The Defense Department has put out a solicitation for robot boats that are capable of launching small attack drones — with technology mature enough to be deployed to the field within 120 days.

The goal for the Suitable Warfighting Adaptive Payloads, or SWAP-USV, project is to find “mature, market-ready [unmanned surface vessels] fully integrated with two or more mature, market-ready aerial drones to detect, identify, track, and defeat hostile threats,” according to the Defense Innovation Unit solicitation. The call out set a response deadline of Aug. 10.

To make this happen, DIU created a year-long contest backed by $100 million in prize money. DIU wants to “partner with established maritime manufacturers, autonomy developers, sensor manufacturers, and UAS developers to execute a multi-phase Prize Challenge.”

The SWAP-USV project is billed as a solution to a problem that has also plagued missile and drone defense on land: the economics favor the offense.

“The cost-exchange ratio for detecting and neutralizing asymmetric maritime threats in contested environments is heavily skewed in favor of the adversary,” the DIU solicitation states. Nor can the U.S. military continue to rely “on exquisite, multi-million-dollar naval and aviation assets to intercept these inexpensive targets.”

The solicitation paints the picture of a drone boat that can carry, launch and control at least two small UAVs. The UAVs together should be capable of conducting kinetic strikes with a combined payload of at least 2 kilograms, or just over 4 pounds.

DIU wants a mix of recoverable and one-way attack drones that can patrol ocean, coastal and riverine waters, and loiter on station. The drones, according to the solicitation, should “support one or more operational effects, including ISR, comms relay, electronic warfare, payload delivery, or precision engagement of moving or stationary, as applicable, under operator command.”

The Pentagon also wants the system to be mobile enough to fit into a standard cargo container, on road trailers or on C-17 and C-130 transports.

“Solutions that can launch from unimproved locations or provide additional launch flexibility, i.e. remotely from a container, will be looked upon favorably,” DIU noted, adding that the UAVs should be “technically mature and have an established production line.”

Interestingly, among the maritime threats the DIU solicitation cites are “‘go-fast’ smuggling boats, and semi-submersibles.” Drug cartels have used semi-submersibles to transport contraband from South America to the U.S., and such pseudo-submarines are hard to detect.

The SWAP-USV project calls for robot craft capable of “autonomous surveillance and interdiction of defined maritime operating areas, maximizing operational coverage, probability of detection, interdiction effectiveness, and time on station while minimizing daily operating cost, logistics burden, and required personnel.”

The surveillance elements of the solicitation state that the drone boat must be able to “autonomously follow or shadow a vessel of interest, and autonomously intercept a noncooperative, maneuvering vessel. Autonomous execution of these functions is desired but not required.”

The SWAP-USV Challenge, meanwhile, comprises three “sprints,” or phases, each with separate prize money. To sweeten the pot further, companies that pass the test in each phase will be eligible for procurement contracts backed by a $200 million budget.

Sprint 1 calls for in-water testing in fall 2026, with a goal of deploying a system in the field within 120 days.

“Solutions must include a complete mission ready USV with integrated drone capability system available for testing and evaluation within 29 days of down-selection for Sprint 1,” the solicitation specified. There will be $40 million in prize money.

Sprint 2 will have a fall 2026 deadline and in-water testing in early 2027, with the focus on “expanded payloads, upgraded autonomy, and multi-vendor integrations.” The prize money for that timeframe will also be $40 million.

Sprint 3 will take submissions in early 2027, with in-water testing in summer 2027. The goals of this phase will be announced later, but there will be $20 million in prizes.

Companies must specify which phase they want to join. “The government reserves the right to assign applicants to [Sprint] cohorts based on technical and manufacturing maturity,” the solicitation noted.

Maj. Collin L. Welch, 40, pleaded guilty to unlawfully introducing aliens to enter and remain in the U.S. and the theft of around $54,000 in government money, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, D.C. He is scheduled for sentencing in December.

As a married man, Welch was posted in 2019 to the U.S. Embassy in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where he kindled a relationship with a Mongolian woman. By creating a fake divorce decree, he convinced the woman he was single and in 2022, he married her in Mongolia, federal prosecutors said.

In 2024, Welch brought the woman and her minor daughter to the U.S. on tourist visas and in October of that year, he married the woman for a second time in Virginia, according to the attorney’s office. Welch was still legally married to his initial wife at each of his subsequent nuptials.

When his guests’ tourist visas expired in early 2025, Welch continued to house and financially support them and he, once again, took to fabricating documents, creating permanent residency approvals, Social Security cards and a letter showing military health benefits for dependents, the office said. He never filed any paperwork with any government agency.

To fund the travel and living expenses of his new bride and her daughter, Welch racked up tens of thousands of dollars on his government travel card, creating fraudulent travel vouchers using fake hotel and rental card receipts.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division, with help from the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Criminal Investigations Unit.

Welch, who is from Arlington, Virginia, previously served in the Alaska and D.C. National Guard, and he deployed to Afghanistan and Djibouti.

The D.C. National Guard has not responded to a request for comment.

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby announced on X Tuesday that the Defense Department had “kicked off” the review Hegseth unveiled during the NATO defense ministerial in Brussels on June 18. Hegseth described the effort at the time as “a real review” of America’s force posture and basing in Europe.

Neither Hegseth’s announcement nor Colby’s statement announced troop reductions, unit movements or installation changes as part of the review. The Pentagon also has not said when the review’s recommendations will be released.

The review follows repeated calls by Trump administration officials for European allies to assume greater responsibility for NATO’s conventional defense as the administration reassesses U.S. force posture worldwide.

Hegseth said the review is expected to take up to six months, but it “could be less.” He shared that the review will include input from U.S. European Command as well as consultations with Congress and U.S. allies.

Colby said the review is designed to ensure NATO is “moving fast and irreversibly toward Europe taking primary responsibility for its conventional defense.” He explained the outcome of the review is intended to accelerate NATO’s transition to what he described as “a stronger, more equitable, and sustainable alliance.”

The Pentagon review aims to ensure U.S. force posture in Europe reflects the 2025 National Security Strategy and the 2026 National Defense Strategy. Colby said the department will develop a range of options based on “strategic rigor, a strong empirical baseline, and a clear sense of the geopolitical and military realities.”

Colby also said he looks forward to working closely with Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, on the review. He noted that the Defense Department plans to have “extensive consultations” with European allies, Congress and other parts of the U.S. government throughout the process.

New programs have launched at Naval Station Norfolk and the Hampton Roads area in Virginia, as well as at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. Programs launch within the next few weeks at installations in the San Diego, California, area and around Seattle and Tacoma, Washington.

The additions will bring the total number of installations served by MFAN’s Fresh Funds program to 17 across six states.

The other areas where the Fresh Funds program operates are Fort Hood and Fort Bliss, Texas, and Camp Lejeune, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point and MCAS New River in North Carolina.

Families in the areas can request the assistance from MFAN directly through its website.

The program was established in response to MFAN’s research over the years that has found military families often face significant out-of-pocket costs when making permanent change of station moves, which can exacerbate financial problems. In the nonproit’s most recent survey, MFAN found that more than 40% of military family respondents reported low or very low food security.

MFAN’s recent research found that more than 60% of active-duty families who made moves in the past two years paid more than $1,000 out of pocket for expenses related to their move, over and above what the Defense Department pays to move them.

For example, during these relocations, families must replace food, cleaning supplies and other items they couldn’t bring from their previous locations.

MFAN is partnering with Instacart, an online grocery delivery and pickup service, and the program includes delivery of the items to the families.

“Meeting military families where they are — especially during the disruption of a relocation — requires partners like Instacart who share our commitment to making food easier to access,” said Shannon Razsadin, chief executive officer of MFAN, in a statement to Military Times. “Our research shows food insecurity remains a serious challenge for too many military families, and partnerships like this are an important part of the solution.”

How it works

The program starts with MFAN’s PCS Pantry Restock Box to newly arriving families who have signed up. Service members with at least one dependent are eligible, regardless of rank.

The box is stocked with pantry staples, cleaning supplies and paper goods and delivered to families’ homes. Those who need help with additional food can receive a one-time Fresh Funds code for a $125 grocery stipend, for up to three months, to order groceries and essentials through Instacart. The program doesn’t include military commissaries.

Instacart has partnered with MFAN since 2024, with more than 6,000 military families benefiting from the PCS Box program to date.

“Moving a family is difficult enough. We should make the transition as easy and seamless as possible for military families, and that starts with making sure there’s food in the fridge when they arrive,” said Casey Aden-Wansbury, vice president and head of global public policy at Instacart.

Any crackdown on mobile communications would add a new dimension to the conflict for the thousands of U.S. troops in the region, many of whom still rely on phones to periodically message loved ones and assure them they are well.

Adm. Brad Cooper, in a previously unreported letter, said Iran was benefiting from being able to see the success or failure of its strikes in near real-time by searching news reports or online posts by journalists referencing “reactions, photos, and footage from the cellphones of our troops.”

“The direct, unavoidable cost of this open-source intelligence could be measured in the lives of American service members and civilian residents in targeted Gulf countries,” Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, wrote in his July 28 letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

He called on troops to “redouble our focus on operational security,” without prescribing specific steps in the memo.

The warning underscored the mounting tensions between real-time news reporting on the war, often aided by satellite imagery and first-person accounts, and the desire by the U.S. military to restrict any information that could aid Iran as it tries to kill and wound U.S. troops.

