“I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device,” Trump wrote.

“He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed. That said, the execution may be viewed in person by the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose. They deserve to witness JUSTICE!”

Some of Trump’s fellow Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, as well as religious leaders and international observers, had expressed doubts about the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the Dec. 3 execution of Nidal Hasan. Recent polls have also shown a majority of Americans opposed livestreaming it.

Hasan, a former U.S. Army psychiatrist, was found guilty in a military trial of fatally shooting 13 people and wounding dozens more at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.

The goal is to have benchmarks that will allow assessment of the “physiological and biomechanical effects of blast injuries” caused by explosions of enemy munitions or the blast effects from firing friendly weapons, according to the Request for Information by the Blast Injury Research Coordinating Office, or BIRCO, within U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command.

This will enable “risk assessment of military service members who are exposed to blunt impacts resulting from acceleration of the body, blunt injury from a ballistic strike to the helmet, or effects from blast pressure produced by a weapon system or explosion,” the RFI reads.

BIRCO is seeking a variety of information that can help formulate standards for assessing mild traumatic brain injuries, or mTBI. The information could include existing criteria, standards and models for brain injuries, as well as identifying experts on the topic.

The Pentagon is also seeking input from manufacturers of protective gear that can be “highly relevant to understanding human tolerance limits and predicting blast injuries.”

The RFI uses a broad definition of blast injuries, including the effects on the body of blast-wave overpressure, fragments, the human body being thrown against hard objects, collapsing buildings and burns, as well as the effects of toxic gases and radiation.

“The standards can range from simple dose response curves and injury thresholds that address single components of blast insults, such as blast pressure wave magnitude, or address multiple components of blast insults, such as pressure magnitude over time,” the RFI said.

These standards will be used for “health hazard assessments, survivability assessments, and protection system development aimed at producing safe weapon systems, survivable combat platforms, and effective protection systems.”

The effects of traumatic brain injuries on military personnel have become better known in recent years. There is evidence that exposure to the blast of firing artillery, tank guns and handheld missiles, as well as being thrown around while riding small boats used by special operations forces, leads to brain trauma, or even TBI.

Department of Defense data from the Iran war shows a relatively high proportion of head trauma from Iranian missile and drone strikes.

The RFI was published after the Government Accountability Office released the findings of its investigation into the ability of military services to provide baseline cognitive assessments to troops. Across the services, the Defense Department is hampered by staff shortages and a lack of technology needed to conduct the assessments, the GAO found.

The Pentagon announced in April that it will begin a one-year pilot program to test a new cognitive assessment tool, an app that service members can use to complete assessments. DoD officials said the app will be less resource-intensive than current assessments and will help improve the services’ ability to track exposures.

Veterans who have suffered traumatic brain injuries are more than twice as likely to die by suicide, according to a 2019 study.

The 2025 National Security Strategy prioritizes economic dominance in the Western Hemisphere through national security, Gen. Joseph Ryan, the commander of the U.S. Army Western Hemisphere Command, said during a panel discussion with Gen. Luis Cardozo, Colombian attaché, and Vice Adm. Jo-Ann Burdian, the U.S. Coast Guard’s Atlantic Area Commander.

“The end state is economic supremacy for the United States,” Ryan said, later adding, “We have ceded control of that economic terrain in this hemisphere to the People’s Republic of China over at least the last two decades, and that is a major threat to our national security.”

Ryan pointed to Panama as an example, explaining how a high percentage of trade to and from the United States passes through the Panama Canal. He said the Panamanian government saw a mutual benefit in the partnership. It also allows the U.S. to “keep an eye on those states that are aligned with other adversaries in the region,” he said, such as Cuba, Nicaragua and formerly Venezuela. Lebanese Hezbollah has a presence in the area, he added.

Recently, the U.S. military co-led PANAMAX, a massive multinational exercise hosted in Panama for the first time since 2012, where forces practiced defending the Panama Canal. During the exercise, which included personnel from 19 countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile and Colombia, troops drilled command post and field exercises.

Countering cartels

In addition to countering China, the Defense Department has railed against cartels, prioritizing counter-cartel operations in the Western Hemisphere.

Burdian said the cartels are trafficking people, narcotics and bulk cash. She characterized them as “multi-billion-dollar organizations that operate globally and are unconstrained in the ways we are — they are unconstrained financially,” she said, adding, “and they demonstrate extraordinary agility, and they certainly are unfettered by rules or basic human decency.”

Cardozo said his country — Colombia — has seen how cartels can build diverse, enormous economies.

“In Colombia, it’s not only using the drug trafficking as a main source of income, they also use illegal mining,” he said, which can destroy the environment and people’s homes, but reap huge financial rewards. “I think that’s their Achilles’ heel: the illegal financing. If we take that money away from them, they’re going to asphyxiate.”

With the Army’s logistics assistance, Burdian said the Coast Guard is working to establish an Expeditionary Cutter Squadron with two ships in Panama to conduct interdiction operations. Ryan said officials recently approved a capacity increase for Joint Task Force Bravo — a forward-deployed task force based at Soto Cano Air Base in Comayagua, Honduras — to expand the footprint over the next few fiscal years.

