During a review period from June 1, 2024, through May 31, 2025, the VA made at least one error in 17,900 cases, roughly 38%, regarding disability decisions for painful scars, according to a recent VA Office of Inspector General report.

920 of those decisions, per the report, led to millions in overpayment and will continue to accrue without “corrective action.”

For service-connected painful scars, as a result of burns, surgeries, shrapnel and gunshot wounds, among other sources, the VA requires a physical examination to support a veteran’s claim.

However, the OIG found that the Disability Benefits Questionnaire “does not clearly define objective versus subjective evidence.

Therefore, claims processors sometimes provided evaluations for painful scars without objective evidence to support the evaluations, which led to overpayments in disability compensation.”

In addition, the report found that physical manifestations of the disability were often evaluated under two separate diagnostic codes, often resulting in “pyramiding” and overpayment.

The report notes that more than a half-million veterans currently receive VA disability benefits for painful scarring caused or worsened by military service, but it took a random sample of 70 decisions from a review population of 47,300.

It further notes that the OIG took the findings to the VBA in February 2026 and following the briefing, “30 additional decisions completed from January 1 through January 31, 2026… identified a 43 percent error rate.”

The VBA, while agreeing with many of the OIG’s recommendations, including revising the “Scars/Disfigurement” section of the DBQ; ensuring employees understand how to accurately evaluate painful scars; and reviewing and correcting the processing errors on decisions the Office of Inspector General team identified, took issue with the statistical sample and the contextualization of those estimates.

“The OIG examined 130 decisions, representing approximately 0.27 percent of the total review population of about 47,300 decisions, and identified 60 errors, which form the basis for the projected 17,900 errors referenced throughout the report,” per VA comments in the report.

“Importantly, only seven of the 60 errors OIG found resulted in improper payments, which represents about 5.4 percent of the sample, and when viewed across the full review population, only about 0.015 percent of all decisions reviewed. The remaining 53 errors, more than 88 percent of the sample, were technical or procedural issues that did not result in improper payments.”

The VA is working to complete the OIG’s suggestions by February 2027 at the latest.

The relocation is expected to be completed later this year and executed as a permanent change of station for the aircraft carrier’s crew and family members. The move, while long planned, had left many family members in limbo after the USS Abraham Lincoln’s routine six-month deployment was extended twice after the U.S. jointly launched Operation Epic Fury with Israel on Feb. 28.

The ship, which returned to San Diego, California, on Oct. 8, spent 322 days at sea — and 265 consecutive days without a port call.

At an August town hall meeting in San Diego, family members spoke with Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao and other senior officials, expressing frustration with Navy officials over reported food shortages, concerns about self-harm and confusion over the timeline regarding the impending move to Washington.

According to the release, the home port shift is part of the Navy’s “strategic dispersal of ships,” while noting that “Regularly scheduled depot-level maintenance maximizes the lifespan of our Navy vessels and keeps our fleets lethal, modern, and ready to defend the nation. The work conducted during the maintenance period will maximize the lifespan of Abraham Lincoln and re-establish the carrier at the highest state of material and combat readiness.”

The Navy did not provide a start date for the maintenance period. Naval Base Kitsap is the Navy’s third-largest Fleet Concentration Area and its most complex multi-mission installation, according to its website. The Lincoln will join its fellow Nimitz-class carrier, USS Ronald Reagan, in Kitsap.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Oct. 7 that the carrier strike group had been awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the military’s highest unit-level valor award.

Hegseth, who visited the carrier one day prior to the ship reaching shore, announced the award to the 5,000 sailors aboard the Lincoln, citing the “historic mission” that included completing “3,693 combat flights, sinking 64 Iranian warships, launching 450 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles and shooting down 77 one-way aerial attack drones.”

Despite massive technological shifts, that paradigm still holds, which is why the U.S. Army and Navy have teamed up to keep systems operational — even in the extreme cold of the Arctic.

As the Department of Defense eyes greater operability in the far north, these low temperatures can wreak havoc on equipment and machinery (and toilets), with ice becoming enemy No. 1.

Which is why the Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center, or NAVFAC EXWC, and the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, or CRREL, began working with both branches to field a rapidly deployable Triple Container rigid-wall shelter system usable in temperatures as low as -50 degrees Fahrenheit.