In Jordan, which has been a frequent target of Iranian strikes, some troops have been told their phones will be confiscated in the coming days, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

A third source said such a move was being considered in the region due to operational security concerns but did not present the confiscation as a certainty.

Asked for comment, U.S. Central Command spokesperson Captain Timothy Hawkins said: “The message is a general reminder to our service members on the importance of maintaining operational security. This is one of many opportunities Admiral Cooper has used to convey operational priorities.”

Running for shelter during Iran attack

In a video posted online this month, a U.S. service member recorded a video as soldiers ran for shelter during a deadly Iranian attack on the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan on July 17.

Cooper appeared to reference the footage in his letter, saying it had been recorded on Meta smart glasses with a built-in camera.

“Video captured from a service member’s Meta glasses was posted on Instagram showing where and how the individual had evacuated to a bunker during an Iranian missile and drone attack,” Cooper wrote.

Iran would normally have a tough time determining the success or failure of its strikes, were it not for such accounts, Cooper said, thanks to the U.S. military’s electronic jamming or other tactics used in war zones.

“Iran knows the weapons were fired; however, their forces do not know if they missed by 50 meters, hit an empty tarmac, or successfully struck a crowded facility,” he wrote. “Detailed lists, descriptions, and analyses of what was hit, openly published by news outlets are essentially performing Iran’s Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) for them, free of charge,” Cooper said.

Some 18 U.S. troops have died in the conflict with Iran that started on Feb. 28 and more than 600 have been wounded in the fighting, casualties that have deepened Americans’ concerns about a war that just one in three Americans support.

Democratic lawmakers have called for more information about the war, including details about damage to U.S. infrastructure on bases including radar towers, barracks and aircraft hangars. They have also called for the release of a U.S. military investigation into a likely U.S. strike on a girls’ school in Iran, first reported by Reuters, on the opening day of the war on Feb. 28.

Cell phones being taken?

Rules surrounding cell phone use for deployed troops can vary widely across the military, officials say. Many troops have to lock them away and cell phones can be banned on particularly sensitive missions by special operations forces, for example.

But the possible seizure of phones has stoked anxiety among some family members, already on edge in recent months as they read Iranian claims of deadly strikes on bases throughout the Middle East, two of the sources said.

U.S. officials have cautioned for years that certain applications on mobile devices, like fitness applications, can be exploited by adversaries to aid adversary targeting because of location data. Reuters reported in May that commercially available location data harvested from smartphones or other devices has been used to target or surveil U.S. forces.

At the same time, the Pentagon has sought to carefully control the release of information due to what it says are operational security concerns, often declining to comment on Iran’s attack claims or detail individual incidents that led to injuries of U.S. troops.

Cooper said details on strikes can help Iran mount follow-up attacks.

“Detailed public disclosures can become an immediate green light for Iranian forces to launch a secondary, much more devastating wave of attacks,” he said.

But that may not be a bad thing, according to an epidemiologist who coauthored the latest report.

The survey data, published in June in the Pentagon’s Medical Surveillance Monthly Report, shows that heatstroke cases are up from 471 to 518 from 2024 to 2025. It’s a significant climb from 2023, which had 407 heatstroke cases. While cases dropped slightly in 2022 and 2023 from 2021’s total of 459 cases, 2025 was the worst year for heatstroke since 2018. That year, which saw 578 heatstroke cases — an alarming peak for documented data — helped prompt the founding of the Army Heat Center and other structural changes to protect troops.

Last year’s reported heatstroke cases were also notable in that there was a steep increase in hospitalizations, both those reported by the Defense Department health system and those only reported at a later point by troops. Reported hospitalizations were up from 132 to 173; while those initially unreported were up from 198 to 228. The cases that received ambulatory care at the scene were down, from 141 to 117.

Dr. Alexis Maule, who works at the Defense Health Agency-Public Health Disease Epidemiology branch in Aberdeen, Maryland, said that the rise in hospitalizations might be interpreted as a positive trend. While the increase in heatstroke could be a sign, she said, that early signs of heat exhaustion are being missed in the field, it could also mean that dangerous symptoms are being flagged and diagnosed more consistently.

“There are two hallmark symptoms that distinguish heat stroke from heat exhaustion. Those are a core temperature equal to or above 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and a change in mental status, whether that be extreme confusion, delirium, and in some cases, loss of consciousness,” Maule told Military Times.

“So it’s possible that the increase in heat stroke identification is related to an increase in field medics or other medical providers in the field acquiring core temperatures prior to service members being seen by medical providers in a healthcare facility, or accurately assessing individuals’ changes in mental status and noting that prior to their transport to medical care,” she continued.

Total heat illness diagnoses saw a slight decline in 2025, with 2,751, down from 2,859 in 2024. The Marine Corps and Air Force saw steep reductions in heat exhaustion cases that appear to account for the difference. What’s less clear is whether any of the interventions the military has taken in recent years are having their desired effect.

The Army and Marine Corps in 2024 debuted the wearable Heat Illness Protection System, or HIPS, using the devices at specific training events and locations such as Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, to monitor troops’ vitals and flag “wobbles” that could predict danger.

Earlier this year, Army Heat Center Director Lt. Col. Dave DeGroot said at a forum focused on heat injury prevention that the devices could detect heatstroke as much as 12 minutes sooner than conventional observation methods. But not every unit and formation is using the devices. It’s also likely that more years of data are needed to discern the impact of new prevention efforts.

To that end, the Marine Corps earlier this month released new interim guidance on heat and cold injury prevention that stressed data collection and rigorous reporting.

“We do see fluctuations in data every year, so that’s why it’s important to not only look at the current year that you’re reporting on,” Maule said.

“The reality is that the military has to continue to train warfighters in all environmental conditions, you know, 365 days a year, and the surveillance data tries to provide commanders with an objective and highly specific picture of the magnitude and severity of the threat of heat illness. And then we hope that leaders can deploy evidence-based prevention and mitigation strategies where they’re needed to preserve readiness, but without compromising training rigor,” she concluded.

The service on June 30 awarded firm-fixed-price Other Transaction Agreements to Ford, GM Defense and BC Customs, the Army confirmed Tuesday. Each company will deliver three Infantry Squad Vehicle-Heavy, or ISV-H, models, with the first expected by March 30, 2027. The six-seat platforms will then be tested with the Army Test and Evaluation Command.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the awards on Monday.

Military Times requested the dollar amounts of the contracts, but the Army did not specify the cost.

In a Commercial Solutions Opening, or CSO, published in April, the Army posted that it was looking for vehicles capable of carrying a 4,000-pound payload, towing a 6,500-pound trailer and supporting large power requirements. The service wants its new ISV-H able to export 60 kW of continuous high-voltage DC power — an immense load — so soldiers can operate counter drone systems, electronic warfare, directed energy weapons and more.

The Army also wants the vehicle to be rechargeable — able to replenish its power to 90% within six hours — in conditions ranging from extreme cold that dips to -25 degrees Fahrenheit to intense heat climbing to 130 degrees.

The Army is preparing for autonomous operations, with desired specifications like architecture already in place for “drive-by-wire.” It also wants rotating rear seats and “ergonomic mobile workstations,” as well as rear seating that can be quickly configured — without tools — to hold a litter for evacuations.

The current Infantry Squad Vehicle, built by GM Defense, was designed to quickly move nine soldiers through landscapes that were dangerous or impractical to use other military vehicles.

The Army’s fiscal 2027 budget request, released in April, calls for purchasing an initial 34 ISV-H vehicles at an estimated cost of $463,000 per truck, with a long-term goal to buy 606 vehicles.

In a June Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Jess Tolleson, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology, said the ISV-H needs to fill a power-generation shortfall.

“One of the things that we do have a critical capability gap on right now is power generation at that mobile brigade combat team level,” he said.

GM Defense had not responded to a Military Times inquiry at the time of publication but previously said on social media that it was optimizing a Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD truck.

Ford, in a Tuesday statement regarding the contract, said its Super Duty trucks are well suited for military applications but did not provide further details on the specifications. Breaking Defense on Monday reported Ford would be using its F-Series pickup truck.

In a call on Tuesday, BC Customs chief operating officer, Dave Baringer, said the company was uniquely able to create an endlessly modify-able, “purpose-driven, ground-up vehicle.” He also said BC Customs was working in cooperation with Raglan, a company that will handle the electronic infrastructure of the prototypes. Baringer declined to discuss the timeline or contract amount.

The Army’s quest for a vehicle that can produce powerful amounts of energy comes amid its push to field more energy-directed weapons on lighter tactical vehicles.

The service has already operationally tested AeroVironment’s 20-kilowatt LOCUST laser aboard both the Infantry Squad Vehicle and Joint Light Tactical Vehicle through its Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser effort.

Sometimes it changes the outcome of a battle. Sometimes it means the difference between life and death. Eisenhower credited his meteorologists as one reason the Allied invasion of Normandy succeeded. They gave him the information he needed to make a decision at a moment when weather meant the difference between victory and defeat.

This underpins a simple reality: Weather does not accommodate the mission. The mission accommodates the weather.

That is why the Pentagon should be paying attention to the El Nino forecast now. Whatever one’s views on long-term climate trends, the military still has to operate in the weather it actually experiences. And the weather forecast for the second half of 2026 is giving the Department of Defense something commanders rarely get before disruption arrives: months of notice.

