Tag: U.S. Army

Here is what we know about Travis King, the U.S. Soldier who ran across the DMZ to North Korea laughing earlier this week:

Officials say Pvt. 2nd Class King has been a cavalry scout with the U.S. Army since January 2021. 

The 23-year-old had been stationed in South Korea, but had recently served two months in a prison there on charges of assault, the Associated Press reported.

Several South Korean media outlets report that King had punched a South Korean national in a club last September. He had also been fined 5 million won ($3,942) for causing public damage and being uncooperative with police during his arrest.

According to an account from the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, citing legal sources, King yelled obscenities at South Korean police as he kicked the doors and interior of a police vehicle.

CBS News reports that King was released to U.S. officials at the military hub in the country about a week ago.

Before bolting into North Korea, King was being escorted to an airport outside of Seoul where he was expected to board a plane bound for Fort Bliss, Texas, to face military disciplinary action. 

Officials escorted him through airport security, but King somehow managed to ditch the escort and make his way out of the terminal and back to the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. 

That is where officials said King, who was dressed in civilian clothes, joined a tour of the Korean border village of Panmunjom.

NPR

You can read more at the link, but King had to have planned this out because here are the rules for going on a tour of Panmunjom on the DMZ:

According to the UNC rules the roster of the tourists to Panmunjum should be reported 48 hours (2 days) prior to the tour briefing time (13:45) in the camp Bonifas on the tour day. So person who is interested in this tour should send your name, passport number and nationality to us at least 3 days before.

KoreaDMZtour.com

The fact he claimed that he lost his passport to not board his flight is further evidence of how planned this was:

On Monday, the American solider was escorted by military police from Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, to Incheon International Airport. The solider then went through a security checkpoint alone because the military police officers were not allowed to accompany him.

King arrived at the boarding gate, but did not board the plane. 

“At the gate, he approached an American Airlines official and reported that his passport was missing, and was able to return out of the departure gate under the escort of an airline employee,” an official at Incheon International Airport told The Korea Times, adding that King appears to have lied about his missing passport.  

Once a passenger goes through the customs and immigration checkpoint at Incheon airport, he or she cannot go back to the terminal without a valid reason approved by an authorized personnel. 

Korea Times

So this was clearly not a drunken spur of the moment type of defection like we saw decades ago with Charles Robert Jenkins. King had this planned out at least three days in advance. The closest defection to this I can think of is PFC Joseph White who defected in 1982 likely because he was forbidden by his unit leadership from meeting his Korean girlfriend. So he got pissed off and crossed the DMZ into North Korea. In 1985 North Korea reported that White died in a river drowning. Will a similar fate await King?

Here is an extremely odd story coming out of JBLM:

Lt. Col. Meghann Sullivan takes the 5th Battalion, 5th Security Force Assistance Brigade guidon at Joint Base Lewis McChord, Washington, June 28, 2021. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Joseph Knoch)

A top officer in the Army‘s 5th Security Force Assistance Brigade has been investigated following allegations of multiple sexual assaults and a pattern of sexual harassment, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation. It is unclear whether the investigation is ongoing, but it comes while another is underway into allegations of toxic leadership by the brigade’s commander.

Col. Meghann Sullivan, commander of the 5th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 5th SFAB, faces allegations of assaulting at least two subordinate men and harassing several others, with some of those incidents allegedly tied to alcohol abuse, according to one of the two sources. At least one of those alleged assaults involved forceful kissing and another grabbing a man below the belt without his consent.

Military.com

You can read more at the link.

It will soon be official that troops that score over a 540 on the ACFT will not need to weighed or taped:

Soldiers who earn a high enough score on the Army’s fitness test will be exempt from body fat standards under a new policy that will go into effect immediately, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston announced Thursday. 

Service officials said they believe those exemptions will help reduce the error rate of the Army’s body fat measurement method to almost zero. 

Body fat is only measured on soldiers who fail to meet the service’s weight standards for their age and gender. The Army did not provide how many of its nearly 1 million active, National Guard and Reserve soldiers are failing the standard each year. 

The policy change came from a body composition study that also recommended the service simplify its tape measure method for calculating body fat for those soldiers who exceed weight requirements. A second recommendation would allow for a biometric screening on approved devices to calculate body fat if the soldier fails after a tape test. Those two recommendations are still pending approval from the Army, Grinston said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but the number of highly fit Soldiers who have trouble passing a tape test in my prior experience is very low. They are usually very large muscular people who just have weirdly shaped bodies that don’t pass the tape test well. This new regulation is going to really help out this small number of people. Most people that tape overweight in my prior experience are just that, overweight.

Recruiting our next generation of Soldiers is my #1 priority. Today, @USArmy announces its new Soldier Referral Program & Army Recruiting Ribbon. Both efforts ask Soldiers to share their stories w/ those who want to serve.

Learn More: https://t.co/5djSSbsBec

— Secretary of the Army Christine E. Wormuth (@SecArmy) January 24, 2023

The Army is gearing up for what is expected to be a very challenging year of recruiting after missing last year’s recruiting numbers by 15,000 troops:

Some of the recruiting troubles, such as declining trust in military institutions, have been known for years, defense officials have said. Others, like the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, are new.

“Only 9% of young Americans are interested in serving in the military,” Wormuth said, referring to a recent Defense Department survey that found only about 23% of young Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 years old meet all eligibility requirements without a waiver. Nine percent is the lowest amount since 2007.

Wormuth, 53, who has been Army secretary since May 2021 and was formerly undersecretary of defense for policy under President Barack Obama, identified many problem areas – but also detailed a series of new changes that are intended to solve them.