The already fielded version can operate in temperatures as low as -15 degrees Fahrenheit. The team focused on different configurations of thermal wrappings, insulation and other components to ensure that parts of the kit’s components that are particularly vulnerable to cracking and freezing — hoses, valves, bladders and pumps — were able to withstand the greater threshold for cold, according to a recent Army release.

The result, per the release, far exceeded the objectives, with the TRICON-based system staying operational down to -65 degrees Fahrenheit.

Testing took place in CRREL’s New Hampshire-based Extreme Cold Chamber, a 288-square-foot cold room capable of reaching temperatures as low as -90 degrees Fahrenheit, per the release. While military units typically have to wait until the Alaskan winter reaches its peak to simulate similar conditions, the controlled environment allowed the research team to create conditions similar to those of the real world.

“Our armed forces live and operate in extremely cold and difficult conditions, so having these facilities operational is important for their physical and mental health while serving in the Arctic and other high-north environments,” said Dr. Dan Tague, a research chemist at CRREL, one of seven U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center laboratories.

In 2024, the DoD released its “Arctic Strategy,” citing “Major geopolitical changes are driving the need for this new strategic approach to the Arctic, including Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the accession of Finland and Sweden to the NATO Alliance, increasing collaboration between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia, and the accelerating impacts of climate change.”

The region, according to the report, had become “a venue for strategic competition,” and a space where the United States intends to build a more persistent presence.

The latest successes with TRICORN-based systems provide, beyond the obvious comforts for personnel stationed in the Arctic — Toilets! Laundry! Showers! — an expanded operational footprint for the U.S. military as a whole, according to James Pilkington, a project manager in NAVFAC EXWC Expeditionary Technical Department.

“This extends the operational range of base camps in terms of geographic locations and durations,” said Pilkington. “In turn [it] extend[s] force posture.”

“Ten and a half months is a significant amount of time away from home. The mission required that sacrifice, but it does not make up for missed birthdays, anniversaries and other important family milestones,” Lt. Cmdr. Tyler Barker, USS Abraham Lincoln’s public affairs officer, said during a news conference Thursday. “There are 122 new dads that are going to walk off the ship today. From the air wing and from my ship, they’re waiting to meet their children for the very first time.”

As thousands of sailors poured off the aircraft carrier to thunderous cheers and distant cowbell clangs, some of the first to touch solid ground were those 122 sailors, making a beeline to embrace the babies they had “met” via screens but never physically touched.

Among those sailors was Brent Ledbetter, an air traffic control center officer, whose son was born shortly after the Lincoln’s Nov. 21, 2025, departure.

“I just want to hold him, play with him,” Ledbetter told NBC News. “He’s crawling around now, so I’m excited to chase him around the house and give him all the love that, that, you know — has been kind of withheld for the last 10 months. I’m so excited.”

According to the outlet, Ledbetter’s wife was also assigned to what would become a storied deployment, but the sailor had relieved his wife shortly before her birth due to Navy regulations that they can’t be on the ship at the same time. Ledbetter’s wife, also an air traffic controller, will now swap positions with the sailor and deploy, while he will stay home with their son.

Ledbetter has served in the U.S. Navy for 13 years and deployed two other times on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower; once to the Red Sea and another time, in 2020, was 206 days at sea, NBC News reported.

In November 2025, the Lincoln departed San Diego for a routine six-month deployment, which was extended twice after the U.S. jointly launched Operation Epic Fury with Israel on Feb. 28.

For Mackenzie Adkins, she and her husband Alex had planned to start their growing family around his deployment schedule, but the path to conceiving is often not linear. Adkins found herself giving birth 10 weeks ago — with Alex video-calling in.

“I’m feeling a little bit of everything,” Adkins told KFMB. “I’m excited above all else, just so ready to have my husband back, to have him finally meet his son. I’m nervous, just the excited nerves of, ‘Oh my goodness, it’s finally happening’ after we thought it was going to happen so many other times, but this is finally it, and so [I’m] extremely happy.

