It looks like for a number of servicemembers it will be back to wearing masks indoors regardless of vaccination status:
The Pentagon on Wednesday announced it would once again require all individuals to wear face coverings when indoors at Defense Department facilities in locations deemed high risk by federal health officials for the spread of coronavirus.
The directive from Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks on Wednesday walks back guidance issued in May that allowed service members and others who had been fully vaccinated against the virus to forgo mask-wearing at Defense Department facilities worldwide. It comes one day after the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidance encouraging vaccinated Americans to don masks indoors in certain locations where the coronavirus is spreading rapidly.
Every time I see some one go down in flames for mishandling classified information I can’t help, but think of the whole Hillary Clinton situation:
sia Janay Lavarello, shown here at Camp Smith, Hawaii, Nov. 30, 2018, pleaded guilty July 20, 2021, in Hawaii federal court to mishandling classified Defense Department documents while on temporary duty in Manila
A 31-year-old civilian employee of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command pleaded guilty this week in Hawaii to mishandling classified information while she was on temporary duty in Manila.
Asia Janay Lavarello, in a plea agreement on Tuesday, admitted one count of “knowingly removing classified information concerning the national defense or foreign relations of the United States and retaining it at an unauthorized location” in U.S. District Court in Hawaii, the Department of Justice said in a news release Tuesday.
She is free on an unsecured bail bond, with sentencing scheduled for Nov. 4.
The count carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000, the release said.
It looks like soon the remaining 30% of US military personnel not vaccinated will have to get the shot:
The Army is directing commands to prepare to administer mandatory COVID-19 vaccines as soon as Sept. 1, Army Times is reporting.
The Department of the Army Headquarters has sent an executive order to commands that the vaccines will become mandatory “on or around 01 September 2021 pending full Food and Drug Administration licensure.”
It sounds like this guy should be doing something else other than working for the Pentagon:
Franz Gayl, a civilian who works at the Pentagon, is facing a counterintelligence investigation after writing pieces attacking U.S. foreign policy for a Chinese state tabloid. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
The headline hardly stood out on the website of the hyper-nationalistic Chinese newspaper.
“Why US will lose a war with China over Taiwan island,” announced the April 27 op-ed in the Global Times, which also referred to Taiwan’s democratically elected leaders as “renegade secessionists” and called U.S. Congress interest “corrupt.”
What was unusual about the article was its author.
Franz Gayl isn’t just an American. He is a celebrated whistleblower — whose conduct was praised by then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del. — and a retired Marine major working at the Pentagon.
The anti-religion group MRFF has found another cause to attack the military with:
A religious freedom and diversity group is demanding that a naval air station in Japan remove a Bible from a POW-MIA table on base.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation sent a letter Friday to Naval Air Facility Atsugi’s commander, Capt. John Montagnet, after receiving 15 complaints about the table from personnel at the installation, group founder Michael Weinstein told Stars and Stripes in a phone call Monday. (…..)
Over the past five years, the MRFF’s petitions resulted in the removal of Bibles from POW-MIA tables at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio; four Veterans’ Administration offices in Pennsylvania, Texas and Ohio; and an allergy clinic at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.
You can read more at the link, but if someone wants their religion represented on the table I am sure no one would have a problem with another book added to the table. I wonder if this group’s ultimate goal is to go after military chaplains and try to get them removed?
Anyway if any is wondering why the MRFF’s founder Michael Weinstein is so adamant about attacking the military all you have to do is follow the money.
Don’t expect to see any gay pride flags flying on U.S. military installations this month:
Capt. Rich Jarrett, commander of Fleet Activities Yokosuka, cuts a celebratory cake at a LGBT Pride Month cake-cutting ceremony on June 25, 2020. (Tetsuya Morita)
The Defense Department will not make an exception to its unauthorized-flag policy to allow military bases to fly rainbow flags for Pride month, chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Friday.
June is gay pride month, which supporters often mark with displays of rainbow flags. However, a July 16 Pentagon policy that banned the display of unofficial flags on military installations means the unauthorized Pride flag will not fly on bases this month, Kirby said.
“The department will maintain the existing policy from July of 2020 regarding the display or depiction of unofficial flags, so there won’t be an exception made this month for the Pride flag,” Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon.
You can read more at the link, but I can understand why the Pentagon upheld this ban because who knows what other exceptions people may want in the future for other events. The article did say that the State Department is going to allow gay pride flags to fly this month though.
