal of having at least one working reactor on a military base by Sept. 30, 2028.

“The MMR installation will provide reliable, around-the-clock power independent of the commercial electric grid, capable of sustaining critical operations under the most demanding conditions,” a Pentagon release said.

The reactor will help create American jobs, bolster the nuclear supply chain, provide nonstop power outside of the civilian electric grid and help support national security.

It will also be the first power-producing reactor installed in Indiana.

The reactor installation will be implemented by the Army’s Janus Program, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment, the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, and state of Indiana.

The Janus program was created to install nuclear power on military bases that can operate independently of the surrounding city’s electrical grid.

The Pentagon said it will work hand-in-hand with federal, state and local partners to ensure the reactor is installed in a way that complies with environmental and safety regulations.

Testifying before the National Commission on the Future of the Navy Wednesday, DIU’s principal deputy director and chief commercial officer, Matthew Shortal, said dollars are not following rhetoric when it comes to building out the unmanned fleet.

“I’ve seen reports that it’s 96% manned, 4% unmanned,” Shortal said. “My personal view is that it’s not even close, and we need to move quicker.”

He added that, in meetings with Navy and Marine Corps leadership, it was easy to secure agreement around the importance of manned vessels and platforms in the fight.

But “when it comes time for budget, moving things, it just doesn’t happen, and we need to move out quickly,” he said. “It’s 96-4; it’s not moving to 10%, and I’ve seen the budget for this year. You know, a couple more billion for unmanned. It’s not enough. We need to start killing manned programs.”

Shortal gave his testimony before the congressionally established panel at its third public hearing, taking place at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

Established in 2022, the commission has eight members and kicked off its series of hearings in March. It’s set to deliver initial findings in early 2027 that will include “concrete choices for force design, industrial base reform, and the policies that enable a Navy and Marine Corps team capable of sustained operations and rapid surge when required,” according to the commission.

Shortal’s testimony emphasized the way both the ongoing Ukraine conflict and Operation Epic Fury — the United States’ war on Iran — have shifted the paradigm and emphasized unmanned vessels as “the way into the future.”

He cited in particular the Navy’s deployment of a Saronic-made Corsair unmanned surface vessel into the Strait of Hormuz to conduct an at-sea rescue of two Army AH-64 Apache pilots after their helicopter went down in the Strait in June.

“Then, not long after, three explosive-laden Corsair autonomous surface vessels conducted one-way attacks against maritime infrastructure at the Bandar Abbas naval base,” Shortal said, referring to Iran’s largest naval facility, which abuts the Strait.

DIU, he said, had funded early prototyping and acquisition channels for Saronic-made USVs, leading to the award of a $392 million production contract for Corsairs last December.

“At DIU, we don’t spend years gazing at the problem,” Shortal said. “In the face of generational technological change on the battlefield, resource allocation towards new entrants and new capabilities like unmanned autonomous vehicles in all domains is a critical directive in the face of a new war.”

Shortal did not expand, however, on which manned platforms and capabilities the Navy should divest or reduce to achieve a greater proportion of unmanned platforms in the fleet.

Operation Epic Fury has also emphasized the limitations of the Navy’s manned fleet, particularly the finite number of carriers and support vessels it has to maintain and sustain presence in the Middle East.

The retasking of the carrier George Washington to the region in order to relieve the Abraham Lincoln following a marathon deployment left a temporary carrier gap in the Pacific, where China threatens allied nations.

The Navy’s shipbuilding plan, released in May, requests funding for five unmanned and 34 manned vessels in Fiscal Year 2027. Over the next five years, it asks for 63 unmanned platforms and 122 manned ships, for a total of 299 manned battle-force ships and 83 unmanned vessels by FY 2031. It was the first time the Navy had included unmanned vessels in its future fleet projections.

“This inclusion is driven by the level of maturity in unmanned vessels,” the plan noted, “Which are now projected to be able to perform [chief of Naval Operations]-approved operational requirements.”

House lawmakers released key findings Tuesday from an investigation into the Navy’s response to aviators dealing with flight-related brain injuries.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said the Navy has not done enough to research and mitigate potential neurological damage for Navy pilots despite being aware of documented mental health concerns and suicides within the F/A-18 community.

“The result is a system that is well-equipped to treat injuries once they are diagnosed, but poorly structured to understand or prevent risks developing over time,” the investigation said. “In effect, despite internal warnings and external reporting, the Navy has not taken the steps necessary to determine whether it is systematically exposing its aviators to long-term brain injury.”

The investigation, which began Feb. 6, 2025, was sparked by a New York Times report about a confidential Navy program studying whether Navy pilots were experiencing debilitating brain injuries from flying.

The program, called Project Odin’s Eye, studied pilots who flew the F/A-18 Super Hornet, according to the report.

Several of those aviators died by suicide between June 2023 and December 2024, when the article was published.

The investigation found that some aviators reportedly experienced memory loss, depression and anxiety, which the committee said may be associated with their time as naval aviators.

Lawmakers said that brain injuries may be the result of extreme gravitational forces that occur during carrier catapult launches or during aerial maneuvers.

The investigation also found that the Navy was aware of issues with its pilots, including suicides, but had not launched a formal investigation into whether underlying neurological causes could be contributing factors.

The Navy had also not identified a way to properly research on the long-term effects of potential brain injuries in its pilots.

“Programs like ‘Project Odin’s Eye,’ focus on screening and performance optimization in select communities but are not structured as formal research studies and do not generate population wide, cumulative exposure,” the report said.

The Navy itself described the program, lawmakers said, as an effort to optimize performance for individuals working in maritime special operations that was not created for long-term research into brain injuries or to assess risks.

According to the investigation, naval aviators were not the program’s primary focus.

The effort was also conducted without the awareness of top Navy officials, the report said.

Leaders in the Naval aviation community did not appear to know the program existed before the New York Times inquired about it for its December 2024 article.

Current policies allow flight surgeons and neurocognitive testing to diagnose head trauma and provide pilots with a network of mental health providers to help address psychological issues.

These resources are adept at assessing identifiable acute injuries but not at tracking long-term brain damage, lawmakers found.

The culture within the Navy aviation community is not conducive to addressing concerns over long-term mental health either.

The investigation said that pilots are less inclined to seek mental health counseling or medical assistance because they feel doing so may jeopardize their careers or flight status.

In April 2026, the Navy released its own findings of a cohort study that researched the neurological effects of flying among 8,500 active-duty aviators. The study found no statistically significant increase in diagnosed neurological conditions among tactical aviators exposed to high-G forces compared with their peers.