“We were ready to start our family, and so we took the original return home date and used that to plan the pregnancy, and with military life, things just happen,” she said. “And well, here we are 10 weeks later, and he’s finally going to get to meet his son.”

On Wednesday, as the Abraham Lincoln and elements of its carrier strike group neared the California coast, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the carrier strike group had been awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the military’s highest unit-level valor award.

Hegseth announced the award to the 5,000 sailors aboard the Lincoln, citing the “historic mission” that included completing “3,693 combat flights, sinking 64 Iranian warships, launching 450 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles and shooting down 77 one-way aerial attack drones.”

“Congratulations to @CNV_72 and all of CSG-3 on this well-earned Presidential Unit Citation for their extreme heroism over the last 10 months in defense of our homeland,” Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao wrote on social media.

That defense included 40 days in combat and an “ironclad maritime blockade against Iran in support of Operation Epic Fury,” according to the citation.

Hegseth, who visited the carrier one day prior to the ship reaching shore, announced the award to the 5,000 sailors aboard the Lincoln, citing the “historic mission” that included completing “3,693 combat flights, sinking 64 Iranian warships, launching 450 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles and shooting down 77 one-way aerial attack drones.”

“You have changed the arc of history, ensuring that crazy people, theocrats, never get a nuclear weapon,” Hegseth said.

The first ship in Carrier Strike Group 3, destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., returned to Hawaii on Sept. 28, while the Lincoln continued to sail towards the California coast.

“Congratulations to @CNV_72 and all of CSG-3 on this well-earned Presidential Unit Citation for their extreme heroism over the last 10 months in defense of our homeland,” Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao wrote on social media.

That defense included 40 days in combat and an “ironclad maritime blockade against Iran in support of Operation Epic Fury,” according to the citation.

The increasingly long deployments of U.S. vessels — the USS Gerald R. Ford returned to its home port in May 2026 after a record 327-day deployment — have raised growing concerns regarding the demand of prolonged combat deployments.

Public concern over deteriorating mental health aboard the Abraham Lincoln and within the carrier group grew to a crescendo in mid-August, when Military Times reported that two sailors attempted to jump overboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. The carrier, at that time, had gone 265 consecutive days without a port call.

Cao confirmed on Sept. 22 that eight sailors aboard ships from the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide but also said that no sailor had died from the attempts.

“There were some in the media who wanted to mischaracterize your great success or characterize it as something else,” Hegseth said. “Some in the media … wanted to define your mission by that. Or make it seem that that was all that people should take away.”

Hegseth refuted that characterization, instead noting faces “beaming with pride” aboard the ship — “and rightfully so,” he added. “You’re a part of history.”

Ultimately, the aircraft carrier USS George Washington was sent to relieve the Lincoln, which left the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility in late August. The carrier group made a brief port call in Thailand, then a logistics stop in Guam, before heading toward the coast of southern California.

Since the rollout began in November 2025, the Navy has sought to provide free, high-speed Wi-Fi to all Navy-owned and -operated unaccompanied housing. Now, according to a Department of Defense release on Friday, 90% of those buildings are now online.

“Reliable connectivity is an important part of sustaining the force and ensuring sailors have the support they need to remain ready and resilient,” said Navy Vice Adm. Scott Gray, deputy chief of naval operations for sustainment. “This milestone demonstrates the Navy’s continued investment in the infrastructure and services that enable our people to focus on the mission, wherever they serve.”

According to the release, 865 of the 962 buildings now have free Wi-Fi.

The remaining 10% of unaccompanied housing facilities left to connect are in isolated regions, such as Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti and the Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the central Indian Ocean. According to the Navy, the remaining installations are scheduled for completion in fiscal 2027.

The program, a partnership between Commander, Navy Installations Command and the Navy Exchange Service Command, offers sailors “filtered free Wi-Fi and subsidized high-speed upgrades without long-term contracts or termination fees in full compliance with the Military Honor and Decency Act of 1996,” according to the release.

The quest to install free Wi-Fi in remote military barracks is part of a broader DoD initiative launched in September 2024 to help service members access email, banking, entertainment, online training, telehealth appointments, Military OneSource and military and family life counselors, a 2024 release reads.