On June 12, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared that El Nino had formed, and current forecasts suggest it may become a very strong event by fall or winter, one of the strongest in the modern record.

That means significant warming of the Pacific Ocean will influence the broad weather patterns we experience through the rest of the year. It cannot tell us when and where extreme weather will hit, but it is a significant threat indicator.

NOAA is forecasting a below-normal Atlantic hurricane season. At the same time, El Nino conditions tend to shift typhoon activity eastward in the Pacific, toward Guam and the Marianas.

The region’s exposure is not hypothetical. This year, Guam and the Northern Marianas have already been hit by two major typhoons. Typhoon Sinlaku brought widespread blackouts, flooding, and infrastructure damage in April. Super Typhoon Bavi followed in July, its eye passing over Rota, leaving severe outages and flooded roads on Guam and Saipan while thousands were still recovering from the first storm.

Whatever the forecast holds, these storms are a reminder of what installations in the region face. The El Nino outlook says: Be ready for more.

The Pacific is not the only concern. El Nino is also expected to reshape weather across the United States as the year progresses, especially this winter.

NOAA’s historical outlooks associate El Nino with a stronger southern storm track: wetter conditions across the southern tier of the country; a greater risk of heavy rain and flooding in parts of California, the Gulf Coast and the Southeast; and a generally warmer northern tier.

For the military, that is not an academic forecast. It means installations across the South and Southwest may have to contend with more flooding, more drainage and access problems and more interruptions to training and maintenance, just as they are already operating through a punishing summer.

Heat stress remains part of the story as well.

Training bases in the South already face more days above safe thresholds for strenuous outdoor activity. El Nino will not create that problem, but it arrives on top of it, extending a year in which commanders may have to manage both the immediate effects of extreme heat and the prospect of a wetter, stormier winter ahead.

Years ago, after Hurricane Michael devastated Tyndall Air Force Base in 2018, I asked the base commander what he would have done if he had six months’ warning that the storm was coming. His answer was revealing. He did not begin with a five-year military construction plan or a new regulatory framework. He talked about operations. He would have done more hurricane drills. He would have made sure his people knew what to do. He would have prepared the force to absorb the shock.

That is the right way to think about this El Nino forecast. Six months of warning is not enough time to redesign a vulnerable installation. It is enough time to prepare to operate through disruption.

For commanders and installation leaders, that preparation is not mysterious. It means testing continuity plans and making sure the mission-essential functions of a base can continue if normal operations are interrupted. It means checking backup power, fuel, water, communications, drainage and access routes before a storm or heat emergency exposes the weakness for you. It means revisiting training calendars and work-rest cycles in places where extreme heat is increasingly likely to interfere with readiness. And it means asking the basic operational question: If a storm takes this installation offline for a week, what absolutely has to keep functioning?

The larger lesson is not limited to this one forecast.

El Nino will pass, but the baseline it returns to is not the baseline of thirty years ago. Each of these events now arrives atop a warmer ocean atmosphere, which means the same seasonal pattern delivers more water, more heat and stronger storms than its predecessors did. That is not a policy argument; it is an input to planning.

Another seasonal forecast will take this one’s place. Another storm season will come. Another heat wave will test the assumptions built into training schedules and installation operations. The military does not have the luxury of ignoring those warnings because they arrive under the label of “weather” rather than “war.” The weather is part of the operating environment. It always has been.

The Pentagon cannot control the weather, but it can use the intelligence it has been given. El Nino is a threat warning. The military should treat it like one.

John Conger served as the U.S. principal deputy under secretary of defense (comptroller) from December 2015 to January 2017.

Joint Base Charleston, housed in North Charleston, South Carolina, is slated to be renamed after Graham, a U.S. Air Force official told Military Times.

Graham spent 33 years in the Air Force as an active-duty staff judge advocate, a South Carolina Air National Guard officer and a senior lawyer in the Air Force Reserve.

He died unexpectedly from an aortic dissection at the age of 71.

Graham was born in Central, South Carolina, and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1994 and the Senate in 2002.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted Monday on social media about the base’s renaming. She did not provide further details, only linking a story by The Post and Courier, which first reported on the news.

The South Carolina newspaper reported that a Monday memo, signed by Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink, directed staff to begin working with Air Mobility Command and Joint Base Charleston to rename the base to Joint Base Lindsey Graham, citing his “decades of distinguished service to the United States Congress and the United States Air Force.”

The Air Force official who spoke to Military Times confirmed that Meink signed a memo initiating steps to rename the base.

“Today’s announcement to rename Joint Base Charleston in honor of Senator Lindsey Graham is a fitting tribute to a man who dedicated his life to serving our nation and state,” Alan Wilson, South Carolina’s attorney general and Republican nominee for governor, said on social media.

Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, spearheaded efforts to support military funding. In particular, for the Charleston base, he assisted in securing $212 million in funding given to the Coast Guard for enhanced readiness.

Prior to his death, he commemorated the funding, calling it “welcome news.” The Coast Guard is set to use the funds to improve the installation’s pier infrastructure and construct a new medical and dental facility, in addition to other projects.

The news of the base’s renaming comes as lawmakers gathered on Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a memorial service for Graham. Afterward, his casket was moved to the Washington National Cathedral, where President Donald Trump gave remarks at a larger service Tuesday afternoon.

JB Charleston primarily houses the 628th Air Base Wing, 437th Airlift Wing and the reserve 315th Airlift Wing. It has a total force of over 90,000 airmen, sailors, soldiers, marines, coast guardsmen, civilians and retirees across four installations. The flying units are tasked with managing the base’s C-17 cargo fleet.

Think of it as “using AI to navigate your next mission,” Easterly said in a June 29 podcast of the Army’s Transition Assistance Program. Troops can feed information from the DD-214, the record of military service, into AI — minus the Social Security number and other identifiers — and give it prompts to decipher what jobs might be suitable, how much those jobs pay and what the chances might be for getting hired, he added.

In the process, transitioning soldiers should ditch the mindset that AI is a job-killing obstacle to overcome and instead think of it as a tool “that can support your transition,” said Easterly, director of the Plans, Analysis and Integration Office at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

About 200,000 service members — 100,000 from the Army alone — leave the military each year, and this year they are entering a jobs market in flux, with the long-term effects of AI anybody’s guess. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 57,000 jobs were created in June, about half of what Wall Street analysts had expected in the current low-hire, low fire jobs market.

The impact of AI, which some have compared to the vast societal changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, hasn’t yet produced the job apocalypse feared by many, but in May U.S employers cut 97,006 jobs, an increase of 16% over the 83,387 jobs cut in April, according to a report from the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The report showed that “AI is now the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs and the primary industry citing it is technology,” Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer for the Challenger firm, said in the report. “The open question isn’t whether AI changes the workforce, but how fast.”

The AI issue will become all too real in a few days for Navy Lt. Cmdr. Alvin Carr, 34, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, when he leaves the military at the end of July after 13 years in the sea service, mostly in human resources.

“I think I definitely saw that AI was a tool that was being widely adopted” by employers in their recruiting and screening efforts, Carr said in a phone interview with Military Times, but “I don’t think I had the awareness of the impact of AI on the job market that I have now.”

“I heard it’s going to be a tough,” Carr added, noting that he was still confident that “I shouldn’t have to struggle too much,” given his degree from Annapolis and the masters in business administration he earned during his time in service.

Carr is one of the transitioning service members who has sought the help of career “coaches” at the Wounded Warrior Project, where Lesly Marmolejos is a career transition manager for WWP’s Warriors to Work program.

Her first task in meeting with newcomers to the program is to disabuse them of what they think they already know about AI.

“If you tell me you’re an expert in AI, I know you’re lying,” Marmolejos said in a phone interview with Military Times.

As a “coach,” Marmolejos said one of the first things she tells transitioning troops is that there’s “not any type of certification you can get in AI. Well, there is, but it would be irrelevant in a month.”

Despite all the emphasis on being tech proficient, “I still very much believe that the human side of the hiring process is very important,” she said. “The feedback that I’m getting is that while we have to learn how to use AI as part of the employment process, we still matter. If you talk to a [jobs] recruiter, they’ll say the same thing.”

Networking is still a major component of the job search, Marmolejos added, and “we still encourage [service members] to go to job fairs. Who you know matters, and who can give you a referral still matters. I don’t think [AI is] the big bad wolf everyone’s making it out to be.”

In a separate phone interview with Military Times, Jacob Mousseau, a former Army sergeant and a coaching colleague of Marmolejos at WWP, said, “New people need to get over their fear” of AI and stop doomscrolling on how AI is going to make humans in the workforce obsolete.

Mousseau echoed Marmolejos in stressing the importance of networking, calling it “critical this year more than ever.”

He has developed his own five-step strategy for assisting transitioning service members in their job search, beginning with career exploration by using AI to turn “an assessment into a personalized roadmap — realistic pathways, salary ranges, target organizations, a 30-day plan to explore before committing.“

“I use it to build deep, individualized guides for warriors,” Mousseau added, “and I teach them to run a lighter version themselves so they can keep exploring on their own.”

Another perspective was offered by Ben Dufay, a veteran of both the Army and Navy who now is director of career preparation and training at the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University.

