Exorbitant damage brought on by a deluge of Iranian drones and missiles in the wake of the Feb. 28 launch of Operation Epic Fury has — expeditiously — rendered those installations anything but.

Damage estimates have since ballooned, vulnerable assets forced to relocate and families evacuated from longtime regional hubs such as NSA Bahrain left in limbo, with Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle telling sailors as recently as Aug. 31, “We’re not getting back in there any time soon.”

In all, the U.S. military has spent more than $47 billion on the war, according to a recent Pentagon estimate. That sum included $6 billion to replace military equipment and more than $29 billion to replenish costly munitions. The U.S. Navy’s ongoing naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz — and the fuel, munitions and supplies to support it — will only push that number higher. In the U.S., impacts of the conflict are estimated to have cost an average of $2,000 per household.

Any fiscal damage pales next to the 23 U.S. dead and 866 wounded since Feb. 28. Two more U.S. airmen died last week in “non-hostile” incidents.

And still yet to be released are the Pentagon’s findings into the Feb. 28 missile strike on the Minab School in Iran, a shocking miscalculation that killed over 150 people, approximately 120 of them children. Bloomberg on Oct. 15 reported that the Pentagon planned to hold its internal investigation until after midterms, despite various independent investigations already pointing to U.S. involvement in the strike.

Taken together, public perception of the campaign has become such that on Wednesday, U.S. Vice President JD Vance openly blamed the war for what became a historic midterm annihilation suffered by the Republican Party.

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote in a lengthy social media post after Democrats took control of the U.S. House and Senate. “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. But everyone knows why we lost.”

It is against this backdrop that one of the architects of the Iran war strategy, U.S. Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper, appeared as the first-ever guest on “Inside CENTCOM,” a lifestyle podcast that debuted Thursday brimming with such vital discussion topics as Cooper’s proclivity for french fries, basketball free-throw shooting and sun-soaked beaches.

In a nation already under siege by an average of one military or veteran podcast for every five human ears, what’s one more?

“I’ll be asking the questions you want to know,” Fleet Master Chief Lateef Compton, CENTCOM’s senior enlisted leader, states on a set replete with a neon sign bearing the pod name.

“You like french fries. Most people don’t know this, but … when we were stationed together years ago, my lunch would come, and I would always have french fries,” Compton recalled. “You would see my french fries … and you would at least take one or two. … I don’t think you ever knew that I knew you took my french fries. Is that your favorite food? French Fries.”

“We should let the world know: For years, I’ve been eating your french fries,” Cooper responds. “The secret is now out. I never met a french fry I didn’t like.”

The duo tackled additional topics like the importance of daily workouts, memories of service on past ships, an affinity for San Francisco 49ers legend Jerry Rice, playing basketball while at sea and the virtues of exercising patience.

Sailors currently exercising patience, meanwhile, are those aboard the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer USS Spruance, which recently set a post-World War II record for a U.S. Navy destroyer deployment. As of Nov. 5, Spruance and its crew have been deployed for 349 days. The warship does not yet have a definitive return date.

“We are hearing they’re supposed to come home sometime next month,” Marie Bailey, whose husband serves aboard Spruance, told Military Times in late October. “But we’ve been hearing about ‘next month’ for several months.”

Also exercising patience are sailors aboard the deployed destroyers USS John Finn, USS Mustin and USS Rafael Peralta, each of which had expected return dates pushed from 2026 into 2027, with some expected to stretch over 14 months, according to Defense One.

“There’s [deployed sailors’] cars that were left on base that have been stickered to be towed and then to be junked,” a spouse of a John Finn sailor told the outlet. “So there’s sailors that are going to come back and have no cars.”

These record-setting deployments continue in the wake of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln’s return, which arrived home on Oct. 8 after a 322-day deployment that raised concerns over deteriorating mental health, with multiple sailors reportedly attempting to jump overboard at sea.

Recently reunited Lincoln families are exercising further patience while navigating a permanent change of station, with the hulking vessel changing its home port from San Diego to Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton, Washington.

While long planned, the extended deployment left many family members in limbo and scrambling to get affairs in order once a return date was finally set.

Despite myriad concerns among sailors and families about extended deployments, strained operational tempo and mental health struggles, such questions did not make it into the show.

That is, at least, the proper terminology in this great American age of rebrands, one that has borne witness to such seismic overhauls as the Gulf of Mexico becoming the Gulf of America, Lake Ontario becoming Lake America, and a push to call New Mexico … New America.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 29 the term “artificial intelligence” would henceforth be retired in favor of “super intelligence.”