Aircraft carriers aren't obsolete. People like to say that they are huge targets that can be hit by missiles, thus making them obsolete. Even if that were true, it doesn't matter. If anyone attacked an aircraft carrier, the retaliation would be excessive and swift. Fire and Fury! https://t.co/EolqAOD9gx
It looks like Santa brought the coronavirus vaccine for some U.S. troops in South Korea and Japan:
U.S. Army Gen. Robert B. Abrams, U.S. Forces Korea commander, shown here in November 2018, on Dec. 23, 2020, said he expected the Moderna vaccine for COVID-19 to arrive at USFK within days.
U.S. Forces Korea will start administering the Moderna vaccine against the coronavirus to frontline health care workers and first responders “over the next few days,” the USFK commander, Gen. Robert Abrams, announced Tuesday.
In a message on the USFK website, Abrams said the command would receive “additional shipments of the vaccine to inoculate all USFK-affiliated community members as production and distribution increases.”
He did not specify a timeline for wider distribution of the vaccine. “I ask that our community remains patient and flexible as the additional shipments arrive,” Abrams wrote. (…….)
In Japan, the same vaccine is expected to arrive, destined for six U.S. bases with medical treatment facilities, “within the next 24-48 hours,” Chief Master Sgt. Rick Winegardner Jr., senior enlisted leader of U.S. Forces Japan, said on American Forces Network Radio on Wednesday.
This announcement will probably set off a whole new round of jokes about the Space Force:
Troops serving in Space Force are now referred to as Guardians, Vice President Mike Pence announced Friday.
“It is my honor on behalf of the president to announce henceforth the men and women of the United States Space Force will be known as Guardians,” Pence said during a ceremony to celebrate Space Force’s first birthday, which is Dec. 20. “Soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Guardians will be defending our nation for generations to come.”
It seems like every few years someone in the media recycles the same criticism against the military about the lack of diversity in the higher officer ranks:
The lack of Black officers in the Army’s key combat commands has diminished the chances for diversity in senior military leadership for years to come, resulting in a nearly all-white leadership of an increasingly diverse military and nation.
The Army, the largest of the armed services, has made little progress in promoting officers of color, particularly Black soldiers, to key commands in the last six years, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
Black people make up 22.7% of enlisted soldiers, 16.5% of warrant officers and 11% of officers on active duty as of July 2020. At the officer levels, this is actually a decrease from 21%, 18.4% and 12.6%, respectively, in 2010. The stakes of fairness and equity are manifest. So, too, is military’s ability to defend the nation. (……)
But not enough, some argue. Consider the new commanders of what the Army considers its operational brigades, including front-line units such as infantry, artillery and armor. There are 96 such brigades of around 4,000 soldiers led by a colonel. Just two of the incoming commanders of those units are Black
In 2014, when USA TODAY first began collecting such data, the Army had no Black colonels leading its combat arms units. Command at battalion and brigade level is practically a prerequisite to leading the Army’s legendary divisions such as the 82nd Airborne, 10th Mountain and 1st Armored. Not coincidentally, the last five Army chiefs of staff have commanded infantry or armored divisions.
The story is only slightly better an echelon below brigade. At the battalion level, where lieutenant colonels are in charge of about 700 soldiers, there are 13 Black battalion commanders out of 231 combat units, or 5.6%.
You can read much more at the link, but the biggest initial hold up to becoming an officer is attending college and completing the ROTC program or going through OCS. In 2019, 29% of the African-American population aged 25 to 29 held a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 45% of the white population in the same age range. Until this gets fixed the pool of available African-Americans to become officers remains lower than for whites.
The next issue buried deep in the article is how so few African-American officers want to branch into combat arms:
Parents, clergy, coaches, even soldiers often discourage aspiring minority officers from joining combat units, Beagle said. Heavy casualties among African Americans, particularly early in the Vietnam War, and the prospect of better post-military employment options made non-combat units such as logistics a preferred choice.
From my experience joining support branches to develop job skills is why so many African-Americans do not join combat arms compared to white soldiers. I have seen many friends of mine in non-combat arms branches receive some great job opportunities after their military service.
Another issue briefly buried in the article is how an assignment to lead an ROTC battalion can be considered as delaying an officer’s career. Having promising African-American officers recruiting and training college students in ROTC could encourage more African-Americans students to become Army officers. The easy fix is to make an assignment to an ROTC unit a position which gives battalion command credit. This would then enhance and not delay an officers career.
Something else that should be considered is opening up Division command to officers other than the usual Infantry, Armor, Field Artillery, and Aviation branches. For example why can’t a successful Logistics officer be a Division commander? This would increase the pool of African-American applicants for senior leadership positions in the Army.
This would definitely make the combat arms branches unhappy since they have a stranglehold on these senior leadership positions. If something like this is not done it is likely that the USA Today will be recycling this same article ten years from now explaining the same problem.