“We’re transitioning into an environment where even people in the environment don’t know what’s going on,” Dufay said of the impact of AI on employers as well as job seekers. “Everybody knows somebody who’s been laid off. Employers don’t know what they want out of AI. It is disrupting stuff. ... Transition has always been something of a guessing game. That hasn’t changed.”

AI’s impact has only added to the traditional list of questions transitioning service members have, he noted.

“I don’t know what AI is. How does it help me?” Dufay stated, citing common questions. “How can I use it to assist me? What’s going to get me into an interview? How do you continue to engage with it, leverage it?”

Transitioning service members will also be facing a jobs market where an employer will occasionally decide that going with AI for a certain task was the wrong move, as happened with the Ford Motor Co. last month.

In a June 29 press call, Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of Vehicle Hardware Engineering, said that AI had botched the job of quality control.

Poon called for about 300-350 engineers to be hired to clean up the mess.

“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product,” Poon said.

Now, the Army is saying goodbye to one of the cavalry units whose lineage draws a straight line to the original Buffalo Soldiers.

On July 28th, soldiers assigned to the 4th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division gathered to honor the squadron’s 160-year legacy during Project Convergence-Capstone 6 at Fort Irwin, California, according to a recent release.

Conducting a final formation before its deactivation on July 29, soldiers of the 4th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment assembled to mark and honor the renowned Army unit.

While African Americans have fought in every major U.S. war since the nation’s inception, Black U.S. Regular Army units were not created until 1866 when, as part of a Army reorganization following the Civil War, Congress created six segregated Regular Army regiments of African American soldiers: the 9th and 10th cavalry regiments; and the 38th, 39th, 40th and 41st infantry regiments.

Three years later, the infantry regiments were condensed into four and redesignated as the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry.

The newly established units were tasked with protecting frontier settlers, escorting wagon trains and securing transportation routes across the frontier, according to the release.

The nickname “Buffalo Soldiers” originated during the 10th Cavalry’s initial service in the Frontier Army during campaigns against Native American tribes.

While there are differing theories regarding the origin of the nickname, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, “One is that the Plains Indians who fought the Buffalo Soldiers thought that their dark, curly hair resembled the fur of the buffalo. Another is that their bravery and ferocity in battle reminded the Indians of the way buffalo fought.”

Regardless, the soldiers considered the name high praise, with an image of a buffalo becoming part of the 10th Cavalry’s regimental crest, according to the museum. Eventually, the name was extended to denote all troops in the four Black cavalry and infantry regiments.

Throughout the 19th century, American aspirations of “Manifest Destiny” were largely aided by the practical, on-the-ground support of Buffalo Soldiers who protected communities, escorted mail routes, built roads and safeguarded critical infrastructure, according to the release. Eighteen Buffalo Soldiers received the Medal of Honor during the Indian Wars from roughly the 1860s to 1890.

From its creation in 1866, Buffalo Soldiers fought in the Spanish-American War, Philippine-American War, Mexican Punitive Expedition, World War II and the Korean War.

Notable U.S. Army officers who led Buffalo Soldiers include Benjamin H. Grierson; Ranald S. Mackenzie; John J. Pershing; Henry O. Flipper, the first Black graduate of West Point; and Charles Young, the third Black graduate of West Point and the first African American promoted to the rank of colonel.

The oldest Buffalo Soldier, Mark Matthews, died on Sept. 6, 2005, at the age of 111. He is interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

Now, according to the release, the deactivation of 4-10 Cav “reflects the Army’s broader transformation of its force structure to meet the demands of future large-scale combat operations.”

As emerging capabilities, including unmanned systems and electronic warfare, enhance battlefield effectiveness, the Army is sunsetting the 4-10 to modernize its force structure.

“Today we honor 160 years of service, sacrifice, and excellence that began with the very first Buffalo Soldiers and continued through every Trooper that followed in their footsteps,” said Lt. Col. Shawn Scott, commander of 4th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment.

“As the squadron colors are cased, we remember the courage, professionalism and selfless service of all those BLACK JACK Troopers who came before us.While this chapter comes to a close, the values and traditions of the Buffalo Soldiers will continue to live on in every Trooper who served in this extraordinary unit. READY AND FORWARD!” Scott concluded.

The United States recorded at least 17 life-threatening casualties during the first phase of the war with Iran, according to newly obtained Defense Department records that provide the most detailed accounting yet of troops wounded in the conflict. More than 400 casualties were recorded between Feb. 28 and April 8, with Army personnel accounting for most of the casualties.

The data obtained by The War Horse details the specifics of troop injuries from the beginning of the war until the second week of April, when the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire. Although U.S. military operations continued in the region and several more troops were wounded, hostilities remained subdued until earlier this month, when President Donald Trump declared the truce over on July 8.

The records, obtained by The War Horse through a Freedom of Information Act request, include service members’ branch, rank, injury type, and the date they were wounded. Each record accounts for an individual casualty incident, not a person, according to the DoD FOIA Analyst who processed the request, meaning that one person may have been injured multiple times.

More than 270 of the roughly 400 casualties were Army soldiers, and about one-third of those were reservists. Enlisted soldiers accounted for most Army casualties, including 57 sergeants and 53 specialists. But also wounded were 64 Army officers, including 20 captains, and 13 lieutenant colonels or colonels.

Head trauma, shrapnel, smoke: wounds of the Iran war

The U.S. military logged more than 400 casualties from the beginning of the conflict in late February through early April.

That level of detail is absent from public reporting in the Defense Casualty Analysis System, which provides monthly totals for the conflict with limited demographic data. Until now, those sparse updates were the only public statistical accounting of the war’s toll on U.S. troops.

“When you look at most of our wars, the Army does the vast majority of the fighting and dying,” said John McManus, a professor and military historian at Missouri University of Science and Technology.

While McManus said it is typical for more troops to be wounded than killed in modern warfare, the ratio in this conflict is particularly high.

The Navy reported 64 casualties, none of whom were classified as seriously injured. The Air Force recorded 51 casualties, and the Marine Corps recorded 19. Unlike the Army, the other branches did not list the type or cause of injury.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees forces in the Middle East region, did not respond to multiple phone calls and emails from The War Horse requesting comment.

‘We broke all the tactical level rules’

The data obtained by The War Horse provides new details about the aftermath of several Iranian attacks, including some that had not been previously reported.

U.S. troops suffered shrapnel wounds, broken bones, smoke inhalation, and other injuries. But one category appeared far more often than any other: head trauma.

At least 170 troops sustained head trauma between the start of the war to early April, according to the data.

One of them was an Army colonel who was sitting at a desk in an operations center in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, on March 1 when an Iranian drone slammed into the building. The strike killed six U.S. service members in what remains the deadliest attack of the war.

“Everybody inside the building was in a concussive blast,” said the colonel. The officer requested anonymity since they did not want members of their unit to face reprisal.

Two generals — later identified as Brig. Gen. Clint Barnes and Maj. Gen. Brad Hinson — also sustained head trauma that day, according to the data. General officers are rarely wounded in modern combat. The two senior officers have been criticized since then for ignoring intelligence warnings and abandoning their troops during the attack.

“We broke all the tactical-level rules,” the colonel said.

Days after the deadly attack in Kuwait, on March 3, as many news outlets were focused on drones striking the U.S. consulate in Dubai, 29 casualties were recorded in what the Pentagon classified as “enemy attack,” including one who was seriously injured. The military classifies an injury as serious when medical attention is required and death is “possible but not likely to occur within 72 hours.”

Central Command did not issue a press release or announce a large number of troops wounded in a single day. The next day, however, Central Command assured the public that the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile capabilities were “decimated.” Yet in the following weeks, roughly 200 more casualties occurred, some of them severe.

Two weeks later, on March 18, a total of 70 casualties occurred, according to the data. This large number of casualties for a single day was never reported by the Pentagon, which currently only provides public statistics of casualties by month. While more than two dozen were classified as “enemy attack,” the data on the rest of the injuries is missing. This occurred about 24 hours after a U.S.-Israeli air strike killed Ali Larijani, one of the most powerful figures in Iranian politics.

Hundreds of troops suffering from head trauma

A large portion of the wounded suffering from head trauma has led some military health experts to worry that traumatic brain injuries — caused by damage to the brain that can impact thinking, movement and emotion — could become the signature injury of this war, as in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Most traumatic brain injuries sustained in the military can be classified as mild, said Michael McCrea, a neuropsychologist who studies traumatic brain injury at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

“That means there was no evidence of structural brain damage on brain imaging studies,” he said. “And the overwhelming majority of those individuals go on to have a complete recovery over a relatively short period of time.”

But even “mild” injuries can have long-term consequences, since the effects of a traumatic brain injury may not become apparent for weeks or even months.

“Many times when we think that there’s a relatively minor event, it turns out to be much more catastrophic than we ever thought it would be,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, an expert on military traumatic brain injury who served as Army surgeon general prior to his retirement in 2012. “Down the road, there may be decrements in cognition and memory and balance.”

Schoomaker described possible long-term issues with headaches, speech, language, and more.

“Remember, this thing that is lying between our ears is the most complex computer anyone has ever seen or studied,” he said.

The army colonel wounded at Port Shuaiba knows that firsthand. Since the attack, the colonel has experienced persistent headaches, vision problems, and other symptoms. Now, as a new wave of U.S. strikes against Tehran exposes additional American troops to Iranian counterattacks, the officer is watching closely.