Ryan said the task force would receive more rotary-wing aircraft and personnel to “address some of the natural disasters and threats in the region.” Those additional resources, he said, “become absolutely critical when you’re talking about moving supplies, moving people to the point of need, and making assessments.”

Command restructure

In a major force restructure, the Army stood up the Western Hemisphere Command in December 2025, combining U.S. Army North, U.S. Army South and Armed Forces Command under a single headquarters. As its focus shifted, the Army revived its jungle school in Panama’s “Green Hell” and approved service-wide wear of the Jungle tab.

In August, U.S. Southern Command activated Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, a new headquarters to unify operations with allies and partners, including the 18 partner nations of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition. The new task force replaced Operation Southern Spear, which has destroyed scores of sea vessels as part of what the Trump administration characterizes as a counternarcotics campaign. More than 210 people have been killed in the attacks.

The strikes have drawn controversy, and the Trump administration has offered little evidence of drug-trafficking activity. The Defense Department’s inspector general launched an investigation into whether U.S. Southern Command followed protocols with the strikes, but the White House has emphatically defended the attacks.

Ryan said that joint exercises with partner forces in the region will increasingly center on counter-cartel operations.

“We are going to focus our exercise programming going forward to be really focused on those things that contribute to the counter-designated terrorist organization threat and cartel threat in the region,” he told the crowd.

Publicly available technology is fueling the cartel’s economy, the panelists emphasized.

“Make no mistake, you know, Starlink is great as long as you’re using it on your side. When it pervades to the adversary side, it becomes very difficult to counter,” Ryan said, emphasizing that the military cannot stop cartels from accessing publicly available technology.

Ryan said the intelligence is showing an increase in unmanned aerial systems for human trafficking operations, and Burdian said the Coast Guard is used to seeing homemade submersibles from the cartels coming out of riverine terrain off the coast of Colombia. But now, as the markets grow, they are seeing them move across the Atlantic.

“The greatest threat I face — the most persistent threat, frankly — is the commingling of illicit traffic or threats or another nature with legitimate traffic,” Burdian said.

Only completely closing a port can eliminate all illegal traffic, she said, but that is economically destructive.

“So, how do you know what to let in? How do you know what to keep out?” she asked. “How do I enable those commanders on scene to allow the legitimate commerce to pass in and out while at the same time, identifying and neutralizing threats before they damage the U.S. economy or kill Americans?”

From Sept. 11 to 19, 11 squads battled at Fort Benning, Georgia, to earn the titles of Soldier of the Year, Noncommissioned Officer of the Year and Best Squad.

Cpl. Michael Shield was named the Army’s Soldier of the Year, and Staff Sgt. Colin Doyle as the Army’s non-commissioned officer of the year. The announcement cements the Rangers as a dominant force within the Army competition, with the special forces unit sweeping the last three events in four years.

“The 75th Ranger Regiment is a one-of-a-kind unit,” Doyle said, an Army release states. “We simply show up to work every day focused on marksmanship, small unit tactics, medical training and mobility.”

Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael R. Weimer presented the awards to Shield and Doyle, as well as to the soldiers that rounded out the best squad, which included Sgt. William Masters, Spc. William Schaeffer and Spc. Marshall Garren.

After securing its place in the competition and being named the Army Special Operations Command top squad in August, the five-soldier squad found themselves in the muck and mire of Fort Benning.

During the 2026 competition, events ranged from fitness assessments, weapons qualifications, medical scenarios and an 18.6-mile nighttime foot march and obstacle course. Competitors also experienced the “First 100 Yards” evolution that replaced the traditional “shark attack” opening day for recruits, the release said. The soldiers also completed the combat water survival course, loaded and fired from an M1A2 Abrams and rounded out the competition with interviews with review boards.

“The Army Best Squad Competition is important because it shows where the readiness of the different commands is at across the entire Army,” Shield said. “And on top of that, competition is a huge part of the Army. And who doesn’t want to be first?”

This is the first Best Squad competition in two years after the yearly competition was canceled in 2025 due to a “lapse in appropriations” caused by Congress’ failure to pass a fiscal 2026 budget.

In 2022, Rangers earned the title of Best Squad and swept all three awards the following year. In 2024, a team from the U.S. Army Pacific won Best Squad.

Currently, parents don’t have access to a child’s medical records from the time they turn 13, “based on current departmental policy,” Lt. Gen. Mary K. Izaguirre said Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army.

In addition, children don’t have ID cards to sign in to the Defense Enrollment Eligibility System (DEERS), she said. Children must be at least 18 to log in to the system.

The question of parents’ access came up during a family forum at AUSA. Izaguirre said the issue is one of her husband’s favorite topics, and “I share his passion for it,” she said.

For now, parents must go to the patient administration offices at their military treatment facilities and have their teenage children sign consent forms to give parents permission for access to their medical records.

“That’s a barrier,” Izaguirre said, adding that “we’ve been working with the [Defense Health Agency], and the [Department of Health and Human Services]” to address the hurdle.

The issue stems from privacy laws and has come up in various settings with military families.