“As these capabilities continue to improve, they increasingly represent not merely artificial intelligence, but a new era of Super Intelligence,” the executive order stated.

The president followed that “SI” declaration up with an Oct. 8 Truth Social post asserting that anyone who uses the previous moniker would be branded “THE ENEMY!”

The U.S. Navy this week became one of the first services to avoid that traitorous designation, cementing the super initiative and calling on “all Navy echelons, commands, activities, and personnel [to] use ‘Super Intelligence’ and ‘SI’ in place of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI,’” a service memo stated.

“This policy applies effective immediately across all official Navy correspondence, flag letters, OPORDs, wargame documentation, instructional material, fleet advisories, public communications, official websites, strategic assessments, congressional reports, and non-statutory internal and external policy documents,” the memo continued.

As part of the super overhaul, echelon II commanders, type commanders and systems commanders will be required to review all “public releases, intranet portals, and external presentations for compliance” no later than 30 days after the release of the super memo. These personnel will then be required to submit a super report on completing the task.

The directive does not require retroactively amending previously published documentation or contracts, the message noted, while existing laws and statutes “will continue to be cited as statutorily required until conforming congressional amendments are enacted.”

A Military Times request for comment from the sea service regarding what consequences might result should “artificial intelligence” be used was not returned as of press time.

Gecko Robotics announced Tuesday that the Navy is increasing the value of its initial contract to up to $300 million — just six months after the company reached an initial agreement with the sea service.

“Gecko’s AI and robotic technology can save the U.S. Navy up to $8 million in repair costs per ship and return vessels to sea quicker by identifying structural issues up to 50 times faster than traditional methods — reducing inspections from months to days,” Gecko Robotics said in a release.

The initial contract began as a 5-year, $54 million indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity deal for Gecko to work on 18 ships assigned to the Navy’s U.S. Pacific Fleet.

The company uses drones, wall-climbing robots and fixed sensors to gather data on components, decks, welds and hulls.

That information, paired with AI tools, is used to identify current and potential structural issues that may remain hidden to the naked eye.

A key part of the new contract investment is Gecko Robotics’ Komodo machine system, which analyzes the health of deck coatings by scanning — eliminating the need to physically dig into them.

This allows the Navy to plan repairs and map out damaged areas before the ship enters dry dock, something that previously only occurred after the maintenance cycle began.

The Navy has consistently stated its goal of reaching 80% fleet readiness by 2027, despite criticisms of the service’s deployment capabilities.

The Government Accountability Office reported in December 2024 that readiness rates among the Navy’s amphibious warfare ships fell to 46% between 2011 and 2020, hindering Marine Corps deployment and training plans.

In August 2025, that rate reportedly dipped to just 41%, resulting in a more than five-month gap in Marine Expeditionary Unit deployments that year and further straining resources amid the Trump administration’s push to counter the illicit drug trade in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, who adopted the 80% goal from his predecessor Adm. Lisa Franchetti, laid out the major tenets for achieving the ambitious milestone.

“Achieving this requires shorter maintenance cycles, increased spare-parts availability, improved training pipelines and targeted upgrades across the fleet,” Caudle wrote for Military Times in December.

“The execution of Nidal Hasan by firing squad will take place at Fort Hood, Texas, on Thursday, December 3rd, 2026, at 1 p.m. CT.,” acting Army Secretary Adam Telle announced, confirming that the location would return Hasan to the site of the murders.

A memo Telle shared on X stated that President Donald Trump approved the execution order on Oct. 2.

“The execution officer will be the Commandant, United States Disciplinary Barracks,” the memo states.

Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell first announced the execution order on Monday, stating, “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recommended — and President Donald J. Trump has approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009.

“He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ during the attack,” Parnell wrote.

If the date and method of execution are carried out, it would mark the first such case for the service since Jan. 31, 1945, when Pvt. Eddie D. Slovik was executed by a U.S. Army firing squad in France for desertion during World War II.

The last death sentence carried out by the U.S. military was in 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was executed by hanging at the gallows in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after he was convicted of raping and attempting to kill a young girl.

Hasan, who was born in northern Virginia, walked into a Fort Hood readiness processing center on Nov. 5, 2009, and opened fire using a semi-automatic handgun.

Thirteen people were killed, including a pregnant soldier.

Former Army Staff Sgt. Patrick Zeigler, a two-time combat veteran, was shot four times in the attack and spent nearly a year recovering in various hospitals.