“The Iran War’s kicking off again,” the colonel said in mid-July. “There’s gonna be more.”

By the end of July, more than 200 additional casualties had been added to a new table in the DoD casualties database, classified only as “Overseas Operations,” and four more had been killed.

Suicidal thoughts among U.S. veterans have risen nearly 50% in the past five years, but the frequency of suicide planning and attempts remained relatively stable, according to a new study based on a survey of 2,636 veterans.

Researchers from the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Center for PTSD and the Yale School of Medicine analyzed data from the 2025-26 National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study and found that 13.4% of veterans reported suicidal thoughts in the previous two weeks, compared with 9% in the 2019-2020 survey.

The analysis found that rates of suicide planning and attempts remained unchanged in the same time frame, but for certain groups — particularly younger veterans and women — rates were higher for thoughts, planning and attempts over the five years.

Ian Fischer, the study’s lead author and a clinical psychologist at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, said the research was needed to understand the changing veteran population and potential shifts in suicidal thoughts and behaviors that can drive suicide prevention efforts.

“The veteran population has become younger, and there have been increases in the proportion of women veterans and shifts in its racial and ethnic composition over the past five years, making it essential to monitor changes in suicidal thoughts and behaviors and identify the veterans who may benefit most from prevention and early intervention,” Fischer said Tuesday in a Yale press release.

More than 6,000 veterans have died each year by suicide since 2001. In 2024 — the most recent year for accurate nationwide data, 6,398 veterans died by suicide. Veterans ages 18 to 34 and those experiencing homelessness or health issues were at higher risk.

According to the VA, the suicide rates among veterans are 60% higher than the national average, with suicide the second leading cause of death among veterans under age 45.

The VA has invested millions in suicide prevention and teamed with community partners, providing grants and support to address suicide among former service members. It recently has focused on encouraging veterans to enroll in VA medical services, citing evidence that patients who receive health care at the VA have lower rates of suicide and suicide attempts.

The study, published July 20 in JAMA Network Open, showed that veterans who use the VA for primary health care were twice as likely to have received mental health treatment at some point in their lives. More than half of those who said they used VA health care services were actively enrolled in mental health care.

The survey also found that fewer than 37% of veterans who reported having suicidal thoughts in the previous two weeks were receiving mental health care.

“These findings suggest that the VA is playing an important role in connecting veterans at elevated suicide risk with mental healthcare,” said Brandon Nichter, a visiting scholar in Yale’s Department of Psychiatry and study coauthor, in a release.

“At the same time, many veterans with recent suicidal thoughts are still not engaged in treatment. Expanding outreach and reducing barriers to care across both VA and community health systems will be essential to reaching these individuals,” Nichter said.

According to the study, younger veterans remain at higher risk for suicide, possibly because post 9/11 veterans experienced of “elevated trauma exposure” during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Researchers noted that service-era comparisons are complicated by generational differences and “survivorship bias,” meaning older veterans may appear less likely to experience suicide behavior because younger veterans at highest risk are less likely to survive into old age.

According to the survey, woman veterans had higher odds of suicide planning and attempts, while VA national data shows that male veterans die by suicide at higher rates.

Risk factors for suicide attempts include major depression, alcohol use and adverse childhood experiences that preceded military service, according to the study, and risk factors for suicidal thoughts and planning included PTSD, major depressive disorder and adverse childhood experiences.

The authors cautioned that the study relied on self-reported data, and veterans may have been reluctant to disclose suicidal thoughts or attempts. Those surveyed also were a recruited group and did not include incarcerated or institutionalized veterans or other unique veteran subsets, meaning the sample was not fully representative of the U.S. veteran population.

Based on the survey results, researchers estimated that between 2.3 million and 2.4 million of the nation’s roughly 16 million veterans experienced suicidal thoughts within the study’s measured time frame. They also estimated that about 1.4 million veterans had planned suicide at some point and around 830,000 had attempted during their lifetimes.

The researchers said they hoped information contained in the study will be used for improving prevention efforts, intervention and treatment.

“Targeting key risk factors in vulnerable sub-populations may help mitigate suicide risk,” they wrote.

But this time, the Pentagon is in a hurry. The Iran war has exposed the problem of relying on costly long-range missiles such as the Tomahawk. To remedy that, DoD is putting out a call for long-range, autonomously guided Ground-Based Affordable Mass, or GBAM, weapons that cost less than $250,000 apiece.

The Pentagon also wants the GBAM munitions to be ready for demonstration within three months, and full-scale production within 18 months.

The goal of the GBAM initiative is to supplement expensive smart munitions with “affordable, scalable long-range effects, and “enable commanders to service a broader target set, preserve exquisite munitions for their intended purpose, and sustain operational tempo throughout a prolonged conflict.”

To facilitate that, the Defense Innovation Unit has created the GBAM Challenge. Contestants will pitch ideas in the form of a pitch deck or white paper, with a deadline of Aug. 5.

Winning teams will be invited to a Phase II flight demonstration at a government test site in early November, where they will give a 30-minute presentation — and get a $250,000 cash prize.

The top Phase II contenders may receive up to $5 million “to immediately deliver operational test quantities to units.” They may also be eligible for other funds, including Prototype Other Transaction agreements, follow-on production contracts and Small Business Innovation Research awards.

“In total, the government has budgeted up to $250 million to support prize execution and follow-on transition activities associated with this effort,” DIU pointed out.

However, grabbing that pot of gold will require much work. For starters, the timeline is tight. The Pentagon wants “mature, affordable, long-range precision strike systems that can be demonstrated within 60 to 90 days, certified, and scaled into production within 12 to 18 months.”

DIU doesn’t specify whether GBAM will be a missile or a drone, though it does say GBAM will be “aligned with the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems (DRPM-UxS) mandate to field low-cost autonomous capabilities at scale.”

Either way, the U.S. military wants a “favorable cost-per-effect at operationally relevant ranges while minimizing the logistical, training, and sustainment burden on employing units.” This means a ground-launched weapon with a range of at least 600 nautical miles, and a minimum payload of 35 pounds while ideally allowing for 100 pounds.

It should have automatic target recognition and autonomous terminal guidance, and be “ideally mission-proven” to function in jamming and GPS-denied environments. This includes “Alternative Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) or redundant navigation capabilities suitable for GPS/GNSS-denied operations in maritime and other ‘feature-poor’ environments.”

DIU is also looking for a weapon that doesn’t require any proprietary launch equipment, with “remote and low-signature launch methods strongly preferred.”

Companies should have an “existing production capacity or credible path to producing 100+ systems monthly.” And with a price tag of “cost-per-effect below $500,000 based on system reliability and mission success rate, with a sub-$250,000 all-up flyaway cost at scale.”

In addition to GBAM, the U.S. military is pursuing other strike weapons that don’t cost as much as traditional missiles, and can be mass produced as needed. They include the Family of Affordable Mass Missiles, or FAMM-BAR, program to launch cruise missiles from cargo planes, as well as the Low-Cost Containerized Missiles hypersonic weapons program.

A now-viral video of the pests scuttled across the internet last week, prompting the closure of a Texas Army dining facility that seemingly served up hot meals to two- and six-legged bellies alike.

“We are aware of the video depicting our dining facility. Effective immediately, we are closing the Operation Iraqi Freedom facility to correct the situation. The DFAC will remain closed until the problem is remediated,” Lt. Col. Joey Payton, the director of public affairs for III Armored Corps, said in a statement to Military Times.

Payton said the Army was investigating how the Fort Hood facility became infested with the crawling creatures. While the building remains closed, he said, the base is providing food trucks with options for soldiers who hold meal cards to use.

Many junior enlisted soldiers who live in barracks automatically have part of their pay deducted to cover food at base dining facilities.

The video was posted anonymously on U.S. Army W.T.F. moments, an unofficial social media account that frequently shares soldier-submitted material.

Troops have long bemoaned the quality of dining facility food, but it is unlikely that insects were the intended answer to those seeking more diverse protein options.

The most recent roach-ma-geddon follows years of other complaints at the installation. In 2024, soldiers at the base, then called Fort Cavazos, said money was being deducted from their accounts even when dining facilities could not accommodate their religious dietary requirements.

Nearly 40,000 soldiers are currently stationed at Fort Hood, according to the service.

In its updated accounting method, the Defense Casualty Analysis System’s category labeled “Overseas Operations (OO) Casualty Summary” lists U.S. casualties suffered in the conflict since July 7 — effectively removing the totals from those associated with Operation Epic Fury.

The new page comes in the wake of criticism that the Pentagon had dropped the number of U.S. troops killed and wounded in the war with Iran.

On July 17 three U.S. service members were killed when an Iranian missile hit their sleeping barracks at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. The fourth death occurred two days later in a separate incident in Erbil, Iraq, during a controlled detonation of an attack drone.

The Pentagon initially updated its system to 18 killed before lowering that number to 14 once again.

On July 23, Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, refuted a New York Times article on the lowering of the KIA number, writing on X that “Our Pentagon Press Office gave the New York Times a courtesy off-the-record phone call explaining in detail that the site errors on the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) were due to a temporary data disruption. Our team explained we are working on it being resolved in coordination with the Military Services.”

Under the “overseas operations” system, the Pentagon reports that 207 U.S. service members have been wounded in action. It lists 417 wounded during Operation Epic Fury. Combined, the two categories account for 624 wounded service members. The total number listed as killed is 18.