Researchers with the organization Feedback were “surprised at how often this came up, not just one parent at one base,” said Erin Domagola, the research director at the organization. Feedback analyzed comments received in the Federal Register, following a Defense Department solicitation in March for comments and suggestions from military families on how DoD could improve their quality of life.

Feedback uses applied anthropology, behavioral science and digital ethnography to understand what people experience and why.

The company independently analyzed Federal Register military family comments from 2024 to 2026 about quality of life. While there were a relatively small number of comments overall —117 in 2026 — it does provide a window into some of the concerns and suggestions, the researchers said.

This summer, mechanical problems with a water treatment plant in Hawaii left thousands of soldiers at multiple Army installations on Oahu without central air conditioning. Soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, experienced five to six weeks of unbearably hot temperatures in their rooms last year before AC was restored.

And just last month, soldiers assigned to Fort Carson, Colorado, reported sleeping in their cars to escape hot barracks rooms, Stars and Stripes reported.

Now, Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle is attempting to do something about it. Telle announced Monday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting the creation of an enterprise-level Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Task Force focused on soldiers’ quality of life.

The task force includes leaders from facility operations, contracting and military engineering who can “cut through bureaucratic silos,” the Army said in a Monday statement.

The announcement follows a directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last year to create another military-wide task force to improve barracks.

“Secretary of War Hegseth has said every service member deserves clean, comfortable, and safe housing,” Telle said at the annual meeting in Washington, D.C. “This has never been done before — we’re taking this for the first time to the national level, to deliver results across the country to soldiers.”

Jordan Gillis, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment, said in a statement that HVAC is the top quality-of-life complaint that leadership hears from soldiers.

The Government Accountability Office reported in August that the Defense Department does not request enough funding to fully meet its installation maintenance and major improvement needs, leading to a backlog of deferred maintenance at barracks. Hundreds of thousands of service members live in military barracks, with concerns about poor living conditions and management going back decades, according to the government watchdog.

Before the end of the fiscal year in September, the Army directed $15 million toward 44 high-priority HVAC projects across multiple installations, the service said in a statement.

“While that effort brought immediate relief to specific facilities, the [task force] leaders recognized that one-time emergency funding cannot replace a comprehensive, proactive strategy,” the Army said.

Members of the task force will work directly with garrison commanders to find HVAC projects for 2027 and 2028, the Army said. So far, it has identified more than $100 million in projects to be awarded in early 2027.

“This ensures ready-to-award projects are pre-engineered and priced as soon as funds become available,” the service said. “Additionally, the [task force] will utilize regional contracting approaches, utility energy service contracts, and commercial best practices.”

Within the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, or 2CR, new basics include unmanned aerial systems operation and employment, counter-UAS systems and unmanned ground vehicle usage, service officials said during a Monday discussion at the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting, titled “Project Flytrap—Accelerating Offensive Maneuver through Data-Centric Kill Web.”

Project Flytrap is an Army counter-unmanned aerial systems initiative and multinational exercise, which has leveled up from the individual soldier to the squadron level with multiple iterations.

The most recent exercise, Project Flytrap 5.0, took place in Lithuania and was concluded earlier this year with partner nations, including the United Kingdom and Australia, and was led by the Army’s V Corps. The countries integrated and tested more than 50 industry-provided technologies, launched effects and unmanned ground vehicles and tested against a live opposing force.

“The American way of war is centered on maneuver, and counter-UAS cannot remain tied to static defense,” Col. Timothy Price, commander of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, said in a Tuesday release. “Project FlyTrap ensures we maintain mobility and offensive survivability in a highly contested, opaque operational environment.”

The 2nd Cavalry Regiment is expanding Project Flytrap into a battalion-level operational capability, adapting from small-unit field trials into tactical employment connected with operational objectives aimed at breaking through drone-saturated frontlines on Europe’s Eastern Flank.

“As we’re training our soldiers for the multi-domain operations, or multi-domain breeds, we talk about the new basics inside of 2CR,” Command Sgt. Maj. Jesse Clark, 2nd Cavalry Regiment senior enlisted leader, said during Monday’s discussion.

“With the new basics, we need to focus on sUAS, counter-UAS, camouflage for electromagnetic signatures … and how we’re going to do that so soldiers understand how to camouflage themselves with those spectrum options,” he continued.

Officials listed the previous basics to include topics such as marksmanship, map reading and navigation, radio etiquette and UAS and jamming reaction to contact.

Clark said the service needs to have disciplined unit training management in which personnel, time and equipment are included to ensure soldiers are proficient at the new basics. One way to complete this is to have a series of expert badges.

“Everyone needs to know these basics because it’s going to be required whether you’re on the frontline or you’re back in the rear because we’re going to have UAS all over the place,” Clark said.

The U.S. military has strived to incorporate UAS and counter-UAS training across all branches, with new units in the Marine Corps and the Defense Innovation Unit aiming to recruit service members with first-person-view drone experience to participate in the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance program.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed AUSA attendees at the Project Agincourt panel on Wednesday, sharing that the Pentagon is requesting roughly $50 billion in reconciliation funding to support the push to scale autonomous and robotic systems.

