Tag: US military

The three nations have done this trilateral missile defense exercises in the past, but they were scrapped during the prior Moon administration:

South Korea, the United States and Japan held a trilateral missile defense exercise in the international waters of the East Sea on Wednesday, Seoul’s military said, amid heightened tensions caused by North Korea’s recent missile launches.

The exercise took place in waters east of South Korea’s Ulleung Island, mobilizing three Aegis-equipped destroyers — the South’s Sejong the Great, the U.S.’ USS Barry and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s JS Atago — according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

The exercise, which lasted for some five hours from 9 a.m., focused on practicing procedures to detect, track and intercept computer-simulated targets, and share related information, it said.

Of the three destroyers, only the U.S. vessel was involved in the interception segment, while the rest joined other parts of the drills, such as the detection of virtual targets, a Seoul official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Cutting “woke” may make for good politics in Republican right, but it is going to little to save money in the Defense budget:

A variety of social issues can fall under the “woke” umbrella, including diversity, equity and inclusion training, funding for women’s reproductive health and support for gender identity initiatives. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., Jordan and other Republicans have argued the military’s attention to “the left’s social agenda” has hurt readiness.

“If we’d focus on getting rid of all the ‘woke’ in our military, we’d have the money we need to make sure our troops get the pay raise they deserve, we’d have the weapons systems and training that needs to be done so that we’re ready to deal with our adversaries around the planet,” Jordan said Sunday on Fox News.

Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., insinuated last month that transgender service members were taking financial advantage of the Pentagon’s policy to provide hormone therapy, mental health care and surgeries for troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria. She said a cadet at Fort Sill, Okla., had told her that he enlisted in the military because he wanted the government to pay for gender reassignment surgery.

“It was shocking that he would actually verbalize that in front of all those officers and other cadets standing there,” Bice said in December during a House Armed Services committee hearing. “This is an issue, and I do think we should be looking at it.”

The cost of transgender care is minuscule when compared to the overall size of the defense budget. The Pentagon spent $15 million treating transgender troops from 2016 to 2021, including about $3 million for surgery, according to the Defense Health Agency. The parts of the spending plan dealing with personnel are so vast and expensive that carving out items targeting “woke” culture will have a negligible impact, said Michael Herson, president of the lobbying firm American Defense International and a former Defense Department official.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but if Congress wants to save money than look at wasteful military acquisitions programs which they probably won’t because they produce jobs in influential voting districts.

It is official, the COVID vaccine mandate has been repealed for all U.S. service members:

But the bill also ends one of Biden’s former top priorities in making the coronavirus mandatory for U.S. service members. Republican lawmakers successfully included the measure that rescinds Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s August 2021 order requiring troops to receive the coronavirus inoculation or face punishment, including dismissal from the military. Some 8,200 service members were discharged from the military this year for refusing the vaccine. 

Republicans also tried to include a measure in the NDAA that would force the military services to reinstate those service members who were discharged because of the mandate, but that effort failed. 

The Pentagon has not said what it plans to do now that the vaccine requirement has been ended. Defense Department spokespeople this week said they could not yet comment on the issue.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

This is just totally bizarre and incredibly involves an O6 being involved in taking these pictures. The Soldiers involved in these pictures appear to all be stationed in Hawaii:

Multiple soldiers are under investigation for indiscreet activity while in uniform. Specifically, posting photos of themselves wearing dog-themed bondage masks while in uniform. 

As reported by USA Today, the images — many of which first appeared on social media on Dec. 9 — depict “male soldiers in uniform, or parts of uniforms, wearing dog masks, leather and chains. Some of the photos depict poses of submission and sexual acts. Another photo shows a soldier in combat fatigues wearing the dog mask on an airfield.”

Task and Purpose

You can read more at the link, but if you want to see an O6 with a bondage mask on click the link. You can also read more about this craziness in the original article breaking this story in USA Today.

It looks like the COVID-19 vaccination requirement for all DOD service members may soon be coming to an end if this legislation passes and is signed by the President:

The final version of the fiscal 2023 defense authorization bill is likely to rescind Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III’s August 2021 memo ordering COVID-19 vaccines for most troops, a source familiar with the matter said Monday.

Ending the requirement, under which service members who aren’t fully vaccinated are subject to discharge, has been a top priority of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and other senior Republicans in both chambers. McCarthy raised the issue with President Joe Biden in a meeting last week and reiterated over the weekend that the mandate should be repealed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It should be no surprise that Saudi Arabia is the country paying the most for U.S. military personnel to work for them:

Foreign governments have long advanced their interests in Washington by paying Americans as lobbyists, lawyers, political consultants, think tank analysts and public relations advisers. But the hiring of retired U.S. military personnel for their expertise and political clout has accelerated over the past decade as oil-rich gulf monarchies have splurged on defense spending and strengthened their security partnerships with the Pentagon.

Congress permits retired troops as well as reservists to work for foreign governments if they first obtain approval from their branch of the armed forces and the State Department. But the U.S. government has fought to keep the hirings secret. For years, it withheld virtually all information about the practice, including which countries employ the most retired U.S. service members and how much money is at stake.

To shed light on the matter, The Post sued the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the State Department in federal court under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). After a two-year legal battle, The Post obtained more than 4,000 pages of documents, including case files for about 450 retired soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

Washington Post

You can read more at the link, but the article did not mention any retired military officials working with South Korea or Japan. It appears to all be governments from the Middle East, Turkey, and Russia. The fact that Korea and Japan has USFK and USFJ probably means they don’t need to hire outside experts like these other countries are doing.

The U.S. is using a standing play from its North Korean provocation playbook by sailing in a U.S. aircraft carrier into the East Sea. This time they are doing it shortly after it already completed an exercise there:

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan is redeploying to South Korea’s eastern coast less than a week after it concluded trilateral naval drills with South Korean and Japanese warships.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff in a press release Wednesday said the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group would be entering international waters in the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, on the same day due to “highly unusual” timing of North Korea’s activities.

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.

As I have long said, when DOD instituted the Blended Retirement System a few years ago, it was the first step to eventually doing away with the fixed military retirement system. This latest report will be used to further justify moving military retirement totally to a Thrift Savings Plan model:

Military leaders will need to make some difficult choices on pay and benefits in coming years if they want to maintain funding needed to keep up force readiness and end strength, a panel of defense experts said on Tuesday.

“We need to focus [military] benefits on those currently serving, but the problem is most of the benefits now have shifted to those no longer serving,” said Arnold Punaro, former staff director for the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“There are 2.4 million retirees [receiving benefits] compared to 1.3 million active -duty troops getting them … The deferred piece of military spending has to be dealt with.”

Purnaro’s comments came at a roundtable event on military challenges organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Other panelists echoed his concerns about personnel costs continuing to rise within the Defense Department even as the services’ end strengths have declined. Earlier this fall, CSIS released a report noting that the number of active-duty troops fell by more than 64 percent from 1952 to 2016, but total DOD personnel spending rose by 110 percent over the same period.

Army Times

You can read more at the link.