The post-July 7 tally comes one day prior to the collapse of the tenuous June ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran, resulting in U.S. Central Command delivering 13 continuous nightly strikes against the Middle East nation.

The collapse of the ceasefire, the Trump administration argued, restarted the 60-day clock that allows the president to use military force without congressional approval.

The new accounting system is in line with President Donald Trump’s assertion that the latest escalation between the U.S. and Iran is part of a new conflict with the Islamic Republic, not a continuation of the one that began in February.

On July 10, the president formally notified Congress that hostilities with Iran had resumed, a position that administration officials contend allows them to bypass the War Powers Resolution and restart the clock again on the war.

In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth controversially claimed that the ceasefire with Iran meant that Trump did not yet have to seek congressional consent to extend the war.

Hegseth argued that the pause in hostilities froze the ticking clock that would otherwise require the president either to get agreement from lawmakers or to end military operations after 60 days.

“We are in a ceasefire right now, which [in] our understanding means the 60-day clock pauses, or stops,” Hegseth told Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

“I do not believe the statute would support that,” Kaine said, adding that he has “serious constitutional concerns and we don’t want to layer those with additional statutory concerns.”

Congress has not technically declared war since World War II, and yet more than 100,000 service members have died in conflicts spanning the globe since 1945.

In May 2026, South Carolina enacted Act 186 with overwhelming bipartisan support. Under an Americans with Disabilities Act framework, the law guarantees that autistic children can receive medically necessary behavioral health support, specifically Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy, inside public-school classrooms.

It was designed to ensure that no child must forfeit their public education to access required medical care.

Yet, active-duty military families stationed at Joint Base Charleston and across the state are being stripped of this protection.

The Defense Health Agency (DHA), operating through TRICARE’s Autism Care Demonstration (ACD), continues to enforce a rigid “School Exclusion” rule.

Under this administrative posture, TRICARE completely cuts off provider reimbursement the moment a behavior technician steps onto public school property. While civilian families with commercial insurance benefit from state law protections, military families face an impossible ultimatum: Either pull their children out of public school to maintain therapy in a clinical setting or drop medically necessary care so their children can attend school alongside their peers.

The operational cost of this bureaucratic conflict is staggering.

Summer 2026 field survey data from The Military Family Advocacy Group reveals that 100% of surveyed active-duty, mid-career operators navigating these TRICARE autism denials are actively planning early separation from military service.

When a specialized EOD technician or fighter pilot is consumed by an exhausting administrative war at home just to secure standard healthcare for their child, mission focus fractures and unit lethality suffers. The military spends millions of dollars and years of specialized training to build these operators, only to lose them over a TRICARE setting restriction.

Adding insult to injury is the financial cost-shift onto local taxpayers.

Denied in-school coverage by TRICARE, 80% of surveyed military families have been forced to enroll their dependents onto state-funded Medicaid waivers to cover essential care. This shifts an estimated $6,383 annual net tax burden per child directly onto South Carolina taxpayers for care that a federal defense program should be providing.

This systemic breakdown is not inevitable; it is the result of administrative intransigence.

In 2025, a comprehensive report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) recommended that the Defense Health Agency discontinue the 12-year ACD “demonstration” status, authorize ABA as a standard TRICARE Basic benefit, remove arbitrary setting exclusions and eliminate onerous assessment mandates.

Because the Defense Health Agency has repeatedly failed to self-correct or adopt these independent scientific recommendations, Congress must step in.

As lawmakers finalize the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, they must include statutory language that legally compels the secretary of defense to terminate the ACD demonstration status, align TRICARE with NASEM standards and prohibit the Defense Health Agency from restricting medically necessary care based on geographic or educational settings.

South Carolina has done its part to protect military children. It is now time for federal lawmakers to enforce those protections, end the school exclusion rule and preserve the readiness of our total force.

Mariah Wilkins is the executive director and principal policy advisor of The Military Family Advocacy Group.

Around 5,200 Army, Navy and Air Force enlisted students assigned to the Medical Education and Training Campus, or METC, at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston are being moved to on-base temporary housing, the San Antonio Express-News was first to report.

Their barracks face construction failures, which is forcing them to be demolished and ultimately reconstructed, a base spokesperson told Military Times.

Instead of normal wear and tear, “systemic infrastructure failures” rooted in their construction are causing the need to tear down the METC dormitories. The spokesperson said that the facilities have experienced persistent issues with their climate control systems, and the structural flaws in the building cannot be permanently resolved through routine maintenance or ongoing repairs.

“It has been determined that a complete teardown and transition to traditionally built facilities is the most responsible course of action,” the spokesperson said.

The METC dorms finished construction in 2014 using modular building methods meant to enhance efficiency and reduce onsite labor requirements to boost the project timelines.

The construction cost $140 million for each 1,200-person dormitory, according to the construction company tasked with the project. The company completed five multi-story barracks for METC.

The relocation is occurring in phases, with roughly 2,000 students moved since July 11. The spokesperson did not specify when all students are expected to be relocated but did say that construction is slated to begin by the end of 2026.

The base is utilizing existing infrastructure and transportation networks to allow for the students to maintain their training schedules, the spokesperson said.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, whose district houses JBSA-Lackland and parts of Fort Sam Houston, said in a release that the Department of Defense told his office five base barracks will be replaced due to mold, humidity and construction issues.

Castro said that the barracks’ demolishment is set for September, and the project is expected to cost over $1.4 billion in fiscal years 2027 and 2028.

“It’s critical that the Pentagon not repeat the construction mistakes of the past and provide quality housing that meets the needs of our servicemembers,” he said in the statement.

The move to replace these barracks follows the October 2025 creation of the Barracks Task Force by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, which aims to improve service members’ living conditions and quality of life.

The base spokesperson said the Pentagon is investing more than $1.2 billion immediately into the improvement of the METC barracks. The $1.2 billion matches the initial amount invested across the services to overhaul barracks’ conditions, alongside granting local commanders more than $400 million to direct immediate work and more than $800 million in critical barracks renovations.

A Government Accountability Office 2023 report found that concerns about poor living conditions in military barracks and its management date back decades, with issues such as safety risks from sewage overflow, inoperable fire systems and a lack of reliable information from the Defense Department on how low-quality conditions affect troop morale.

“Our primary focus is ensuring every service member has a clean, comfortable, and safe living space so that they can focus on their training and mission,” the spokesperson said. “This relocation will allow the medical training pipeline to continue without compromise.”

Students are slated to move back onto campus once the reconstruction is complete.

Admiral, who currently serves as the commander of III Corps and Fort Hood, Texas, could take over the top job from Gen. Christopher Donahue, who unexpectedly relinquished command earlier this month after only 18 months in the role. Since Donahue’s exit, Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie has been serving as acting commander.

If confirmed, Admiral would also serve as commander of NATO’s Allied Land Command, coordinating with 104 countries in USAREUR-AF’s area of responsibility. He would remain a three-star, despite the role previously being a four-star position.

Prior to leading III Corps and Fort Hood, Admiral served as the commanding general for the 1st Cavalry Division out of Fort Hood, Texas, and in Poland, and director of force management in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3/5/7, according to his official Army bio.

Donahue’s early July departure came amid the Pentagon’s broad senior leadership changes under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who in April asked U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George to step down and retire ahead of the typical four-year term.

Since taking office, Hegseth has removed more than a dozen senior military leaders, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown and former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti.

Eve Sampson contributed to this report.

The contract, the largest interagency lodging acquisition in the history of the Guard, comes as part of ongoing support for the Trump administration’s “Making D.C. Safe and Beautiful” executive order.

The length of the D.C. task force’s mission, which kicked off in August 2025, has made current lodging arrangements unsustainable, a Guard release stated. Mobilized troops have been staying in hotels throughout the region.

The Guard is hoping a long-term housing remedy will improve overall quality of life and flexibility for those mobilized while reducing taxpayer expenses, the release stated. The acquisition process was reportedly completed in under three months, “despite an agency-level vendor protest, which was reviewed and denied.”

“This contract delivers stable, secure housing for our soldiers and airmen while achieving significant cost savings for the government,” Monica Williams, executive director of acquisitions and head of contracting activity for the National Guard Bureau, said in the release. “We were able to move quickly to meet mission requirements and provide a long-term solution for deployed personnel.”

The contract pricing, according to Guard and GSA figures, is “about 49% below projected short-term commercial hotel costs and 27% below standard GSA schedule pricing for lodging and housekeeping services.”

The new arrangement comes on the heels of a May 28 report, meanwhile, that assessed that the 2,000-plus National Guard troops to have participated in the D.C. task force have had “no measurable effect on violent crime.”

The report, published by the Niskanen Center, described the Guard deployments as “an expensive tool” used in “the wrong places for the wrong types of crime.”

Researchers cited the $607 average daily cost per Guard member in the nation’s capital, compared with $384 in pay for Metropolitan Police Department officers.

Robbery and other violent crime rates in the D.C. area had also decreased prior to the Guard deployment, the report said. Those numbers were not impacted by the military operation.

Still, the report’s authors stopped short of calling the deployment a waste, noting that there was a 24% decline in opportunistic property crime recorded in the first six months of the operation.