This request is part of an effort to make the technology available in far greater numbers.

The figure is separate from the Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 budget request, which includes $53.6 billion for the Drone Dominance initiative. That request covers $16.9 billion for unmanned-system procurement, $14.4 billion for counter-unmanned systems, $13.5 billion for contested logistics, $4.5 billion for collaborative autonomy and $4.3 billion for institutional systems and personnel. The budget request does not establish that the reconciliation funding Hegseth cited is the same money or that it is dedicated entirely to drone purchases

Hegseth characterized the funding as a one-time investment rather than a recurring annual allocation, intended to accelerate the development and production of autonomous and robotic systems.

“Ultimately we will be dealing with hundreds of thousands of one-way attack systems this year and into the millions in years to come at a pace that this department’s never ever seen before.”

The Defense Secretary said the Pentagon must make it easier for new companies to compete in a defense market long dominated by established contractors and costly platforms. Traditional defense firms remain important, he said, but the department also needs lower-cost systems that can be manufactured at scale.

The Army’s Drone Dominance program offers a concrete measure of that ambition. In a December 2025 announcement, the Army said a $1 billion initiative would fund approximately 340,000 small unmanned aircraft systems for combat units over two years. The service said it expected to deliver tens of thousands of drones in 2026 and hundreds of thousands by 2027.

Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle said the service is broadening access to its programs for companies outside the traditional defense industrial base. The Army, he said, must make room for new entrants while continuing to work with established suppliers.

Telle also described plans to coordinate the Army’s autonomous-systems efforts while distributing capabilities to operational units. The service is developing an approach that incorporates drones, autonomous ground systems, autonomous fires and autonomous lift into future combat operations.

“We have an MOS in the Army, 390A, where warrant officers could keep the speciality and the skills over the duration to teach our soldiers how to do robotics,” Telle added.

Expanding access to Army test ranges is another part of that effort, Telle said. Greater access gives developers more opportunities to test systems and receive feedback from military users. He also described efforts to share lessons across the force rather than have individual units and organizations solve the same problems independently.

Hegseth said the department must remove bureaucratic barriers that slow the adoption of new technology, telling the panel, “I want you to tell me which rules can be signed away.” He urged officials to identify rules and directives that could be changed without involving new legislation to accelerate progress.

The Social Security Administration’s COLA announcement Wednesday sets the rate of increase for about 72 million Social Security beneficiaries, but also for military retirees and people receiving veterans benefits. The increase goes into effect in January and is 0.8% higher than the 2.8% COLA in 2026.

It’s the biggest increase in four years.

Officials estimate that on average, the monthly Social Security benefit will increase by $75.

As an example, a military retiree who receives $2,500 in retired pay will see a COLA increase of about $90 per month.

For a veteran receiving $1,500 per month in benefits, the increase would be about $54 in 2027.

In 2024, Congress passed legislation that ties increases in veterans’ benefits to the rate of Social Security increases. The cost-of-living increase applies to disability compensation, clothing allowances and dependency and indemnity benefits, as well as some other Department of Veterans Affairs assistance programs.

The COLA is designed to ensure benefits keep pace with inflation. The calculation is based on the Consumer Price Index, which tracks the cost of a wide range of items and calculates inflation and changes in the cost of living.

The 2026 COLA was 2.8%, a few ticks higher than the 2025 COLA of 2.5%.

Those with personal “my Social Security” accounts can view their COLA notice online starting in late November, a few weeks earlier than those who receive paper notices in the mail, officials said.

Another 800 are on federal orders supporting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and “quite a few” are deployed to Washington, D.C., to support local law enforcement.

It all makes up more than three times the Guard’s true capacity, according to Maj. Gen. Robert Carruthers, assistant adjutant general of the Florida Guard. And that’s even after the activation in recent years of the Florida State Guard, a volunteer civilian military force, to support hurricane response and other state needs.

In a panel at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting on Tuesday, the message of other Guard leaders was clear: The demands are unsustainable — and they need to stop.

“The governor’s become quite addicted to the Guard and how useful they are since COVID,” Carruthers said, referring, presumably, to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has been in office since 2019.

The effects are felt in equipment readiness and training, he said, particularly as funding has not followed the deployment of units and their gear.

“You’re going to have this cascading effect of breaking units downstream,” Carruthers said. “In the case of Florida, what are we going to lose first? Are we going to lose our transportation companies, which are critically important in hurricane [relief], or are we going to lose our aviation first? So it’s also important for us to plan for that aspect.”

The Florida Guard, Carruthers said, had ordered a “maintenance stand-down” to assess the status of infantry brigade combat team equipment sitting unused in motor pools. As a result of the assessment, he said, equipment readiness rates dropped from 90% to 27% within six weeks.

“It’s somewhere five degrees below combat-ineffective, right?” he said. “So that’s just the state of where we are, because the equipment sits … we are not funded to maintain it all the time.”

Maj. Gen. Jack James, commanding general of the New York-based 42nd Infantry Division, proposed a solution to push back on governors’ demands: a “broker” and a “traffic cop” to filter activation and employment requests and prioritize them.