“He looked me straight in the eyes as he pointed the gun at me, and a split second later, I’m on the floor with a hole in my head,” he told the Killeen Daily Herald in 2023.

At his court-martial, Hasan, now 56, admitted to the shooting, and in 2013 said he carried out the attack in support of the Taliban.

At the time, Hasan requested a delay in court proceedings so he could ready a new legal strategy that would show he acted “in defense of others.”

Asked by presiding Judge Col. Tara Osborn who he was defending, Hasan replied, “The leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban.”

Hasan was convicted by a military jury in August 2013, which recommended he be sentenced to death.

He was subsequently transferred to Fort Leavenworth, where he has been incarcerated on death row.

“Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recommended — and President Donald J. Trump has approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell announced. “He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ during the attack.

“The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution,” he continued. “Judgement day for Hasan has finally come.”

If Hasan’s execution is indeed carried out by a firing squad, it would mark the first such case for the service since Jan. 31, 1945, when Pvt. Eddie D. Slovik was executed by a U.S. Army firing squad in France for desertion during World War II.

The last death sentence carried out by the U.S. military was in 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was executed by hanging at the gallows in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after he was convicted of raping and attempting to kill a young girl.

Hasan, who was born in northern Virginia, walked into a Fort Hood readiness processing center on Nov. 5, 2009, and opened fire using a semi-automatic handgun.

Thirteen people were killed, including a pregnant soldier.

Former Army Staff Sgt. Patrick Zeigler, a two-time combat veteran, was shot four times in the attack and spent nearly a year recovering in various hospitals.

“He looked me straight in the eyes as he pointed the gun at me, and a split second later, I’m on the floor with a hole in my head,” he told the Killeen Daily Herald in 2023.

At his court-martial, Hasan, now 56, admitted to the shooting, and in 2013 said he carried out the attack in support of the Taliban.

At the time, Hasan requested a delay in court proceedings so he could ready a new legal strategy that would show he acted “in defense of others.”

Asked by presiding Judge Col. Tara Osborn who he was defending, Hasan replied, “The leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban.”

Hasan was convicted by a military jury in August 2013, which recommended he be sentenced to death.

He was subsequently transferred to Fort Leavenworth, where he has been incarcerated on death row.

Jonathan Lehrfeld contributed to this report.

The Pentagon on Tuesday announced a $5.1 billion fixed-ceiling incentive contract with HII to complete the carrier’s mid-life overhaul at Virginia’s Newport News Shipbuilding.

The refueling and complex overhaul, or RCOH, comprises approximately one-third of the maintenance and modernization a carrier will undergo during its service life, according to the announcement.

The RCOH process on Truman will “include refueling the ship’s reactors, as well as extensive modernization work in thousands of compartments and tanks, as well as on most ship systems,” a HII release stated. “In addition, major upgrades will be made in the propulsion plant and combat systems.”

Truman’s overhaul notice comes a little over a year after the carrier completed a 251-day deployment that saw the vessel fire over 1.1 million pounds of ordnance and unleash the largest carrier-launched airstrike in history.

Despite making combat history, the carrier’s deployment was also plagued by incidents that prompted an array of investigations.

In February 2025, the ship collided with the merchant vessel Besiktas-M near Port Said, Egypt. The ship’s commanding officer Capt. Dave Snowden was subsequently relieved due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command.

Truman also lost a trio of F/A-18 Super Hornets during the deployment. One was shot down by the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg in a friendly-fire incident. Another experienced a failed arrested landing and went overboard. A third slipped off the hangar deck as a result of evasive maneuvers in response to an incoming ballistic missile and fell into the Red Sea.

Homeported at Naval Station Norfolk, Truman will be the eighth Nimitz-class carrier to complete its mid-life RCOH in Newport News.

“Our team has been diligently working to get ahead on this critical engineering and construction project that will prepare USS Harry S. Truman for the second half of her service life,” Bryan Caccavale, the Newport News Shipbuilding vice president of program management, said in a release. “When the ship arrives at NNS, we’ll apply that same diligence to working with our suppliers and Navy partners to ensure a successful recapitalization of CVN 75.”

The announcement did not specify when work on the carrier would begin, but noted that the overhaul is expected to be completed by November 2031.

The contract includes additional options that, if applied, could bump its total value to closer to $5.2 billion.

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.”

Answering a displaced service member’s question about retrieving personal goods from the base they previously called home, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said the Navy would not be using Naval Support Activity Bahrain for the foreseeable future.

“We’re not getting back in there anytime soon,” Caudle said. “I just want to be completely honest with that.”