But the House Committee found that the study had limitations because it focused on a relatively young, active-duty population and did not account for conditions that could emerge later in life or after service.

The service still doesn’t have the framework in place, the report said, to analyze long-term risks of neurological degradation among pilots.

To address this, lawmakers recommended that Congress institute a longitudinal study looking into cumulative neurological damage in Naval aviators.

Lawmakers also recommended that the Defense Department create a specific brain health program that focuses solely on naval aviators and on shifting the culture so that aviators feel more emboldened to seek help without fear of losing their jobs or ruining their careers.

The VA has held events on Patriot Day, as the date was declared by Congress in December 2001, to honor the 47 veterans and family members killed in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, as well as the more than 16,000 veterans who have died since and are interred at VA national cemeteries.

“As our nation marks the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, VA national cemeteries offer a meaningful place to honor the courage and sacrifice of that day,” said VA Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs Sam Brown, a retired Army captain who was severely wounded in combat in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2008.

Patriot Day honors not only those killed in the attacks, but the service members, law enforcement officers, firefighters and first responders who responded, as well as those who gave their lives for their country in subsequent wars.

The efforts mark the eighth year the VA teamed with Carry the Load to host the volunteer events. The nonprofit was founded by two Navy SEALs to promote remembrance of fallen service members on Memorial Day.

“As we come together on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Carry The Load’s National Day of Service and Remembrance gives Americans a meaningful way to honor the nearly 3,000 lives lost,” said former Naval Special Warfare officer and group co-founder Stephen Holley in a statement.

On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four U.S. airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center towers in New York City; the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.; and a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

Forty-four passengers died on United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania; 184 people, including 59 passengers of American Airlines Flight 77 and 125 military and civilian Pentagon employees died in Arlington, Virginia, while the remainder perished in the World Trade Center towers, at work, on American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, or in the response and collapse of the buildings.

The events, which will begin at 10 a.m., will include brief ceremonies followed by opportunities to clean headstones and conduct other restoration activities. All supplies will be furnished. Those wishing to participate can register with Carry the Load. More information is available on the VA’s website.

The VA manages 157 cemeteries nationwide and funds an additional 125 state, territorial and tribal veterans cemeteries.

Last week, the department dedicated the first national cemetery in the state of Nevada in Elko. The 15-acre grounds, expected to open for interments in late 2026, will include 1,045 gravesites as well as a columbarium and other facilities.

Veterans who are eligible for VA burial benefits include all who were discharged under something other than dishonorable conditions; spouses or surviving spouses of eligible veterans; dependent children; and some others.

The policy incorporates directives issued throughout 2025 into a set of standards for the services. Among them: commanders must allow time for physical fitness every duty day and troops in jobs designated as “combat arms” must be held to male fitness standards on regular fitness tests.

Many changes are already underway across the services. In March 2025, Hegseth ordered the services to identify their combat-arms specialties and develop sex-neutral, mission-related physical standards.

Hegseth has railed against “fat troops,” and “fat generals,” and pledged to return combat arms jobs to “the highest male standard only.”

The changes have unfolded alongside a Pentagon review of women in front-line jobs. In December, the Pentagon’s personnel chief, Anthony Tata, announced a study on the effectiveness of integrating ground combat units, prompting concerns among some that it could be used to justify restricting women from combat roles.

Critics have questioned the study’s independence after it was transferred from the Institute for Defense Analyses to Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory and placed under a researcher involved in a controversial 2015 study Hegseth has cited to argue against women serving in combat jobs.

The new document replaces the Pentagon’s 2022 fitness policy.

Here is what to know:

Fitness tests

Active duty troops are slated to take two fitness tests per year, and National Guard and Reserve members will take one. Under the Pentagon’s new policy, active-duty service members will take their service’s regular fitness test and a second assessment aimed at measuring their combat readiness. Those in designated combat arms jobs will be required to take a Combat Field Test, or CFT, while troops outside of those specialties will take a Combat Readiness Test, or CRT. The services can decide to use a regular fitness test in place of a CRT.

The regulations identify more than 80 occupations as combat arms across the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force, including infantry, armor, artillery, some engineering jobs and special forces roles. No Space Force jobs are listed.

Combat arms troops will be held to male-based standards on their regular service tests and required to score an average of 70% across events. Those in non-combat roles will have sex and age-based scoring.

Each service is responsible for developing its own CFTs that adhere to Pentagon standards.

Body composition

Active-duty troops will have body composition testing twice annually; those in the National Guard and Reserve will have testing once per year. All service members must meet a waist-to-height ratio of less than 0.55, which is calculated by dividing a person’s waist circumference by their height. Troops who exceed that standard will be subject to a service-specific body fat assessment. If they fail that assessment, service members will be enrolled in a remedial program to meet benchmarks.

Branches may also set stricter requirements.

The body composition policy also gives a minimum 12-month exemption from fitness and body composition testing after childbirth, miscarriage or stillbirth. Postpartum troops may be granted additional time exemptions based on healthcare provider input.

Accountability and Tracking

The policy makes commanders responsible for giving troops time to stay fit. Leadership “will allow such members to perform physical fitness training every duty day,” the regulation reads, except when mission requirements dictate otherwise.

Starting on June 1, 2027, each service must submit a report on its fitness and body composition programs to the Pentagon with data that enables officials to analyze results based on sex, age, race, ethnicity, rank and military specialty. The services are also required to keep electronic records of troops’ test results throughout their careers.

Additionally, the services must provide the Pentagon with the information about the scientific basis used to create their fitness and body composition standards.

If not for what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, Valeria Casillas probably would not have joined the military. But in the surge of patriotism following deadly terrorist attacks on New York City and outside Washington, D.C., she saw service as a chance to give back to the country where her father — a truck driver and naturalized citizen from Mexico — had carved his own path.

“My dad loves this country so much. … He came to the U.S. and made his life what he wanted,” she said. “It feels almost like my contribution is in my father’s name.”

In 2006, the then-18-year-old Casillas enlisted in the Air Force, where she became an intelligence analyst. But she began to question the value of her mission during a 2008 deployment, after spending 12-hour shifts watching airborne overwatch videos of Iraqi society’s slide into chaos.

“I remember being at the smoke pit after we’d been there a couple months … with other junior enlisted, all of us 18, 19, 20 years old, asking ‘What are we doing here? What’s the point?’” she recalled. “And I just remember being real quiet.”