“You hear what these guys are up against with their governors, right? And then what the warfighting commanders are up against with our, whether it’s the [U.S. Central Command] commander, [U.S. Pacific Command] commander, our Army components, right?” James said. “There’s inherent friction right there, so we need a brokering function. We need a traffic cop function. We need the arbiter of how those resource allocations are going to be made in a quick, timely manner, so we can get after it for the country.”

Carruthers acknowledged there would be “political pressure” and fallout as the Guard works to manage expectations and requirements in line with its actual capacity.

“There are probably homeland defense people who think they’re getting these dudes and dudettes, and all of the governors think they have all of their Guard because they’re not really led in war plans,” he said. “And the time of mobilization is not the time to adjudicate that. So that’s something we got to work now to include … trying to get our governor and our state leadership in on these plans at a classified level, so they understand.”

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 saw a historic mobilization of some 118,000 Guard troops at home and overseas.

And the start of President Donald Trump’s second term in 2025 kicked off a new wave of domestic deployments, both to quell unrest and support ICE enforcement actions in Democratic-controlled cities and to contribute to crime reduction in Washington, D.C. The D.C. deployments alone are expected to cost the country another $1.4 billion through January 2029.

While the increased role of National Guard troops in domestic affairs has been a point of concern for some time, Army National Guard Director Lt. Gen. Jonathan Stubbs said the current situation would force action, and even confrontation, within the next year.

“Hope is not a method in this case; there is no fail. We’ve got to figure this thing out,” Stubbs said.

“It’s going to require hard conversations between adjutants general and governors. There’s going to be a level of dialog, of informing and educating our state commanders and chiefs in terms of the prospect of … mobilization and what it could mean for their access to the respective National Guard service members when conflict comes,“ he continued. ”And then when conflict persists, as it expands and retracts, and at some point in time, what they’re going to have left inside the state.”

All of the information about your state’s requirements and deadlines for voter registration, ballot requests and ballot returns is available at the Federal Voting Assistance Program site, FVAP.gov, and at the U.S. Vote Foundation site.

Deadlines vary by location, but as of mid-October, individuals could still register to vote in some states. For the best results, use the Federal Post Card Application (FPCA), which allows you to register to vote, as well as request a ballot. Some states allow you to email or fax the FPCA.

Federal Voting Assistance Program officials are advising those who have requested a ballot from their state election officials and haven’t received it to fill out a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot, or FWAB, and send it in. States are required to accept these ballots if they meet requirements.

The Federal Voting Assistance Program, a Defense Department program, is the organization that is tasked with implementing the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA. This law applies to service members and their families living away from their voting jurisdiction, stateside, as well as overseas. It also applies to U.S. citizens living overseas.

The Federal Voting Assistance Program is required to be non-partisan and exists only to provide information and tools for service members, family members and overseas citizens to be able to vote. Voting assistance officers in military units and locations on military bases are also available to provide information.

Again this year, the military and U.S. Postal Service are providing free Priority Mail Express service for military ballots coming from the overseas APO and FPO origins to election offices in the U.S.

The Military Post Office personnel will attach the USPS EMS Label 11-DOD to the voted absentee ballot. This applies to military family members, too, but is only available at the APO and FPO locations. Post office personnel will provide a receipt with the tracking number, allowing voters to track their ballot all the way back to their local election office.

This year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed all commanders and supervisors across DoD to conduct a one-day stand down, no later than Oct. 15, to ensure time for service member training, processing and submission of the Federal Post Card Application, if they choose to vote by absentee ballot.

Military Times conducted a spot check of a few states’ UOCAVA deadlines, based on information on the FVAP.gov site:

California: Mailed registration requests postmarked by Oct. 19; online or fax registrations received by Oct. 19. No deadline for ballot requests.

Maine: Registration and ballot requests received by 12 p.m. Nov. 2.

Michigan: No registration deadline; ballot requests received by 2 p.m. on Oct. 31.

Minnesota: No timeline for registration or applying for a UOCAVA ballot, but voted ballots must be returned by mail.

Texas: Voters who haven’t previously registered can submit a FPCA by the Oct. 23 ballot request deadline.

Changes in the FPCA

Voting rights advocates have expressed concerns about changes defense officials made to the FPCA this summer before asking for public comment. DoD has since posted notices in the Federal Register for public comment on the changes, open through Nov. 9.

A new form removes one of the classifications that voters could check: “I am a U.S. citizen who has never resided in the United States.”

Some U.S. citizens who have never lived in the U.S. are legally eligible to vote under some state laws. Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia allow U.S. citizens who were born abroad, but never lived in the U.S., to vote, said Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president and CEO of the U.S. Vote Foundation.

Advocates are concerned that these voters who see their former category has disappeared may think they aren’t eligible to vote absentee. The voters are U.S. citizens who have spent most or all of their lives abroad and are passport-carrying taxpayers, she said.

This isn’t expected to be a huge change for military families, she said, but noted that military families are sensitive to changes in these forms which could affect voting rights.

Military voters are among those who have expressed confusion and concern about whether their old form of the FPCA still counts, said Sarah Streyder, executive director of the Secure Families Initiative. She’s assuring them they do count.

