Category: US Military

Here is another cultural change coming to the military:

All official monthly celebrations related to race and identity in the Defense Department are banned effective immediately, under an order issued late Friday saying such initiatives divide the force. The decision comes at the start of Black History Month, which typically entails various celebrations at military installations around the world.

The guidance was issued under the title “Identity Months Dead at DoD.” “Our unity and purpose are instrumental to meeting the Department’s warfighting mission. Efforts to divide the force — to put one group ahead of another — erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution,” the Pentagon statement said.

The directive applies to all components and departments in the military, which are prohibited from using official resources, including man-hours, to host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months. Instead of traditional identity celebrations, military units were encouraged to recognize “the valor and success of military heroes of all races, genders, and backgrounds as we restore our warrior culture and ethos,” the Pentagon said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It looks like one less block of mandatory training Soldiers need to worry about sitting through as the military’s EO program is going to have to be revamped to take out anything DEI:

President Donald Trump is expected to sign executive orders that remove diversity, equity and inclusion programs from the military and reinstate troops booted out of the service for refusing coronavirus vaccines during the pandemic, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday. “This is happening quickly, and as the secretary of defense, it’s an honor to salute smartly, as I did as a junior officer and now as the secretary of defense, to ensure these orders are complied with rapidly and quickly,” he said. (…….)

“No exceptions, name changes or delays. Those who do not comply will no longer work here,” he wrote.

Stars & Stripes

I think the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff knows that his days are numbered as well:

Hegseth was greeted Monday by Air Force Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who Hegseth has criticized in the past. “First of all, you got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke [stuff] has got to go,” he said during a November podcast interview on the “Shawn Ryan Show.”

You can read more at the link.

Peter Hegseth has long been an advocate for U.S. troops, however he has to be one of the least qualified Secretary of Defenses we have ever had. With that said anything considered “woke” in the military is likely to be gone considering his past statements:

– U.S. President-elect Donald Trump tapped Fox News Channel host Pete Hegseth to serve as his defense secretary on Tuesday, describing him as a “warrior for the troops and for the country.”

Trump issued a statement on the designation of Hegseth, an Army veteran with tours in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan, as America’s next defense secretary is tasked with handling a series of tough security challenges, including North Korea’s military threats, Russia’s war in Ukraine and instability in the Middle East.

The Pentagon chief post requires Senate confirmation.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Drones are now clearly the present and future of warfare:

An Air Force F-22 Raptor takes off during a demonstration at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia. Mysterious drones have been spotted flying around one of the U.S.’s most sensitive military areas, leaving defense

U.S. military personnel reported drones appearing in restricted airspace over Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, shortly after sunset during a period of more than two weeks, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

The drones appeared in December last year, according to the report, pulling in officials across the Pentagon, FBI and the Defense Department’s specialized office for investigating unidentified aerial phenomena.

One senior official based at Langley told The Journal that multiple drones headed across Chesapeake Bay and further south toward the city of Norfolk. They reportedly traveled across Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port and the main base for the Navy’s vaunted SEAL Team Six. Unless the drones are an imminent threat, by law they cannot by shot down near military bases.

Newsweek

You can read more at the link, but the drone provocations over Langley went on for 17 straight days and DOD could do nothing about it. These low cost drones if outfitted with munitions could have taken out all the over-priced F-22’s that were stationed at Langley.

With the proliferation of ballistic and cruise missiles by North Korea and China it only makes sense for the U.S. Army to respond by deploying systems in response. What is interesting about this is that the Army is using U.S. Navy missiles on their own land-based systems:

 The United States will deploy ground-based launchers capable of firing SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles in the Indo-Pacific region soon to address rising security threats, the Army Pacific commander has said. 

During his visit to South Korea, Gen. Charles Flynn said the U.S. Army has developed “long-range precision fires,” listing the SM-6 interceptor and the maritime-strike Tomahawk as missiles that could be launched from the new launch system.

It marks his first confirmation of the types of weapons systems to be fielded in the region this year. 

“That system will be deploying into the region soon. Where and when it’s going to go, I’m not going to talk about that now,” Flynn said during the interview with Yonhap News Agency at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, 60 kilometers south of Seoul, on Saturday.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but imagine how systems like this would rethink calcuations from the Chinese if deployed in some place like the Philippines or Okinawa.

This Sergeant Major in Korea faced a real nightmare upon trying to retire:

Retired Sgt. Major Eriq Brown first learned of his criminal record in 2021 during a screening for veteran disability benefits as part of his retirement from the Army. He met with a civilian psychologist in South Korea as part of a post-traumatic stress disorder screening. The psychologist asked him whether his pending criminal charge was causing him emotional distress. Brown, who spent 28 years doing human resources work in the Army, said he looked at the doctor perplexed.