Launched after the Sept. 11 attacks, the global war on terrorism expanded from Afghanistan and Iraq to counterterrorism missions in countries including Syria, Somalia, and Yemen. Between 1.9 million and 3 million U.S. service members served in those wars and related theaters. By 2021, more than 7,000 service members had died and more than 53,000 had been wounded in action.

Twenty-five years after 9/11 reshaped American foreign policy, veterans whose lives were defined by the wars that followed may still be reconciling two truths: They are proud of the values they defended and the people they served beside, and they question if the wars themselves accomplished anything.

In interviews with The War Horse, three veterans described their service after 9/11, and what it means for them now.

‘To be a true patriot’

At first, Casillas saw the mission to Iraq as a good thing: U.S. troops were helping to build a democracy after the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. She was assigned to an F-16 expeditionary fighter squadron at Balad Air Base, about 40 miles north of Baghdad.

There, one of her jobs was to review footage from Litening targeting pods belly-mounted to F-16 fighter jets, which acted as eyes in the sky from 13,000 or 14,000 feet. One day, while reviewing that footage, Casillas saw the aftermath of an ambush that killed American troops riding in a convoy. Iraqi troops — men in whom the U.S. had invested billions of dollars for training — had abandoned their posts at a nearby checkpoint. This was part of a pattern of desertion and infiltration across the Iraqi army, and Casillas said its soldiers often happened to not show up the day of a fight.

“You can have the American military train all these units, but their hearts aren’t in it,” she said. “At that point I did start to feel frustrated, and maybe angry, at how we lost people every day, young people. And for what?”

Throughout the deployment, Casillas also had to watch footage of Sunni and Shia extremists killing each other, civilians, and Iraqi Christians in addition to burning down each other’s homes.

“We would watch … how these insurgents would drive in a convoy to these villages and drag people out of their houses and murder them and pillage or take the women and then burn an entire village down,” Casillas said. “And I know that there’s rules of engagement. But again, that hopelessness, that frustration, that here we are, you know, we have [helicopters], and we’re just watching these people being slaughtered, innocent people, women and children, just completely wiped out, and it’s like, okay, why are we just sitting here watching this happen?”

Beyond that, Casillas was often made to feel as if she did not belong in uniform. Years before that deployment, while at analyst training, she said she was sexually assaulted and was discriminated against for being Latina. And at Balad, Casillas said she and other military women often felt unsafe from not only enemy rocket and mortar fire, but the threat of sexual assault and violence from their fellow service members and the foreign nationals working on the base.

An Army account from that period reported that Balad’s senior sexual assault response coordinator counseled and assisted more than 100 service members over a nine-month deployment. Casillas said she was grateful to have a truck to drive across the sprawling base rather than take the bus at odd hours.

“We might get mortared and you want to take cover, but you literally got these other service members who might attack you too,” she said.

Casillas left the Air Force in 2010, but it took years to come to terms with her experience. Looking back, she said that military service made her mature and see a bigger picture of the world, and it introduced her to “a sisterhood” of women in uniform who became mentors. As for the bad parts, she found a way to grow through them.

“People say ‘I’m really glad I went through that because it made me a stronger person,’” she said. “I’ve done enough therapy now to know … that nobody should be grateful for or think they deserve any kind of trauma. [But] I’m stronger in spite of it. And I do very much feel that way.”

After feeling alienated in the military, Casillas didn’t maintain relationships with most of the people she met there. But that changed after she got involved in events with Patrol Base Abbate, a nonprofit veterans organization.

“I realized a lot of veterans after getting out had similar experiences or similar views about politics, race issues, and our active duty experiences,” she said. “I remember feeling anxious about doing my first trip because I thought I was going to be the only person in a group that wasn’t a conservative. And while some veterans are that way, I think there’s also a lot of veterans who, like me, are vocal about and have similar views on the things we experienced and current events.”

Being vocal is a key ingredient.

“I feel like to be a true patriot is to ask questions,” she said. “And who better to ask questions and speak up than veterans, because we’ve experienced what most civilians haven’t.”

‘I can’t hold everybody’s hands all the time’

For Casillas, questioning the mission became a form of patriotism. For Paul Brown, the reckoning centered on a more intimate obligation: How long should he remain responsible for the Marines he had tried to keep alive?

Sept. 11, 2001, was only one day after Brown had returned from thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail.

“I panicked and said, ‘Screw this! I’m going back out to the mountains,’” he said.

But by 2009, Brown had a family to support, student loans to pay off, and few prospects besides bartending amid the Great Recession. He also considered himself patriotic and wanted to do something that he felt his young son could look up to.

He decided to become a Navy corpsman at 33 years old and was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, where over the next few years he served as medic and mentor for infantrymen almost half his age.

“They always asked me for advice with their family and treated me like I was a wise old man, even though I was 35,” he said. “I really started to take ownership of them.”

In 2010, the battalion deployed to Afghanistan on a mission to clear Taliban fighters out of the town of Sangin. It turned out to be one of the fiercest battles of the war.

“Every day was so intense,” Brown recalled. “Every step that you’re taking was, ‘Am I going to blow up on this step? No? Great, let’s take the next one.’”

Over their six-month deployment, Brown’s battalion suffered one of the highest casualty rates of the war, with 25 Marines killed and 184 wounded. Just in Brown’s platoon and its attached personnel, three Marines were killed and 14 were injured. And when they came home in 2011, the war followed. One of the men Brown saved on the battlefield committed suicide. Another became addicted to heroin. Brown blames himself for not being there the way he was in Sangin.

“I feel like I let my guys down because the follow-up with them has not been there on my part,” he said. “I didn’t follow up because I was dealing with my own stuff.”

There was a lot to deal with. Brown found he now angered easily, and when he walked anywhere unpaved, he worried the ground might explode beneath him. Brown vividly remembers one day when he was tying his son’s hockey skates. He usually bent down on one knee to do it, but this time he got down on both — and the war came flooding back.

“Leaning over someone on both knees was what I’d do taking care of one of my guys,” he said. “To put tourniquets on as they lost their legs. … One of my guys had an abdominal evisceration, and even treating enemy combatants that we had blown the hell out of —trying to prepare their bodies for the mosque.

“Every time I was down on two knees, I was dealing with carnage,” Brown said.

In the following years, Brown became suicidal and had to be hospitalized. But part of what aided his recovery was a sense of responsibility for his children. That feeling eventually helped create a boundary between his old job as a corpsman and his ongoing job as a father.