“Every time we go and we visit barracks … one of the questions that I ask our soldiers, our airmen, our Marines, our guardians, whoever, in those barracks is, ‘If you could have 10 more square feet in your barracks room or free Wi-Fi, what would it be?’” said Brendan Owens, assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment. “No one is going to be surprised that a 19-year-old wants free Wi-Fi.”

The newest Gerald R. Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier completed acceptance sea trials in August, and the latest acceptance will allow the “ship and its crew to conduct at-sea testing and build underway proficiency while the shipbuilder completes final ship systems testing prior to formal delivery of the ship in Spring 2027,” according to a Navy release.

“Achieving preliminary acceptance marks a new phase for the ship and her crew, allowing them to get more water under the keel as they test and train underway,” Capt. Mark Johnson, the Navy’s Program Manager for Gerald R. Ford-Class New Construction, said in the release.

The new carrier, launched in October 2019 and christened the following month, was initially slated for delivery in July 2025, but Navy and congressionally mandated equipment changes caused years-long delays.

The latest setback was due “to support completion of Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) certification and continued Advanced Weapons Elevator (AWE) work,” according to the Navy’s fiscal 2026 budget documents.

Four remaining Advanced Weapons Elevators require testing, with JFK’s shipbuilder, Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of HII, to complete final ship systems testing before potentially turning the aircraft carrier over to the Navy next spring.

At 1,092 feet long and weighing 100,000 tons, the overall procurement cost for the vessel was to the tune of $13.2 billion, a December 2025 CRS report indicated.

The John F. Kennedy left Newport News, Virginia, on Tuesday to begin its transition to Naval Station Norfolk, according to a HII release.

“Achieving preliminary acceptance is another step toward ensuring the U.S. Navy has the aircraft carriers it needs to carry out the mission of defending our nation,” said Bryan Caccavale, NNS vice president of program management. “It is an honor to see Kennedy depart and begin integration into the fleet.”

The destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. left Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on Dec. 1, spending over 106 days without a scheduled port call as it operated in the South China Sea in January before sailing to the Arabian Sea in support of U.S. Navy operations during Operation Epic Fury.

“This deployment challenged us in many ways and required every sailor to perform at their very best,” said Capt. Casey Mahon, commanding officer of the Frank E. Petersen Jr. “Despite the pressures and complexities of our missions, the crew rose to the occasion every time, ensuring the safety, security, and strategic interests of our nation. Most importantly, the crew never gave up on the ship and never gave up on their shipmates.”

Under Mahon, the Integrated Air and Missile Defense commander for the Abraham Lincoln strike group, the Frank E. Petersen Jr., provided ballistic missile defense for ships transiting in the contested waters of the Strait of Hormuz.

During its 10-month-long deployment, Frank E. Petersen Jr.’s crew conducted 45 replenishments-at-sea, sailed over 85,000 nautical miles and completed 1,094 hours of flight quarters, according to a Navy release.

The increasingly long deployments of U.S. vessels — the USS Gerald R. Ford returned to its home port in May 2026 after a record 327-day deployment — have raised growing concerns regarding the demand of prolonged combat deployments.

Public concern over deteriorating mental health aboard the Abraham Lincoln and within the carrier group grew to a crescendo in mid-August, when Military Times reported that two sailors attempted to jump overboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao confirmed on Sept. 22 that eight sailors aboard ships from the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide but also said that no sailor had died from the attempts.

During an August town hall meeting in San Diego, California, military family members expressed grave concerns to defense officials about the mental health of their loved ones aboard the Lincoln. They flagged food shortages, depleting sailor morale and worry over self-harm, as the ship approached nine months without a scheduled port call. The flagship ultimately went 264 days without a port call. The Abraham Lincoln is scheduled to return to its home port of San Diego.

According to Mahon, there were no reports of suicidal ideation among the Frank E. Petersen Jr.’s crew during its deployment.

“We certainly had some folks who maybe needed a bit more care than others, and we made sure they got that care,” he told Stars and Stripes on Monday.

“I think you can’t do a 10-month deployment like that without really having to really dive deep into the resiliency factor,” he added.

Riley Ceder contributed to this report.