Two years prior, a fellow soldier in Korea accused him of assault. She told military police that Brown in a period of three months had hit her on the back of the neck, bumped her in an on-post store at Camp Humphreys and then grabbed her arm after an event. No charges came of the accusations, according to Brown’s service record and documentation that he would later present to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records.

An officer in Brown’s chain of command with 8th Army conducted an internal investigation and found no evidence it happened — even discovering Brown wasn’t on post the day that he supposedly bumped the woman at a store, according to correction board documents. He was never arrested or detained or read his rights. There was no court-martial or nonjudicial punishment. Instead, Brown received a reprimand in his personnel file for unprofessional behavior. The letter scolded Brown for touching the woman’s neck and then reaching for her arm after she had told him that she did not want to be touched.

“You have exhibited poor judgment,” Brig. Gen. Patrick Donahoe wrote in the reprimand dated Aug. 21, 2019. Nowhere in the letter does he write Brown was arrested or committed a crime. Sitting in that doctor’s office, Brown realized none of this was behind him. The ordeal had left him with a criminal arrest listed on his background check with no resolution — as if he is still waiting to face judgment for a misdemeanor assault charge. “Think about the embarrassment of that,” said Brown, now 47. “I definitely wouldn’t let my children go in the military after this.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read much more at the link, but what is going on is that Soldiers accused of crimes are entered into an FBI data base. Later when it is found that no crime occurred their alleged crime is still showing in the FBI database as if it did occur and it is very difficult to get it removed.

Of course this is not something done in the civilian sector, but in the military this policy was enacted as an over correction from a mass shooting committed by an Air Force veteran in 2007. That veteran had a domestic violence conviction during his time in the Air Force that was not entered into the FBI database which allowed him to buy a gun. Why doesn’t the military just enter people into the database that are actually convicted of a crime?

If China, Russia, and North Korea did try and launch simultaneous conflicts this is what would be called World War III:

Growing military cooperation among North Korea, Russia, China and Iran raises the possibility of “simultaneous conflicts with multiple nuclear-armed adversaries,” a top U.S. general warned Thursday.

Gen. Anthony Cotton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, made the remarks during a session of the Senate Armed Services Committee, stressing that his command will “always” be “ready to fight tonight.”

“We are confronting not one, but two nuclear peers — the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. This reality, combined by missile developments in North Korea, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the growing relationships amongst those nations, adds new layers of complexity to our strategic calculus,” he said.

“It also raises the possibility of simultaneous conflicts with multiple nuclear-armed adversaries,” he added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It took war in Ukraine to for the Pentagon to understand that the future of warfare is drones when most everybody else could easily see it coming. However, there is not as much money building drones as overpriced manned aircraft for defense contractors:

The war in Ukraine has shown the value of low-cost drone swarms in modern warfare. Now the Pentagon is planning to build an army of thousands of small, cheap drones in hopes of spurring U.S. drone production and cutting China’s dominance of that market.

American drone makers are hoping the Pentagon’s “Replicator” program will give a shot in the arm to U.S. manufacturing. Defense experts say there is a need for Washington to build a drone supply chain that doesn’t run through China, due to the small but real risk of a future war between the two rivals.

Stars and Stripes

You can read more at the link.

This is a tough spot the Pentagon is in because is they relent on the paid TDY for abortions this will signal to every other Senator that they can get what they want by following this same playbook:

President Biden is sharply escalating his criticism of Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, highlighting his blockade of military nominations and using him to criticize other right-wing Republicans he characterizes as extreme, obstructionist and willing to jeopardize the country’s national security.

Biden, who has often cited Republicans outside the congressional leadership as emblematic of what he calls their party’s radicalism, warned in harsher tones and with more specificity this week that Tuberville is undermining the servicemen and women who are putting their lives at risk.

“Something dangerous is happening,” Biden said Thursday night, speaking at the Truman Civil Rights Symposium. “The Republican Party used to always support the military, but today, they are undermining the military. The senior senator from Alabama, who claims to support our troops, is now blocking more than 300 military [nominations] with his extreme political agenda.”

For months, Tuberville has refused to let the Senate approve any senior military nominations by unanimous consent unless the Defense Department changes its policy of providing travel expenses for service women seeking an abortion. The policy is a backdoor way for the Pentagon to facilitate even late-term abortions, Tuberville argues, saying last week on the Senate floor that “anyone who calls themselves pro-life needs to stand up and be counted right now.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.