“Not being able to help the guys in a meaningful way after we got home is hard,” he said. “But I also just can’t hold everybody’s hands all the time.”

Brown remains proud that he supported his Marines in-country. But having seen the devastation of a “just war” firsthand, he wishes more thought was put into how America fights, especially amid the war with Iran. Experts have criticized the Trump administration for its ambiguous goals in the Iran war and the lack of planning to keep the Strait of Hormuz safe against waves of cheap Iranian drones.

“For me, it’s more of a, ‘Why didn’t we think it through before we did this?’” Brown said. “It’s not so much the fact that we’re doing something, it’s how we’re doing it.”

‘I believe that I did a lot of good’

Brown was able to accept the limits of what he could do after the war. Bob Gilling reached a similar conclusion about what he could accomplish while still in it.

An Army infantryman, Gilling first enlisted in 2000 and manned the guns of a Bradley fighting vehicle charging across Iraq during the 2003 invasion.

He was inspired to join the infantry because of retired Army 1st Sgt. John Tucker, a Vietnam veteran who brought Junior ROTC to his high school. Tucker was the kind of man Gilling wanted to be: motivated and accountable — and he brought those same values to Afghanistan, even if it landed him in hot water.

By 2010, Gilling had risen to staff sergeant and was now training Afghan National Army troops. He took the position seriously, devouring books on the Vietnam War so he could learn the lessons from a past counterinsurgency fight and apply it to his own.

One rule he picked up was to never pass a candidate who didn’t meet training standards, but that put him in conflict with higher-ups who wanted to meet goals for troop numbers.

“I think I lost them when I said I’ve been reading these books on Vietnam,” Gilling recalled. “Nobody wants to hear that.”

Eventually, Gilling was pulled from his training unit and sent to evaluate how other coalition countries were training Afghan troops in skills such as reacting to an ambush, setting up a traffic control point, and responding to improvised explosive devices. Gilling took notes, gave feedback, and made few friends. He got a sergeant first class fired for being ineffective, and got into an argument with a French captain mistraining his Afghan troops.

“I felt I was disliked because I gave a shit when some people seemed like they just wanted to check the box,” Gilling said.

But enough people read his reports and asked questions that Gilling, a mere staff sergeant, was given a new job: meeting with Afghan colonels to learn more about how their training programs were going. But the Vietnam parallels followed him. One colonel, for example, had an officer on staff who Gilling said was always high on hashish.

“I asked, ‘Can’t you do something about this guy?’ And he just goes, ‘No, his uncle is in the ministry of defense, so there’s nothing I can do,’” Gilling recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh, corruption.’ He just goes, ‘Yes, it’s a big problem in Afghanistan.’ I’m just like, ‘Yeah, you know where else it was a problem? Vietnam, and we didn’t fix that either.’”

Still, Gilling strived to live the values he learned from Sgt. Tucker and pass them on to younger soldiers. When one private complained in front of Afghan troops that they “fucking stink,” Gilling pulled him aside. He explained that plenty of Afghans understood English after working with Americans for years.

“When you say stuff like that, when you act disrespectfully, we lose ground,” Gilling told the soldier. “They’re not going to take you seriously because they’re not going to view you as a professional.”

Gilling also pointed out the lack of clean water and basic sanitation across much of Afghanistan, and that “these dudes could outclimb you up these mountains.” The talk worked.

“What’s great is the kid really took to it,” Gilling said. “He became a solid instructor out there, being able to rally the [Afghan] troops.”

Moments like that make Gilling proud of his time in the Army.

“I believe that I did a lot of good in what I could do as a [noncommissioned officer],” he said. “I trained a lot of good people, and I looked out for a lot of soldiers.”

Like Brown and Casillas, Gilling questioned whether the wars he fought in made the world a better place. But like the other two, he learned to move on from them.

“As far as the war aspect goes … a lot of that is out of my control,” he said. “If I can’t control something, I kind of have to just let it go.”

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

Following the Lincolns’ nearly 10-month deployment that saw 264 days without a port visit, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle and Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy John Perryman said the Roosevelt will maximize its loadout of food and hygiene products before setting sail, among other improvements.

“As one carrier returns home, we listen to its sailors and families,” Perryman said in the video. “We capture what works and what didn’t and we make it better the next time.”

The Roosevelt, which is currently underway in the U.S. 3rd Fleet area of operations conducting training, is set to replace the Lincoln in the Middle East as the Lincoln wraps up its Thailand port visit on its way home to San Diego, California.

Families of sailors aboard the Lincoln expressed concern on Aug. 11 during a San Diego town hall meeting with then-Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao that their loved ones were experiencing food shortages.

Those potential shortages appear to have been at least partially caused by Iran’s destruction of Naval Support Activity Bahrain, the main logistics hub for U.S. Navy ships in the Middle East.

Iran fired missiles and one-way attack drones at the base during a retaliatory strike on Feb. 28 during the opening salvo of Operation Epic Fury.

After the base was badly damaged, the Navy shifted its logistics operations to Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that sits more than 2,000 miles away from the service’s carrier strike groups in the Middle East.

Appearing to respond to these strategic hurdles, Caudle and Perryman said the Roosevelt’s crew was converting available spaces aboard the ship to become storage so that sailors could have the resources they need for longer when resupply may be more difficult to accomplish during a contested environment.

The Navy updated entertainment equipment on the mess deck and fitness equipment, the officers said.

Caudle and Perryman also said that the service was working with the Roosevelt’s ombudsman and family readiness groups to improve the channel of communication between them and the service.

At least one seafarer aboard a tanker was reported killed and another listed as missing. The attacks sent the price of oil surging, with the international Brent crude benchmark breaching $100 a barrel for the first time since July.

Iran also said it had fired ballistic missiles at a base used by U.S. forces in Jordan. Attacks by both sides since the end of August have shattered a month of relative calm, with the U.S. and Iran hitting military, shipping and energy assets.

The Revolutionary Guards said they would sharply escalate their response to any further attacks, and if the enemy struck two or three Iranian targets, Iran would respond by hitting 20. Iran would soon release maps of a new, much larger off-limits zone at sea that would extend as far as the Arabian Gulf off Chabahar on the far reaches of Iran’s coast near Pakistan, the Guards said.

Recent days have also seen an escalation in fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in Yemen, a second theatre of war that threatens global energy supplies from the Middle East.