Inked at $20 billion for the full-scale development phase, the contract, according to a Pentagon release, “procures multiple test aircraft for ground, airworthiness, systems, and weapons integration testing.”

“The F/A-XX is a critical pillar in our commitment to maintaining peace through strength,” Michael P. Duffey, under secretary of defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, said in the release. “F/A-XX will dominate contested airspace, extend operational reach, and deliver a decisive combat advantage for the warfighter.”

Equipped with an extended range to provide power projection from U.S. carriers, Boeing has promised that the F/A-XX will, crucially, be interoperable with both manned and unmanned platforms such as Collaborative Combat Aircraft.

“This achievement marks a new era for the U.S. Navy,” said acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao. “The Sixth-Generation fighter is a generational leap in air superiority and will provide the world’s best aviators with unparalleled capabilities to fight, win, and come home safe. We are excited to partner with Boeing, and for our warfighters to continue to dominate the skies and defeat our nation’s enemies.”

Boeing’s contract award marks another milestone victory for the company, which has now all but guaranteed its monopoly on sixth-generation fighters across the services.

In 2025, Boeing beat out Lockheed Martin for the contract to build the U.S. Air Force’s sixth-generation fighter under the Next Generation Air Dominance program, or NGAD.

That aircraft, since dubbed the F-47, has entered its engineering and manufacturing development phase, one service official announced in July, with first flights expected as early as 2028.

The Air Force at the time announced plans to purchase at least 185 of the next-gen fighters, a number designed to replace the F-22 Raptor fleet.

The F/A-XX program, meanwhile, which has yet to receive its official designation, has been the subject of funding disputes for years, with engineering and supply chain concerns prompting some Pentagon officials to push for delaying the program.

The carrier-based fighter jet is slated to anchor the Navy’s next-generation fighter fleet — operating alongside the F-35 — and is expected to replace the aging inventory of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers beginning in the 2030s.

“It’s an honor to be selected to produce the Navy’s first sixth^–generation platform,” Steve Parker, president and chief executive officer of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, said in a release announcing the deal. “Backed by decades of work, bolstered by game-changing innovations and solidified by the investments we’ve made in new facilities uniquely suited to build multiple products with next-generation capabilities, our dedicated and talented team is ready to execute this critical program.”

The recent SINKEX blended the firepower of U.S. Task Force 65, Task Force 67, Task Force 68, Task Force 69 and Task Force 1060 alongside the Royal Navy and the U.S. Air Force.

The USS Klakring, an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate — laid up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since its decommissioning on March 22, 2013 — served as the target of the exercise.

Named for Rear Adm. Thomas B. Klakring, who was awarded three Navy Crosses as the commander of the submarine USS Guardfish during World War II, the USS Klakring entered the sea service on Aug. 20, 1983, and supported Operation Earnest Will to protect Kuwaiti oil tankers from Iranian attacks during the Iran-Iraq War.

The final blow to the USS Klakring on Sept. 25 came from the newly commissioned submarine USS Massachusetts, a nuclear-powered, Block IV Virginia-class fast-attack boat, which successfully struck and sank the decommissioned frigate with a Mk 48 Advanced Capability Torpedo.

“Atlantic Thunder demonstrates the unmatched lethality and interoperability of the United States and United Kingdom,” Capt. Kelechi Ndukwe, commander of U.S. Task Force 65, said in a release. “This sinking exercise not only validated the power behind U.S.-UK offensive weapons but delivers a clear message to adversaries that the U.S. Navy and Royal Navy remain a ready allied force.”

Led by the U.S. 6th Fleet in the North Atlantic, Exercise Atlantic Thunder 2026 came just days after the Royal Navy successfully launched a U.S. Navy Mk 48 Heavyweight Torpedo from a British Excalibur uncrewed underwater vehicle, or UUV, marking a significant step toward allied operational fleets of uncrewed vehicles.

The exercise highlighted capabilities within both the U.S. and U.K. fleets, with the guided-missile destroyer USS Paul Ignatius successfully inflicting maximum damage and range capability of an anti-surface variant of the Standard Missile 6 (SM 6), while the Royal Navy utilized its newest ship-busting missiles, the Naval Strike Missile and Sea Venom, per the release.