FVAP officials have notified state officials that the old form is still acceptable, and voters who have the old form on file don’t have to resubmit a new form. The old form and new form are both available on the usvotefoundation.org website.

That’s the essence of “How The Army Fights,” a new 46-page guide on how the U.S. Army can leverage the tactical to improve the operational.

“While [How The Army Fights] is focused on the operational and strategic levels of war, it will affect how tactical units execute warfighting at echelon,” according to the guide, issued by Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Christopher LaNeve.

How The Army Fights, or HTAF, is a farewell to the small-unit counterinsurgency warfare that shaped Army organization, equipment and structure for nearly two decades.

“These experiences created a generation of units that rarely had to maneuver under a contested sky, mask their electromagnetic signatures, or sustain high-tempo operations without contractor support,” the guide states.

Now, the Army’s operational concept is Multidomain Operations, or MDO, which features big-unit maneuver warfare waged by divisions and brigades rather than platoons and squads.

The guide represents an acknowledgement that the last thing the Army — or the American public — wants is the sort of stalemate seen in the Ukraine war. In that conflict, drones and long-range guided munitions dominate the battlefield to such an extent that maneuver has become the exception rather than the norm.

“Only ground maneuver can seize what the enemy holds and secure it against the enemy’s will,” the HTAF manual emphasizes.

To enable maneuver and the possibility for strategic victory that maneuver offers, HTAF highlights the importance of “the four elements of Army land power”: Convergence, Strike, Close Battle and Endurance.

During Convergence, U.S. forces disrupt enemy command, communications and sensor systems, according to the document.

For example, “a commander executes a kinetic strike against an adversary command post while electronic warfare assets jam backup communication systems,” HTAF states. “Concurrently, long-range artillery targets an enemy radar exposed while illuminating friendly aircraft, while friendly space and cyber capabilities degrade the broader integrated air defense network.”

The Strike element calls for the Army to unleash a variety of munitions, including artillery, rockets, missiles, one-way attack drones and loitering munitions.

“Strike acts as the deep operational shaper, employing medium- and long-range precision fires and uncrewed systems to disrupt, degrade, and dislocate enemy forces and logistical assets before they can influence the close fight,” the document states.

If Convergence and Strike phases achieve the objectives of leaving the enemy dazed and blinded, Close Battle can begin.

Throughout history, battles have culminated with troops advancing to destroy the enemy. But HTAF acknowledges the unprecedented difficulty of a modern battlefield where drones appear to see all and enemy fires can rain down at any moment.

Army units will therefore need to be adept at camouflage and deception, and possess their own defensive weapons against drones and other fires, HTAF states.

“Close Battle is built on highly lethal ground maneuver formations that cannot be formed over short periods of time,” the guide reads. “They are built on years of rigorous training, institutional expertise, and leadership.”

The Army’s ability to function despite enemy fire, particularly when it comes to logistics, is especially vital. This has become a significant issue throughout the Iran war, with strikes by the Islamic Republic on numerous U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf forcing American aircraft to rebase, and ships to sail thousands of miles to seek replenishment.

The Endurance aspect of HTAF involves protecting supply depots, medical facilities and vital infrastructure against enemies that have built anti-access/area denial, or A2/AD, capabilities to keep American forces at bay.

“This requirement is even more pronounced today: the absence of sanctuary across any theater of operations underscores the critical necessity of interior lines,” the guide states.

This also means ensuring that supplies can reach troops on the front lines.

“To achieve Endurance and sustain dispersed forces in contested environments, the Army must operationalize autonomous ground, aerial, and littoral distribution platforms to scale throughput while minimizing human exposure in high-threat corridors.”

Significantly, HTAF stresses the need for the Army to forward-deploy capabilities close to potential combat zones to enable troops to act immediately rather than await reinforcements from the U.S.

“Near-term priorities include constructing bulk fuel and munitions storage, stockpiling supplies, improving contingency sites, and establishing an enduring command-and-control architecture to neutralize the pacing threat’s A2/AD networks,” according to the guide.

HTAF also envisions troops making and fixing their own equipment at the forward edge, including “additive manufacturing and secured ‘right-to-repair’ authorities” that will spare the need to transport items from factories and depots thousands of miles away.

The document points to the importance of the Army’s plan to expand and modernize its organic industrial base: the 23 government depots, arsenals and ammunition plants that produce many crucial items.

“This ‘agile facilitation construct’ will allow production of numerous different finished products and repairs, evolving beyond historical ‘one plant, one output’ industrial models,” the guide states.

Similarly, the contractors in the U.S. defense industrial base must be prepared to surge production if needed.

“The industrial base must develop rapid replenishment solutions rather than relying on peacetime schedules,” the guide says.

Still, HTAF takes care to laud the human component.

“At the center of our operational elements remains the individual soldier. Advanced technology, uncrewed systems, and autonomous networks optimize kill webs, yet they can never replace the human judgment, tactical discipline, and physical courage of the soldiers executing the fight in the mud.”