On Feb. 28, Iran struck NSA Bahrain with missiles and one-way attack drones after the U.S. and Israeli militaries launched strikes on the Islamic Republic.

The Pentagon initially reported zero fatalities and said the strikes did not significantly impact military operations.

Several months later, however, the true impacts of the strike are coming into focus.

Retired Navy Capt. John Cordle recently described the loss of NSA Bahrain as having “profound tactical and strategic repercussions.”

“The more we learn about the attacks on the U.S. Naval Support Activity in Manama, Bahrain, during the opening days of Operation Epic Fury, the clearer it becomes why the news of its near destruction was not initially reported or acknowledged,” Cordle said.

Moving supply hubs that were once hundreds of miles away to thousands of miles away will prove to be a major limitation to future maritime operations, he added.

A sailor who was deployed aboard an Independence-class littoral combat ship during the Iran war told Military Times that they were unable to get food resupplies after NSA Bahrain was damaged.

After the damage, the Navy shifted to relying 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 the sailors onboard the LCS to place food orders 30 days in advance, which proved challenging due to the unpredictable schedule of frenzied military operations.

At an Aug. 11 town hall in San Diego, military families told acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao that they were concerned about food shortages and declining morale aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln after the ship had not made an official port call in over seven months.

Damage to the Fifth Fleet headquarters, barracks, warehouses and communication towers at NSA Bahrain may lead to construction costs worth roughly $400 million, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation.

Meanwhile, thousands of troops and their families are reportedly still in limbo, with many living in temporary lodging while waiting to be reunited with their belongings — and even pets — after the base’s destruction.

Vice Adm. Curt Renshaw, who leads the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, admitted during a recent virtual town hall with Navy families that the service is “making it up as we go because nothing is conceived to go on this length of time.”

“These are complex problems, and the solutions have not been exactly obvious,” Renshaw said.

Roll Tide.

The inert cannonballs, which were — naturally — wrapped in paper towels, were discovered during the baggage screening process at Alabama’s Gulf Shores International Airport and later determined by police to have been stolen from the nearby coastal stronghold Fort Morgan.

“My first thought was, ‘I couldn’t see a fuse and need to get some help quick,’” TSA officer Justin Dupree recalled in a release. “I couldn’t see the entire item but was scared I might have been holding a live explosive.”

Dupree noted the antique artillery projectiles ranged in size, with the largest comparable to a grapefruit.

“I had never seen anything quite this unique,” Dupree said. “I’ve seen inert grenades and training munitions but never an Indiana Jones-esque stolen artifact-type situation.”

A TSA explosives specialist and the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office were subsequently notified and determined that the cannonballs posed no threat.

Law enforcement investigating the incident stated the passenger claimed to be unaware of how the projectiles were acquired. The cannonballs were later returned to Fort Morgan, the release added.

Passenger attempts to transport illegal items, including outlandish weaponry, through the screening process are, of course, nothing new.

In a more glaring example from 2019, a Florida man traveling through Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley International Airport set off alarms after his bag was found to contain a disassembled rocket-propelled grenade.

The individual was subsequently taken into an inspection area, where he told airport security he was under the impression he could bring the checked RPG on the plane, CBS Philadelphia reported.

Inspection of the weapon itself revealed that the launcher was not in working order, and the grenade was a realistic replica.

The items were confiscated by security, and, miraculously, the individual boarded his flight on time.

Sgt. Darilyn C. Duong, a DI with the 3rd Recruit Training Battalion, was found in her apartment in Port Royal, just north of the installation. She was 25 years old.

The cause of death is currently under investigation, Marine spokesperson 2nd Lt. Joshua Hartley said in a statement.

“The Marine Corps extends its deepest condolences to the family, friends and fellow Marines affected by this loss,” Hartley said. “At this time, it would be premature to speculate on the circumstances or results of the investigation. … Out of respect for the Marine’s family and loved ones, no additional details will be released at this time.”

A native of Winnebago, Nebraska, Duong is the second drill instructor assigned to Parris Island to be found dead in as many months.

On May 30, Sgt. Albert Haynes II, 24, was found dead in a hotel room in Starke, Florida, where he was staying while attending a poolee function with U.S. Marine Corps Recruiting Station-Jacksonville.

Duong, who was single with no dependents, enlisted in the Marine Corps as a Food Service Specialist before becoming a drill instructor.

Her awards include the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation, two Sea Service Deployment Ribbons, two Good Conduct Medals and the National Defense Service Medal.