Video shows Iranian tankers ablaze

The Americans said they destroyed five Iranian oil tankers overnight, releasing video of ships ablaze before they sank. The U.S. military’s Central Command called its attacks a response to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeting a U.S. Navy warship twice with ballistic missiles over the previous two days. No Americans were harmed, the U.S. said.

Washington has announced a new policy of attacking Iranian tankers in retaliation for fire that threatens its warships. Iran says it is using new, more capable missiles to attack U.S. ships.

“Iran continues to try to hit U.S. naval ships, and for every time they do that or try to do that, they’re going to lose tankers,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters during a visit to Colombia.

After Iran announced its strikes in response, saying it fired on two U.S. ships and eight tankers, reports indicated vessels had been hit in waters near several neighbouring countries.

One seafarer was killed aboard the oil products tanker Hercules Star while at anchorage off Dubai and another crew member was missing, the vessel’s charterer, Peninsula, said. Maritime security sources said it may have been hit by a drone.

The British maritime security agency UKMTO described a vessel in the vicinity that was listing, possibly taking on water after being struck by a projectile. Reuters could not immediately determine whether this referred to the same ship. Two Iraqi port officials said a tanker carrying 2 million barrels of fuel oil, the New Andros, had caught fire after being struck by a drone in Iraqi waters. There were no reports of casualties among the 22 crew.

The UKMTO said it had received reports of several merchant ships struck by disabling fire in the northern Gulf and Gulf of Oman, on either side of the strait. It was not immediately able to confirm casualties or environmental impact.

Iran also threatened oil tankers in Kuwaiti and Bahraini ports, according to a statement carried by state media. A maritime security source reported a liquefied natural gas tanker was damaged in the Emirati port of Khor Fakkan.

The IRGC also said on Wednesday it had fired ballistic missiles at a base used by U.S. forces near Al Azraq, in eastern Jordan. Jordan said its air defences had intercepted 18 of the 20 Iranian missiles, with two falling in unpopulated areas and no casualties. A U.S. official said Iran’s strikes in Jordan were ineffective and all American troops were accounted for.

Video filmed in Ash-Shajarah, in northern Jordan, and verified by Reuters showed flashes lighting up the night sky.

Strait choked off

Iran has largely choked off transit through the strait that carried a fifth of global oil before the war.

Washington has responded with a blockade of Iranian ports, and says it has been able to guide many tankers through the strait, although independent monitors say the extent to which oil is escaping has become increasingly difficult to assess. Preliminary data showed just six ships crossing with transponders on over the last 24 hours.

Escalating combat between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement that controls most populated parts of Yemen has created additional uncertainty for energy markets. A Saudi-backed government based in the south of Yemen has launched a multi-pronged assault on areas controlled by the Houthis, who have threatened Saudi shipping in the Red Sea.

On Tuesday, the Houthis launched an attack on four cities in Saudi Arabia, causing huge fires at oil installations that were visible from space. Saudi authorities said 73 people were wounded. The Saudi Press Agency released footage showing homes severely damaged and injured patients in hospital.

A source in Pakistan, which signed a mutual defence pact with Riyadh last month, said Saudi Arabia had carried out retaliatory strikes on Yemen. The Houthis say dozens of people have been killed in Saudi airstrikes, which Saudi Arabia has not confirmed.

Boeing and Northrop Grumman are competing for the contract, which previous programs of similar scope suggest could be worth tens of billions of dollars over its lifetime.

The program, currently unnamed but designated F/A-XX, has been buffeted by delays and funding disputes for years. Some Pentagon officials had sought to delay it by up to three years, citing concerns about engineering and supply chain capacity. Congress pushed back, earmarking $750 million for F/A-XX in the massive tax-cut and spending bill signed into law in 2025 and an additional $1.4 billion in fiscal 2026.

With China rapidly fielding advanced combat aircraft — including ones Beijing describes as sixth-generation — the stakes of further delay are high, leaving the Navy without a modern fighter capable of operating from carriers in the 2030s and beyond, potentially undermining its ability to project power in contested environments, a U.S. official has said.

A Pentagon spokesperson said, “We continue work to award the F/A-XX contract in the near future. There is no additional information at this time.”

The carrier-borne fighter jet will be the centerpiece of the Navy’s Next Generation Air Dominance family of systems, intended to replace the aging F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fleet that has been in service since the 1990s.

It is expected to feature advanced stealth capabilities, improved range and endurance, and the ability to integrate with uncrewed combat aircraft and the Navy’s carrier-based air defense systems. The first production jets are expected to enter service in the 2030s, while F/A-18s are expected to remain in service into the 2040s.

Markoff explained that calling in air support was an effective way to clear an area, but with thousands of potential targets and few available weapon systems, he constantly had to calculate whether a particular target was worth it.

“Even if that target wasn’t active, knowing that it might be and maintaining availability of that type of a weapon system on station in case it showed up, that was all math I was doing in my head,” he said, adding, “We had to be really careful about saving those munitions.”

In an interview with Military Times, Markoff, now the co-founder and chief executive of Smack Technologies, said his experience in Mosul illustrates the kind of problem his company’s artificial intelligence software, Omega, is designed to help solve.

Earlier this month, Markoff spoke with Military Times about Smack’s Alpha, the wrist-worn device for which the company recently raised $61 million. He followed up to discuss its flagship product, Omega. The company shared a 14-minute video demonstration typically reserved for general officers.

“What the demo shows is a Joint Fires workflow from long-range planning, through what we would call basically the deliberate planning cycle, through the phased execution horizon, to literally right now: What do we do in the context of that larger plan?” he said.

According to the video, a commander begins the process by uploading intelligence and planning documents to give Omega operational context. The commander can then customize that information by selecting factors, such as units and boundaries. Lastly, the system generates high-level plans and detailed workflows.

“The outputs of this workflow look like what a human would create. We’re just generating it automatically for them and then letting them adjust it … We’re just doing it faster and helping them run calculations that are complicated enough that you don’t want to have someone do it on a whiteboard,” Markoff said.

He explained that Omega’s goal is to determine not just which targets to strike, but how to sequence strikes over the course of a month or two to systematically degrade an adversarial force. He added that Omega gives commanders options, along with the pros and cons of each.

“Sometimes it takes people like a month to build that plan. Building the next one to four days takes one to four days,” he said. “And figuring out, ‘What do we do right now?’ Well, the good news is you only have a few seconds, and it only takes a few seconds.”