Six people interrupted the speakers at various points during the beginning of the roughly hour-long panel, which was part of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting. They shouted condemnations of the U.S. war with Iran and referenced the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

“You’re not a warrior, you’re a coward,” one person yelled, adding, “Children in Gaza are starving!” Another shouted, “You’re killing my family.”

The final protester yelled, “The world f—--- hates you.” “You’re a f—--- war criminal. You’re a Nazi. We’ll see you at the goddamn Hague. You should be ashamed of yourself,” as security pushed him outside of the packed ballroom.

Hegseth made a handful of quips addressing the initial interruptions, saying, “She thinks highly of me,” in response to the first protester.

He appeared to get more irritated as they continued.

“Appears we have a bit of a tactic,” he said.

The panel was intended to be a conversation about Project Agincourt, a Pentagon initiative to accelerate the development and acquisition of autonomous systems.

At one point, after a protester interrupted, a handful of spectators chanted “USA, USA, USA,” before quieting as the panelists continued speaking.

Speaking at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting here Monday, Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command, and United States Forces Korea, said lessons from Ukraine prompted interest in changing the shape and structure of exercises there.

“I think what we recognize is that largely the two big exercises every year in Korea focus on large command posts; we’ve got to move away from that,” Brunson said, in response to a question from a Korean journalist.

“So, what we intend to do is take advantage of the knowledge that we have of the threats that exist or that prevail in the Ukraine fight,” he continued. “We’re trying to say how might we train differently, and so [Gen. Kim Sung-min, deputy commander of the Republic of Korea–U.S. Combined Forces Command] and I talk about how we would operate in a distributed fashion.”

In light of the distributed fight and scope of battle in Ukraine, Brunson suggested a training exercise that spanned from Jeju Island to Gyeonggi Province — a distance of nearly 300 miles across nearly the full span of the Korean peninsula.

“Just imagine if we trained across the entirety of the peninsula and got ourselves in a shape where we would say, ‘You can’t utilize the things that you’ve learned in the fight in the battlefield in Ukraine on us, because we learn the same lessons and we’ve distributed ourselves in such a way that we don’t make ourselves the target,” he said. “We won’t be moored in place, and that’s what I’m talking about when I talk about positional advantage. It might not be the same place through the continuum. It might not be the same place when you’re in a crisis or conflict or competition; we might have to change that, and that’s what we’re learning.”

His remarks acknowledged ongoing collusion and information sharing between U.S. adversaries, including Russia, China and North Korea, as Russia continues its war of aggression in Ukraine.

Also on the table, Brunson said, were additional exercises, or a different schedule.

“For a long time, we trained for two big exercises every year. What would happen if we trained in between those exercises?” he said.

He cited a recent exercise conducted without troops that drilled, on a small scale, on what a mass garrison evacuation would look like in light of a major threat.

“We’re there to protect the Korean people on the peninsula, and so we’re there to defend both homelands, the United States of America and the Republic of Korea. But what would it look like … if our environment changed?” Brunson said.

While Trump’s Aug. 16 Truth Social post suggested a broad reduction in exercises with Korea, another general, Lt. Gen. Joe Hilbert, said earlier Monday that the order pertained to only one exercise in August, Ulchi Freedom Shield.

Hilbert, who commands the Korea-based Eighth Army, said the live portion of that exercise was reduced by half and some elements that had been joint became unilateral. He maintained that joint training writ large

“We continue to train on the peninsula. We continue to train with the Koreans,” he said, adding that troops from the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division were currently training on South Korean ranges in a rotational deployment.

“So we’ll continue to train and we’ll continue to build readiness for U.S. forces on the peninsula throughout the year, except from that particular timeline and that particular exercise,” Hilber said. “As we all are observing and watching how the war is changing in Ukraine and in the Middle East, the North Koreans are absolutely doing that too. So rest assured, we pay attention to that, and we work to stay ahead.”

Forterra installed its AutoDrive autonomy software platform that powers unmanned maneuverability onto Hypercraft’s Razorback ground vehicle, yielding a product that can withstand the punishing logistics of combat without putting soldiers at risk.

“The point of an autonomous military vehicle is to deliver payloads to the point of friction,” Forterra Chief Growth Officer Scott Sanders said. “Razorback has the power, power generation and capacity to carry a wide variety of weapons systems without modification.”

Forterra’s AutoDrive autonomous driving system has become an industry standard, integrated on more than 200 vehicles in active service.

Meanwhile, the Razorback weaponizes 300 horsepower, 4,0000 volumes of payload range, a 500-mile range and up to 38 kilowatts of distributable power.

Forterra was the first U.S. ground autonomy company to be actively deployed in Ukraine and has completed 88 casualty evacuation missions to rescue Ukrainian soldiers from the front lines, according to Forterra spokesperson Kelsey Szablowski.

That mission to not put military personnel in harm’s way is part of Forterra’s mantra.

“Robots don’t bleed,” Szablowski said.

The Army has taken notice of the company’s approach.

In August, the service selected Forterra as a prime contractor for its Engineer Autonomous Breaching Capability program, a larger effort to field autonomous vehicles during mine-clearing missions.

The company outfitted a Ford F-250 with its AutoDrive technology and named it the Mobile Autonomous Uncrewed Lanemaker, or MAUL.