“We brought 2,500 Guardsmen in from 15 states and the District of Columbia, and you all have done an amazing job,” Gen. Steve Nordhaus, chief of the National Guard Bureau, told troops in D.C. in July. “[Since arriving] you saved over 235 lives. You’ve done over 530 medical assistances to personnel, you restored children back to their families 27 times, and you have done amazing things in support of law enforcement to make sure we reduce crime.”

The “Readiness Simulation” project comes as the U.S. government is about to change its draft registration system.

Since 1940, men within a designated age range have been required to register with the Selective Service. But under a proposed rule, men aged 18 to 26 will be automatically registered starting Dec. 19, 2026. The Selective Service System will work off data contained in other federal databases.

Questions remain about how prepared the Selective Service System is to handle the change.

“SSS currently relies on manual analysis, legacy modeling approaches, outdated assumptions, and historical datasets that do not fully reflect modern demographics, communications channels, throughput constraints, or operational readiness conditions,” warned the agency in a Request for Quote for the Readiness Simulation tool.

The deadline for vendors to propose their simulation models is Aug. 14.

The computer simulation will explore multiple areas. These include evaluating staffing and resource requirements, comparing mobilization and police scenarios and assessing the operational impact of surge conditions. In addition, the system will “identify throughput risks, delays, and bottlenecks” and support executive planning and reporting obligations.

The goal is a simulation system that “models the full end-to-end SSS mobilization pipeline, supports configurable scenarios, and provides decision-support analytics necessary for leadership, planners, and operators.”

Scenarios will encompass draft registration, selection, notification, delivery and classification. They will also cover the Alternative Service Program, which includes various forms of community service as well as conscientious objectors.

Computer models will “represent MEPS [Military Entrance Processing Stations] throughput, no-shows, medical disqualification rates, claims processing, and ASP diversion,” according to the Request for Quote.

Contractors must be prepared to run the Readiness Simulation while “recognizing that legacy SSS draft data may be outdated or unreliable,” the agency said.

A draft registration system based on data compiled by — and accessed from — other federal agencies is likely to raise privacy concerns.

The computer simulation “shall operate within an SSS-designated cloud environment, use anonymized aggregate data, and support complete Government ownership and sustainment,” the agency said.

The simulation must also comply with multiple privacy regulations.

The COMPACT Act allows eligible veterans and certain former service members to receive Veterans Affairs-funded emergency suicide crisis care at VA and community hospitals, even if they aren’t enrolled in VA healthcare. New data obtained by Military Times show 49,341 veterans have used the benefit since 2023, but veteran advocates and suicide prevention professionals say many eligible veterans still don’t realize it exists until they experience a crisis.

In 2025, retired Navy Master Chief David Hull’s life unraveled after he lost his job during the government shutdown.

The transition from military service had been difficult, but he had rebuilt his life. Then when his paycheck disappeared, so did his ability to provide for his three children.

“I didn’t always consider taking my own life,” Hull said. “It wasn’t until I felt like I had no one and nowhere to go.”

“It’s easy to sink into feeling nothingness when you can’t see your value anymore or you become disconnected from your purpose,” he said.

After putting his children to bed one night, Hull searched online for combinations of pills that promised an easier way to end his life. As he poured medication into a single bottle, he accidentally knocked the empty container onto the floor.

His 6-year-old daughter picked it up.

“She looked up at me with her big brown eyes,” Hull recalled, his voice breaking. “It cracked me wide open.”

Hull left his children with a neighbor and drove to Garrett Regional Medical Center, a community hospital in Oakland, Maryland.

He wasn’t enrolled in VA healthcare. He didn’t have health insurance. Until that night, he had never heard of the COMPACT Act or that eligible veterans could receive VA-funded emergency suicide crisis care at a community hospital.

“I just needed someone to help clear my head and get me straight again,” Hull said. “I was circling the drain. On the precipice of having no home, no food, no money and no job with a promise of a better tomorrow. Nothing.”

About 40 minutes after arriving, Hull was evaluated by an emergency physician, who assured him he would be taken care of. A hospital social worker then explained that the Department of Veterans Affairs would cover the cost of his emergency treatment and follow-up care.

“I was shocked to find out that I could be seen for free after they identified me as a veteran,” Hull said.

In 2020, Congress signed the COMPACT Act Emergent Suicide Crisis Benefit into law to remove financial and administrative barriers to emergency suicide crisis care. Three years later, it was implemented by the VA, but many eligible veterans remain unaware of the benefit until they need it, veteran advocates and suicide prevention professionals told Military Times.

A lifeline beyond VA’s doors

The Emergency Suicide Crisis Benefit was established under the Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act, or COMPACT Act. Coverage includes emergency evaluation, treatment, inpatient or crisis residential care when clinically appropriate, and up to 90 days of outpatient follow-up care.

According to data provided by VA, nearly 50,000 veterans have received the Emergency Suicide Crisis Benefit since fiscal 2023, including just over 10,000 in fiscal 2023. 14,666 receieved the benefit in fiscal 2024; 15,218 in fiscal 2025; and 9,434 during the first half of fiscal 2026.

“The number of Veterans receiving the COMPACT Act’s Emergent Suicide Crisis Benefit has grown steadily since its inception in FY23,” VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven said.

VA spent a record of nearly $110 million on acute suicide crisis care during fiscal 2025.

Slaven said VA reviews eligible cases to ensure veterans receive the benefit, educates veterans and community emergency department staff about its availability and works with providers so eligible veterans do not receive unexpected medical bills after crisis care.

According to VA, 72% of veterans who have used the benefit have since enrolled in VA healthcare.

Misconceptions persist

Despite growing use of the benefit, the Disabled American Veterans, or DAV, organization says many eligible veterans still misunderstand who qualifies for emergency suicide crisis care.

“DAV believes awareness of the safety net created by the COMPACT Act remains lower than it should be,” Jon Retzer, DAV’s national legislative director, said.

Retzer said DAV service officers routinely meet veterans who believe they must already be enrolled in VA healthcare, have a service-connected disability rating or seek treatment at a VA medical center before the benefit applies.

“Many veterans remain uncertain whether an emergency room visit will generate medical debt or whether VA will ultimately cover the care,” Retzer said. “That uncertainty can discourage veterans from seeking treatment during a crisis when immediate intervention is critical.”

Retzer urged veterans experiencing a suicidal crisis to seek emergency care first and allow VA to determine eligibility afterward.

Army Reserve Prevention Integrator David Arthur said those same misconceptions continue to surface in his work, particularly among older veterans.

He said distance from a VA medical center can create uncertainty because many rural veterans live an hour or more away, while nearby outpatient clinics do not provide emergency services.

“When they are in a crisis, in my experience with suicidal soldiers and vets, they are not even thinking about that,” Arthur said. “But those thoughts are huge barriers, especially the cost.”

“I want every vet to know they can go to any ER or hospital,” Arthur continued.

Returning to care

Hull completed the full 90 days of follow-up care available through the benefit before enrolling in VA healthcare.

“I don’t know if I could have afforded the treatment I received after that night without the VA,” Hull said. “And I don’t know that I’d be enrolled with the VA now without the care I experienced.”

“I wish so many of my brothers and sisters knew that this was an option,” Hull said. “It doesn’t matter if you have insurance. It doesn’t matter if you’re a patient in the VA system. None of that matters. There are no strings attached. No barriers to being seen. This is a gift that every veteran needs to know they’re eligible for.”

Private First Class Benjamin Del Real, Jr., 25, alleges negligence on the part of the Secret Service, accusing agents of failing to exercise reasonable care in responding to the incident of a shooter who opened fire on a Secret Service security post.

The soldier and his father were visiting with Del Real’s sister, Sara, in Washington, D.C., and were walking to dinner on May 23 when they saw a shooter begin firing toward the security post, their attorney, Joseph T. Murphy, said during a Tuesday press conference announcing the legal action.

The three tourists, about 20 yards away, dropped to the ground, and Del Real moved his father to safety. But Del Real suffered a gunshot wound to his abdomen and a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), in his knee.

He was taken to George Washington University Hospital, where he underwent emergency, lifesaving surgery.

Del Real had a subsequent surgery May 25. He was discharged from that hospital on June 1 and brought to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he will undergo a third surgery on Aug. 11.

Recovery has been difficult, he said, as he had part of his digestive system removed — part of his colon and part of his small intestine.

Del Real thanked the U.S. Army for giving him the time and care needed, and said he hopes he will be able to return to duty some day. The Kansas native, who became a soldier a year and a half ago, is stationed in North Carolina.

Murphy said a “reliable and confidential source” has said the shot that struck Del Real came from the Secret Service, based on video footage.

Del Rio said the shooter’s back was turned, and he never faced him. The gunman was later identified as Nasire Best, 21, of Maryland, who was shot by Secret Service and was pronounced dead after being taken to a local hospital.

“The agents’ training should include taking reasonable precautions to avoid striking innocent bystanders in a crowded public area,” Murphy said.

The Secret Service doesn’t comment on pending litigation, spokesman Nate Herring said.

The incident is under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

Del Real’s claim, submitted to the Secret Service, is a step required by the Federal Tort Claims Act before individuals can sue the federal government. The Secret Service will have six months to respond.

“Our family deserves answers,” said Sara Del Real. “We are here today asking for accountability. We need to know exactly what happened, and we believe those responsible for shooting my brother should be held accountable.”

She said it was “heartbreaking” to watch him nearly die, “after being struck by a gunshot at the hands of those entrusted to protect the public from harm.”