A key component, she said, is refuting negative perceptions about the Army, particularly when it comes to Generation Z Americans, who were born between the latter half of the 1990s and the early 2010s. (……….)

“They want community. They want purpose. They want what they’re doing to matter,” said Wormuth, who was director of the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center before she became Army secretary. “I think we really need to reintroduce the Army to the country, to young people, to their parents, to influencers.”

In September, officials from four military branches also told a Senate panel that recruiting is becoming more difficult and they underscored many of the same challenges that Wormuth pointed out.

“We anticipate the recruiting environment to be even more challenging in 2023 and beyond,” Lt. Gen. Caroline Miller, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Some of the most serious problems, Wormuth said Friday, are the change in lifestyle that comes with joining the Army and the negative perceptions in the public psyche, particularly among parents.

“[Parents are] worried that if [their] kid joins the Army they’re going to suffer psychological harm or they’re going to be sexually harassed,” she said. “So we have to put our money where our mouth is — actions speak louder than words. We have got to show results in this area and not just talk about it.”

“Life in the Army is not easy,” she added. “So, we have got to take care of our soldiers. We have to make sure they have safe workplaces where there is good morale.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It is official now that the Army did not meet its recruiting goals for this past fiscal year:

The Army fell about 15,000 soldiers — or 25% — short of its recruitment goal this year, officials confirmed Friday, despite a frantic effort to make up the widely expected gap in a year when all the military services struggled in a tight jobs market to find young people willing and fit to enlist.

While the Army was the only service that didn’t meet its target, all of the others had to dig deep into their pools of delayed entry applicants, which will put them behind as they begin the next recruiting year on Saturday. (……)

“In the Army’s most challenging recruiting year since the start of the all-volunteer force, we will only achieve 75% of our fiscal year 22 recruiting goal,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a statement to The Associated Press. “The Army will maintain its readiness and meet all our national security requirements. If recruiting challenges persist, we will draw on the Guard and Reserve to augment active-duty forces, and may need to trim our force structure.”

Officials said the Army brought in about 45,000 soldiers during the fiscal year that ended Friday. The goal was 60,000.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The recruiting environment out there is tough right now and the Army is adjusting its recruiting requirements to adjust:

The U.S. Army is doing away with its requirement that enlistees have a GED or high school diploma, a move designed to help meet recruiting goals.

In what it described as “limited eligibility,” U.S. Army Recruiting Command said it is moving to a “whole of person” approach, “understanding some quality candidates may have just reason for being unable to complete their education.” The change means a high school diploma or its equivalent won’t be required, but applicants must score 50 or greater on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and meet all other standard enlistment criteria.

“This opportunity means that individuals who left high school prior to graduating due to uncontrollable circumstances, such as caring for a terminally ill family member or working to provide for their family, will not be considered ineligible for service solely because they were unable to graduate,” Recruiting Command said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The Pentagon’s independent commission has released what the names of Army bases named after Confederate generals will now be:

The Army will now have bases named after women and African Americans if Congress and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approve the recommendations offered Tuesday by an independent commission assigned to make the selections. 

Congress mandated last year that an appointed Naming Commission come up with potential new names for nine Army installations that now honor Confederate generals from the Civil War. 

The nine bases are all in former Confederate states and were named during the 1910s and 1940s amid the South’s Jim Crow era.

Stars & Stripes

Here is what the new names are:

— Fort Bragg, N.C., to Fort Liberty

— Fort Polk, La., to Fort Johnson after Sgt. William Henry Johnson

— Fort Benning, Ga., to Fort Moore for Lt. Gen. Hal and Julia Moore

— Fort Gordon, Ga., to Fort Eisenhower for former President Dwight Eisenhower

— Fort A.P. Hill, Va., to Fort Walker after Dr. Mary Walker

— Fort Hood, Texas, to Fort Cavazos after Gen. Richard Cavazos

— Fort Pickett, Va., to Fort Barfoot for Tech. Sgt. Van T. Barfoot

— Fort Rucker, Ala., to Fort Novosel after Chief Warrant Officer 4 Michael J. Novosel, Sr

— Fort Lee, Va., to Fort Gregg-Adams after Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams

It will definitely take some time to get used to these new names, but after a decade most people will likely forget what the old names were. My favorites on this list are probably Fort Moore and Fort Eisenhower. Both are definitely worthy of a base named after them. Fort Johnson is another good one because any other military hero is better than having a base named after Polk who was an extremely poor leader during the Civil War.

I actually thought these Army recruiting videos were pretty clever. Having worked recruiting before patriotism and serving your country is not the number one reason most people join; the benefits is a major reason which these ads help to highlight:

The Army’s latest recruitment video series has targeted American society in a daring bid to entice the country’s youth to become soldiers.

Rather than highlighting the unique opportunities that military service can provide, the branch has gone full petty, comparing what some consider baseline human rights benefits to the much weaker ones provided by the average American workplace.

The clips, featured on YouTube, essentially say, “the Army isn’t great, but it’s a hell of a lot better than working elsewhere.”

Focused on benefits like homebuying, paid parental leave, vacation days and pension plans, the underlying message of these videos seem less about recruiting and serve more as a commentary about the sad state of affairs for the average civilian employee. There are currently five of the ads, all part of a series called “Know Your Army.”

Army Times

You can read more at the link, but here is my favorite commercial:

After years of development and testing the Army has gone from having an age and gender neutral fitness to one that is basically the older fitness test that had age and gender scoring scales, but additional events. Here is the score card that shows the max and minimum standards per event:

The full scorecard can be downloaded at this link.