During the execution phase shown in the video, a commander can monitor operations in real time and adjust plans using information like new intelligence reports, inventory lists or weather forecasts.

For comparison, Smack’s demo likens Omega to Amazon’s approach to the “last-mile delivery problem,” which refers to the logistical challenge of finding the most efficient and resourceful way to get a package to its destination.

Markoff explained the reasoning behind the comparison, saying that while risk tolerances and resources can change during an operation, the overall objective may not.

“It’s not just a scheduling problem, but it’s a pairing of assets and scheduling of assets,” he said, adding that it’s “optimizing that usage in the context of what we’re trying to do long term.”

The demo depicts Omega generating a large number of actions, targets and destinations. The software is designed for campaign-level threats and for developing plans at both the operational and tactical levels. But his company is actively expanding the scope of what it offers to include coordinating humanitarian efforts.

“That has not been the use case that our contracts have focused on, but there is absolutely a demand signal and a requirement for it that we are getting from the users, and it is something that we are building into that longer term,” he said.

While Smack has already shared parts of the demo in marketing materials, the company is in the process of transitioning from prototyping to production, Markoff said. Smack currently has contracts with three U.S. military branches and expects to expand to all six by the end of the year.

Iranian state media said the vessel was a Dive-LD, a large autonomous underwater vehicle built by California defense firm Anduril. The 19-foot (5.8-metre) submersible can carry out missions including mine countermeasures, seabed mapping, intelligence gathering and the inspection of underwater infrastructure such as cables and pipelines, the company has said.

“We trapped one of the most modern, intelligent and unmanned submarines of the terrorist American army at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz. This submersible is equipped with the latest technologies,” the Revolutionary Guards Navy said in a statement carried by Iranian state media.

In response, a Pentagon spokesperson said an underwater drone had “malfunctioned more than a day ago.”

“It was surveying regional waters in support of ongoing operations. The defective drone was an older model that neither collected sensitive data nor carried any classified sonar or radar equipment,” the spokesperson said.

Reuters could not independently verify Iran’s claims and the Pentagon did not address them in its statement.

Anduril did not respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. military is investing heavily in unmanned naval systems, including underwater and surface vessels, as it seeks cheaper ways to monitor vast areas of ocean, gather intelligence and track adversary ships and submarines without putting sailors at risk.

According to Anduril’s website, Dive-LD can operate for up to 10 days without returning to base and is designed to dive to depths of as much as 6,000 metres (19,700 feet). Dive-LD units cost about $2.5 million each, U.S. military news site DefenseScoop reported in 2024.

VoteVets, a Democratic veterans group, was joined by Home of the Brave, a political advocacy group, and the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit focused on landscape heritage, in an effort to halt the build of the planned arch as the anticipated date of construction nears.

Last week, it was announced on social media that construction would soon begin for the arch, which would be 250 feet tall and sit at Memorial Circle on Columbia Island between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

The groups released a new video Tuesday, saying that breaking the sightline from the Lincoln Memorial to the cemetery is “entirely inappropriate and borders on sacrilege” to the 400,000 service members buried there.

“This proposal by this administration doesn’t bear well with me,” Karen Meredith, the Gold Star mother of 1st Lt. Ken Ballard who died in the Iraq War and is buried at Arlington, said in the video. “There will be an observation deck. We don’t need tourists overlooking funerals. I’m just appalled.”

Placing that large of an arch, dubbed the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck, in that location would alter the hallowed ground and associated feeling when experiencing the cemetery, Cultural Landscape Foundation President and CEO Charles Birnbaum said in the video.

The National Park Service released documents saying that construction would take two to three years at 20 hours per day, which the video argues could conflict with burials at the cemetery that occur every weekday.

The project is currently being challenged by veterans and a historic preservationist in federal court. The U.S. District Court filing says that there is no legal basis for the arch and that it needs approval from Congress, despite the Trump administration alleging that a 1925 law related to the building of Arlington Memorial Bridge authorizes the construction.

The National Capital Planning Commission is expected to meet Oct. 1 to review the arch’s plans and consider its final approval after granting it preliminary approval in early July.

In the agreement filed last month, Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay agreed to no longer block or remove comments based on their expressed viewpoints, which aligns its policy with the Navy’s social media handbook.

While there was no monetary award, the base agreed to admit that it violated the Navy’s policy and the plaintiff’s constitutional rights. Officials also had to update the base’s social media pages to state that comments by the general public “will not be banned or blocked” because of their opinions.

In a statement, Michelle Scott, an attorney with the Center for Individual Rights, or CIR, which filed the case, said plaintiff Sergio Rodriguez asked the kinds of questions anyone would ask during a long power outage.

“The Navy doesn’t get to open a comment section, invite the public, and then delete anyone who asks an inconvenient question,” Scott said. “This settlement makes clear that the government can’t silence its critics with the click of a button.”

In July, a CIR plaintiff settled another case in which a North Carolina National Guard unit banned a former guardsman from its Facebook page after he criticized the unit’s leadership. That case also resulted in the unit adopting moderation policies that prohibit removing, hiding or filtering comments because they are deemed “inappropriate.”

According to the complaint, Rodriguez responded to the base’s post announcing a power outage in base housing on Aug. 12, 2024. He asked whether the base had plans to temporarily relocate residents during the outage because of excessive heat and humidity, and how residents could be reimbursed for spoiled food.

The lawsuit described Rodriguez as a disabled Army veteran whose wife served as a supply officer on the naval base. After retiring from the Army, he became an accomplished advocate for military families. He was named “spouse of the year” by Armed Forces Insurance and received a commendation from President Joe Biden.

While the page administrator responded in the thread, Rodriguez said he also received a call from the base commander’s wife informing him that he had been banned from the page. When he later tried to access the page, he found that he had been blocked.

In his lawsuit, he argued he “suffered irreparable injury” because being banned from the page limited his ability to communicate with and receive information from other base residents.

“Base Facebook pages are where military families turn when they’re searching for answers,” Rodriguez said. “When I was banned, I lost the ability to advocate for those families. Those families lost access to a person who was willing to ask hard questions on their behalf. It wasn’t enough for the base to quietly restore my access without ever admitting they were wrong.”

A photo Strohmaier took on Feb. 29, 2024, while stationed aboard the USCGC Bertholf is one of two photos chosen by the U.S. Postal Service for its design of a Forever stamp commemorating the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

The stamp features photos of the Legend-class national security cutter Bertholf, as well as the U.S. Coast Guard Barque Eagle, the academy’s primary training vessel since 1946. Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew Thieme took the photo of the Eagle that’s featured on the stamp.