“The men and women entrusted with protecting the public carry an enormous responsibility,” she continued. “We hope this tragedy leads to greater accountability and helps prevent something like this from ever happening to another innocent family.”

Across the board, childcare providers struggle with financial issues, with about one in five reporting food insecurity, and about one-third struggling with debt.

Childcare providers across the board are experiencing high levels of stress and depression, researchers with the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska found.

In looking at potential solutions to bolster the military childcare provider work force, researchers also noted that poor access to behavioral support is a major reason for turnover, and there’s a high level of acting-out behaviors among children in military childcare.

The research, conducted by the Buffett Early Childhood Institute, provides more insight into military and civilian childcare providers, their needs and their differences.

Among other findings, the researchers determined that a one-time retention bonus of $500 would retain six out of 10 of those who were at risk of leaving for another year.

“You’d be shocked at how little it would take to keep them,” said Walter Gilliam, executive director of the Buffett Early Childhood Institute. “It’s because they want to stay.”

A societal issue

If there aren’t enough childcare providers, fewer children can get care. Access to affordable, high-quality childcare is key to their quality of life, to service members’ readiness and to military readiness, said those who spoke at congressional briefings this week held by the institute, in partnership with the National Military Family Association.

While childcare is a readiness issue for the current force, it’s also a readiness issue for the future force, since many military children follow in the footsteps of their military parents.

Sabrina Dalton, the wife of a Space Force guardian, said she was a preschool teacher until her first child was born more than 11 years ago. She left the work force after failing to find infant care. For her family, like many others in the military, they had many discussions about how to make the numbers work, weighing childcare costs and employment, she said.

But for eight years, until they moved to a state with free pre-Kindergarten for her youngest, she was out of the work force. They were never able to secure on-base childcare.

Dalton, who is the chief operating officer for Operation Child Care Project, said many of the spouses who seek them out to discuss childcare are also struggling with food insecurity and other issues, such as credit card debt, that are related to the effect the lack of childcare has on spouse employment.

As defense officials, lawmakers, private organizations and others have worked for decades to find ways to fill in the gaps of childcare, there has been more of a focus on recruiting and retaining childcare providers.

Stephen Simmons, deputy assistant secretary of defense for military community and family policy, said defense officials have worked on overhauling the compensation models for military child care providers and have been hiring specialists who can help with special needs, such as behavioral problems, in military child care centers.

Since June 2025, different efforts have reduced the amount of unmet need from 12,000 child care spaces to about 9,000 on wait lists across the Defense Department, Simmons said.

Half of the unmet need is located at about 20 installations, he said. And the problem can’t be solved solely by building more child development centers, which can take six years in the military construction process.

This need for child care is a societal issue, being felt across the country, Simmons said, with local, regional and national shortages of child care providers.

Those employees are critical to providing child care of high quality for military children.

“We’re going to change the idea that daycare is where you park a kid so a parent can go to work,” said Raleigh Duttweiler, chief impact officer of the National Military Family Association.

These are the most formative years of a child’s life, and they deserve to be in high quality childcare, she said.

‘It’s a calling’

According to results of the 2023 research — made public at briefings this week — of the 91 on-base military childcare providers who were surveyed, 63% of those said low pay is the leading reason for leaving the field, compared to 54.8% of the 231 military providers off base and 63.8% of the 24,285 non-military child care providers.

The on-base providers were indeed twice as likely to have actually left the field in the previous year as those off base, with 33% reporting leaving in the previous year.

Yet, military childcare providers are more committed to the field, with 51% of on-base providers planning to make it their careers.

For many of these employees, Simmons said, “It’s a calling.”

Many of the on-base providers are also older and more experienced, Gilliam said. On-base providers had a median of 20 years of experience in the field, compared to 18 years for military providers off base, and 16 years for non-military providers.

The down side, Gilliam noted, is that they also may be getting closer to retirement.

It’s unclear how many of the providers who left the field did so because of permanent change of station moves, since some are military spouses.

As troops struggle to find child care, 24-hour centers offer help

In addition to retention bonuses, another solution is to provide better access to support in dealing with children who have challenging behaviors.

Researchers found that a major reason for provider turnover is poor access to behavioral support. That access is “very weak” in off-base military child care programs, they found. More than half of those programs permanently expelled at least one child in the previous year, compared to one-third of on-base programs and 39% of non-military programs.

The rates of children’s mental health concerns are also greatest in off-base care, although about half of classrooms across the board reported that at least half or more of the children in their classrooms were “externalizing” their problems, or acting out.

More off-base military providers and non-military providers reported that children were internalizing problems, or exhibiting physical signs, such as unexplained headaches or stomach aches.

According to the most recent Blue Star Families Military Lifestyle Survey, 20% of active duty families with children have at least one child receiving mental health care, and another 13% would like for their child to receive care.

Other findings of the research into child care providers include:

• Stress is high across the board among providers, with the highest rate, 24%, reported in on-base providers, followed by 23% in non-military and 18% in off-base military providers.
• Depression rates are also high across the board, with about one-third of providers screening positive for depression.
• On-base providers and those providing care for military children off base are also more likely to have childcare credentials. Nearly half hold a Child Development Associate credential, the most widely recognized credential in early childhood education.
• On-base providers have better benefits, with nearly 60% having access to health insurance, 65% with retirement benefits, 54% with paid family leave and 42% with access to employee assistance programs.

“I’ve been acting for 39 years and made many movies and TV shows,” he says. “I have a deep connection to all of them, but I certainly don’t have one I talk about 25 years later like this one.”

Based on the 1992 bestselling nonfiction book by Stephen Ambrose, the monumental miniseries tracked the service of soldiers in Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division from Normandy to Berchtesgaden in World War II. The show’s gritty authenticity and immersive storytelling made it an instant hit with critics and viewers alike.

Premiering on Sept. 9, 2001, “Band of Brothers was created by director Steven Spielberg and actor Tom Hanks, who were both involved in the 1998 film “Saving Private Ryan.” Two days after the first episode aired, the United States was rocked by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The series served as rallying point for a grieving country by showing how Americans responded to a similar challenge decades earlier.

“I remember 9/11 and ‘Band of Brothers’ very vividly,” says historian Adam Coste of the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, which is sponsoring a “Band of Brothers” 25th Anniversary Symposium July 31 and Aug. 1. “Those seminal moments confirmed for me the path I was going to take into the military, where I served 11 years as an Army officer. Watching the series at the time influenced me and my generation of veterans because it emphasized brotherhood over combat.”

“Band of Brothers” also set the bar higher for films and series depicting the bloody reality of war and is now considered the gold standard for all such productions. The actors portrayed real citizen soldiers from across the United States who signed up as paratroopers in the “Screaming Eagles” division to fight fascism. The series shows these young men as determined and ordinary individuals who strove to do their duty with bravery.

“‘Band of Brothers’ was never about celebrity, it was about legacy,” says McCall, who portrayed PFC Joseph Liebgott. “It was a legacy about a particular company of men. Somehow, we managed to follow in their footsteps and tell their stories. We knew what was on the line and what we had to do.”

James Madio, who played T-4 Frank J. Perconte, realized early what they were doing was special. The entire group of actors had to participate in a grueling 10-day “basic training” before filming started so they could get a sense of what soldiers in Easy Company experienced.

“We were up every morning at 5:30 to do PT,” he recalls. “We wore dog tags and marched to the set singing each day. We went through weapons training and learned the manual of arms. We went on long marches with heavy backpacks and bivouacked outdoors. It was an incredible experience and all the actors bonded together during it.”

Since Perconte was still alive when the series went into production, Madio was able to query his “soldier” about his wartime service and get insight into his character. He also developed a close personal relationship with the elderly Army veteran that endured long after filming was completed. Perconte asked Madio to accompany him to Europe on a tour of the battle sites of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment during World War II.

“The friendship was number one for me,” Madio says. “I wanted his trust and I wanted his friendship. I looked up to him and that generation.”

Tim Matthews didn’t have the opportunity to meet his character, Alex M. Penkala Jr. The Army private was killed in action Jan. 10, 1945, in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. The actor-turned-acting-teacher admits to not having much dialog but points out the death of his soldier — as well as others in episode 7 — had a important impact on the show.

“The series is very much a wider story about a whole company,” Matthews says. “This episode shows how the morale of the company is affected when they are killed, which was done very effectively. In a real way, it demonstrates the emotional connection these men had to each other.”

For these actors, being in “Band of Brothers” was a pivotal moment in their careers. Knowing what was at stake, they banded together as a group in much the same way as the soldiers in Easy Company during World War II. They forged lasting relationships with others in the cast that remain intact today.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t have some form of communication with one of the other actors,” Madio says. “We have reunions and we talk to each other all the time. We are all brothers and friends.”

All three actors plan to attend the 25th Anniversary Symposium in New Orleans. Their goal is to renew their bonds while honoring the real men who helped liberate Europe from fascism more than 80 years ago. They also look forward to engaging with fans of the miniseries — especially new viewers who weren’t even born when it first aired 25 years ago.

“I’m stopped today by 16-year-olds in the airport who recognize me,” McCall says. “We’re speaking to the generation we need to speak to now. They need to realize what these men did for us.”

The “Band of Brothers” 25th Anniversary Symposium will be shown live online Friday and Saturday, July 31 and Aug. 1. The public can watch free by registering here.