The U.S. Postal Service has printed 12 million of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy stamps. Strohmaier has already placed his first order. In addition to the birth announcements, he plans to use them for Christmas cards and other mailings, “maybe for the next decade,” he told Military Times.

Antonio Alcalá, an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, designed the stamp. Before it was printed and issued, it was reviewed by the Postal Service, the Citizens stamp Advisory Committee and, finally, the Postmaster General before being printed and issued.

Alcala said their research group worked with the Coast Guard Academy to find imagery deemed to be appropriate for a stamp design.

“From those, in consultation with USPS, we narrowed it down to the two images shown on the stamp,” Alcalá told Military Times.

USPS uses photos taken by individuals in the design of stamps when it’s determined to be the best solution, he said.

“The stamp highlights, by featuring the two Coast Guard vessels … the tradition of training academy cadets on both traditional sailing ships as well as the latest in contemporary ship design and technology,” he said.

Strohmaier, 40, said that when he first saw a picture of the stamp, “I thought it was just a fantastic opportunity to highlight the Coast Guard, especially the juxtaposition of our oldest cutter and one of our newest ones.”

The design process began in March 2025, and the special issue stamp continues the Postal Service’s tradition of honoring the nation’s military academies.

The stamps will be released during a first-day-of-issue unveiling ceremony at 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Saturday, Sept. 12, at the Connecticut Maritime Heritage Festival, which takes place at Custom House Pier at Waterfront Park in New London, Connecticut. The ceremony is free and open to the public.

The stamps can be pre-ordered at usps.com.

When Strohmaier took the photo, he was deployed for two months aboard the Bertholf, located off the coast of Singapore.

He had no idea Postal Service officials were considering his photo for the stamp, he said, until one of his public affairs colleagues sent him an email early this summer and said he was “pretty sure” the photo on the stamp was one of Strohmaier’s. He didn’t think about it much at the time because his mind was elsewhere; his wife was just a couple of days from delivering their son, he said.

Since word of the stamp got out recently, he’s received texts from colleagues around the country congratulating him.

“They were glad we were getting this unique opportunity,” he said. “The fact that they chose one of my pictures is quite an honor and a humbling experience for sure.”

Yet, Cao will need more than the Senate’s majority rule approval — his nomination from Trump will also require a special waiver to assume the post.

Under 10 U.S.C. §8013, federal law requires a seven-year waiting period before former military officers can take several top civilian Pentagon jobs, including deputy secretary of defense, under secretary of defense for policy and comptroller and the service secretaries. Elaine Luria, a Navy veteran and current candidate for Virginia’s Second Congressional District, noted the rule on X over the weekend.

“Hung Cao has an incredible personal story, however, he is ineligible to serve as Secretary of the Navy under 10 U.S.C. §8013, which requires Service Secretaries to be retired from active duty a minimum of 7 years,” Luria wrote. “Mr. Cao has only been retired 5 years. The law was changed in 2021 under a bipartisan and bicameral amendment to the NDAA following the waiver of Generals Mattis and Austin to serve as SECDEF.”

Prior to Gen. Jim Mattis’ confirmation as secretary of defense in 2017 and Gen. Lloyd Austin’s in 2021, Congress had granted only one waiver since the creation of the position in 1947. That special congressional waiver went to retired Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall, allowing the famed former general to serve at the post during the Korean War.

Cao, a Navy captain and former special operations officer, retired from the service in 2021. His nomination, according to Politico, also means that the House of Representatives will get involved, “giving lawmakers rare veto power over a senior personnel pick.”

It will also give Senate Democrats the opportunity to filibuster Cao’s nomination even before a confirmation vote, as the waiver requires 60 votes to advance to the nomination stage.

Congress will largely be out of session until the November midterms, meaning that even the preliminary steps to get Cao confirmed have the potential to drag on for months. The Senate will be in town for only three weeks before Nov. 3. The House will be in session for just one week.

“It can be done,” Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee, told Politico. “But we have to get started and get after it now.”

On Sept. 1, Cao acknowledged the Navy secretary nomination, noting that it has been “an honor of a lifetime to lead the great warriors of the Navy and Marine Corps team. I’m grateful for your leadership and support as we continue to get after shipbuilding and ensure the defense of the homeland.”

The effort, which was under way in June, has included conversations with senior lawmakers in the Senate about whether the administration’s picks would have enough support to be confirmed, said two of the people, one of whom added that the review was still going on as of late August. Reuters could not determine when the White House began considering candidates.

The three sources said no decision had been made to remove Feinberg from his post. They did not say why the White House was reviewing potential replacements and did not specify which candidates the White House was considering.

“These so-called anonymous ‘sources’ have no idea what they are talking about,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly.

“President Trump appreciates the work of Secretary Hegseth, Deputy Secretary Feinberg, and the entire Department of War, whose record of success in Operation Epic Fury, Operation Absolute Resolve, and Operation Midnight Hammer speaks for itself,” she said, referring to U.S. military operations in Iran and Venezuela.

The Pentagon denied a process was under way to replace Feinberg. Asked for comment by Reuters, Hegseth said in a statement that Feinberg has his full support and “isn’t going anywhere.”

The Pentagon did not provide a comment from Feinberg and declined to make him available for an interview.

A departure by Feinberg, the billionaire co-founder of private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, would be the most senior staff change for a department that has already seen a string of high-profile departures under Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned this week following months of tension with Hegseth, according to a source familiar with the matter. The Army has declined to comment on the reasons for his departure. Navy Secretary John Phelan and several senior Army leaders have also departed in recent months.

Feinberg, who vowed to accelerate U.S. munitions production, has not yet met that goal, according to analysts who say that the U.S. industrial base cannot ramp up quickly. Some defense industry executives say his task has been complicated by the slow pace of Congress appropriating funds despite immense pressure from the administration.

Feinberg “has worked tirelessly to rebuild our Defense Industrial Base and ensure our military has everything it needs to win, and I look forward to continuing to work with him,” Hegseth said in his statement to Reuters, adding, “He’s doing a tremendous job for President Trump, for the Department, and for our warfighters.”

Frustration over the Iran war

Trump has increasingly expressed frustration with the lack of progress in the six-month-old Iran war, which has settled into a costly standoff between the U.S. and Iran.

One of the costs has been a drawdown of U.S. weapons stockpiles. Reuters has reported that the U.S. military faces significant shortages of certain munitions, which have alarmed Congress and military leaders.

Trump has dismissed the concerns, saying the U.S. has “far more munitions than anyone in the world.”

But in an exchange with Trump at Camp David earlier this month, according to The Washington Post, Hegseth blamed Feinberg for letting stockpiles of long-range guided missiles and air-defense interceptors shrink.

The White House has called the report “fake news.” In a statement to Reuters, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said: “Secretary Hegseth did not mislead anyone about our munitions posture, and he did not blame Deputy Secretary Feinberg.”

Appointed by Trump last year, Feinberg has attempted to reshape the Pentagon by ramping up the U.S. military’s direct investments in companies and delivering loans to military contractors through multiple offices inside the department, including the Office of Strategic Capital and the newly created Economic Defense Unit.

In an Aug. 18 memo he sent to defense firms and seen by Reuters, Feinberg called on contractors to speed up production and provide more transparency around pricing. The Pentagon did not respond to a question about the memo.

Feinberg has also come under scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has raised concerns about whether his former firm Cerberus could benefit from the Pentagon’s spending on its Golden Dome missile defense program.

“There are no conflicts of interest between Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg and Cerberus,” said Parnell. “He has completely divested from Cerberus and has recused himself from any conversations or business relationships between the Executive Branch and Cerberus.”

Cerberus did not respond to a request for comment.

The Department of Defense wants to take that idea one step further and wield AI-generated “personalities” to mimic real people — and fool enemy AI trying to identify patterns in friendly cellphone traffic.

The goal is to mask “digital exhaust,” the metadata automatically emitted by mobile phones, such as location and specific device IDs. Intelligence agencies, law enforcement, militaries and even criminals have become adept at using this digital debris to locate users and analyze their behavior.

In particular, “accessing foreign mobile phone networks exposes individuals and organizations to surveillance and espionage threats,” warned the DoD Small Business Innovation Research solicitation, which opens Sept. 23 and closes Oct. 21.

“Adversaries can leverage this data to track daily routines, identify deviations indicating special events (e.g., VIP visits or mission preparation), and map sensitive facilities based on cell phone concentration or periods of inactivity,” the solicitation explained.

The solicitation doesn’t specifically mention AI-created people chatting on their mobiles. But DoD does envision a “digital exhaust deception system” in which AI “personas” generate cellphone signals that mimic the behavior of real people.

Each device should have a minimum of two personas, and eventually four or more. The device should weigh fewer than 2 pounds and have a battery life of up to 36 hours.

Defense startup raises $61 million to put AI into a wrist-worn display

Merely generating fake cellphone signals isn’t enough. The device must “mimic realistic patterns of life to defeat automated network analysis,” DoD said.

At a minimum, this means defeating basic traffic analysis. Ultimately, the Pentagon wants a system that can defeat behavioral tracking by advanced AI.

Phase I of the project involves creating a design concept and algorithms, as well as listing any “proprietary software required to conduct AI-enabled mission planning and operations.” Phase II will generate a prototype, followed by Phase III and delivery of “fully integrated mission management software and hardened decoy box form factors (e.g., Wi-Fi router-sized team devices and puck-sized personal devices).”

The technology could lend itself to civilian applications. A capability to obscure cell phone metadata “directly translates to protecting high-value corporate assets, personnel, and intellectual property from commercial espionage and tracking,” the solicitation states.

Analyzing signal traffic has long been a useful intelligence tool. For example, in World War II, the U.S. Navy used it to derive intelligence on Japanese naval deployment. Today, police have software that uses cell phone data to trace a user’s past movement for months.

On the other hand, traffic analysis can boomerang on its creators. Japan used decoy radio signals in 1941 to convince U.S. analysts that the Japanese fleet was at home, rather than steaming toward Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Textile experts and scientists with Navy Exchange Service Command worked on designs from Aug. 17 to Aug. 21 onboard Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story and at NEX Norfolk, Virginia, according to a Thursday release.

“We are committed to providing certified, high-quality Navy uniforms so that sailors are comfortable and professional looking so that they can focus on their mission,” Brianna Plummer, Group Leader of Design & Testing Laboratories at Navy Clothing and Textile Research Facility, said in the announcement.

Service members tried on prototype slacks, shirts and jumper tops, gaining an understanding of which sizes work best for them while experts with the fit clinic took measurements and learned how the new uniforms work alongside a newer numeric sizing system.

Experts will now utilize the intel collected to make decisions on future sizing recommendations, the Navy said.

The service has made a point to modernize its female uniforms, having already rolled out new service khaki slacks with back pockets and summer and dress female white overblouses over the past year.

The Navy Exchange Service Command’s Navy Clothing and Textile Research Facility has been at the helm of those efforts, announcing its first uniform updates in September 2024, as part of the Size Modernization Program.

The program was designed to address issues female sailors have had in the past with fit and comfort.

“We’re investigating it because obviously we care. We want to know,” Vance told reporters during a White House press briefing.

“If we do make mistakes, again, this is a big difference between us and Iran, when our military makes mistakes, they learn from them to try to get better from them,” Vance added.

Iranian officials say four people died and nearly 70 were wounded by a strike that hit a home during a wedding. Iranian state TV reported on Thursday that a fifth person, a 22-year-old woman, had since died at a hospital.

The U.S. military has said it was aware of the Iranian reports but that it “never targets civilians.”

On Wednesday, the Pentagon posted the “Clinical Guidance for Health and Human Performance Optimization” on its website. By Thursday, the memo and an accompanying statement from spokesperson Sean Parnell had been removed.

“The draft (document) published on September 2, 2026, has been temporarily rescinded to allow for updates,” the official said, adding that interim guidance remains in effect.

The detailed clinical guidelines had laid out separate testosterone deficiency screening paths for men and women that were to happen during their annual health assessments.

The guidance was set to take effect immediately, and the ​Pentagon said it is aimed at improving military readiness by ​identifying and managing hormonal and energy-availability issues.

“Page Not Found” appeared on websites for both the Pentagon and Defense Health Agency when clicking on links for the memo and statement.

Wednesday’s guidance said that men aged 30 and older would be screened through a questionnaire that could then trigger a blood test for testosterone levels and, if needed, testosterone hormone therapy.

Women would also be screened through a questionnaire, which could then move to treatment for conditions related to hormonal imbalance. Testosterone would be used in women only for one of the diagnoses for which there is evidence of efficacy, such as Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder, characterized by a distressing level of low sexual interest.