The MAUL, which hosts no human in the driver’s seat and can drive autonomously or be controlled by an operator, is made for reconnaissance, planning and clearing in mine-contested environments.

The autonomous vehicle deploys a rocket-propelled mine-clearing line charge, or MICLIC, to detonate explosives in an area before driving through.

In mid-August, Forterra demonstrated the MAUL’s capabilities during Project Sandhills at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in which drones attacked the vehicle as it attempted to mine-detect and clear.

The MAUL fought off and destroyed the drones with an onboard automated turret, while it navigated through the area autonomously.

The exercise took place from Aug. 17 to Aug. 28 and demonstrated the Army’s ability to tackle a myriad of mission sets using attributable autonomous systems that reduce risks to soldiers.

“Instead of relying solely on high-value, crewed assets, we can field semi-autonomous F-250s, sUAS swarms and autonomous c-UAS systems that are adaptable, scalable and resilient,” said Capt. Denny Drummey, Sandhills Project operations officer, during the exercise.

The service will pay a one-year total of $93.6 million, spread out across nine companies, to create applications for its Next Generation Command and Control, or NGC2, software.

“While the Army is providing capability we can deploy today, we’re also providing a blueprint and reference point for how industry can integrate in the future with interoperability and speed,” said Brig. Gen. Shane Taylor, portfolio management executive for the Command and Control Information Network.

The NGC2 will provide a shared network for technologies, weapons, sensors, devices and applications to operate within that will increase decision-making speed on the battlefield.

The chosen companies include General Dynamics Mission Systems, Air Space Intelligence Federal, Immersive Wisdom, LMI, Mente Systems, Stilman Advanced Strategies, Onebrief, Rune Technologies and AIR.

The applications will be hosted on the common data baseline, or software foundation, that Anduril Industries, Palantir, Raft and Striveworks have built in collaboration with the Army.

The NGC2 system, in conjunction with the applications the companies build for it, will allow information sharing that streamlines mission completion across the Army’s six warfighting functions of command and control, fires, intelligence, movement and maneuver, sustainment and protection, the service said.

The Army is currently in the process of delivering the NGC2 software to the I Corps, which commands service members in the Indo-Pacific.

The move will further test NGC2 software’s ability to host technologies and devices separated by thousands of miles, some in communication-contested environments.

The Army has spent the last year moving from the experimental phase to the fielding phase of NGC2, going from prototype development to placing software in the hands of soldiers at the 4th and 25th Infantry Divisions.

In July 2026, the Army hosted a 10-day event at Fort Irwin, California, entitled Project Convergence-Capstone 6, that asked 10,000 participants from U.S. and allied forces as well as industry partners using 90 technologies to test software for the NGC2.

The service conducted a joint force exercise shortly after in May at Fort Irwin that marked the end of the NGC2 prototype phase and came away stating that the new platform was ready to be scaled up.

The Army awarded Anduril Industries a $162.8 million contract on Sept. 30 worth up to 1.8 billion to continue refining the NGC2’s common data baseline, or software foundation.

The Cyber Mastery Incentive program debuted on Oct. 1, promising a new way of paying service members that rewards technology mastery and performance of demanding tasks. But reports emerged that the program wasn’t as financially enticing as advertised, with reductions in certain soldiers’ pay by up to $1,000 per month.

Lt. Gen. Christopher Eubank told audience members at the Association of the United States Army conference in Washington that wasn’t the case.

“Nobody’s losing pay,” said Eubank.

The new incentive plan was broken down into two tiers: skill incentive pay and special duty assignment pay.

The former provides a financial incentive to soldiers for their specific skill set, whether that’s basic, senior or master.

The latter pays soldiers who complete assignments that U.S. Cyber Command labels “exceptionally demanding.”

Analysts and operators at a basic level could reportedly lose $12,000 a year under the new C-MIP program, while developers could lose $850 a month, reports said.

Service members in the master tier could see their pay boosted between $100 and $250.

Eubank admitted that when the program first rolled out in June, the Army was in danger of putting a dent in soldiers’ wages.

But the service huddled with the Army’s Principal Cyber Advisor Brandon Pugh and Assistant Secretary of Cyber Policy Katherine Sutton and decided to sustain cyber assignment incentive pay for the next year to make sure soldiers’ wages didn’t dip.

Cyber assignment incentive pay offers between $200 and $1500 to soldiers based on skill level, assignment and certification, according to the Army.

The Army would use the CAIP program to fill the gap while it focused on refining the CMIC program over the next year, Eubank said.

It is not immediately evident where the money for C-MIP will come from since the Senate is still deliberating over passing the National Defense Authorization Act and Congress is currently in recess.

The Army instituted C-MIP to remodel how it retains and builds the military and civilian personnel that make up its Cyberspace Operations Forces.

Those in charge were focused on making sure that process was easy on the warfighter.

“Part of my job is making sure this is rolled out, that Army soldiers are being benefited and supported,” said Pugh, who also spoke at AUSA Monday. “If not, that’s going to be our job, to advocate to OSW so they can see where there’s been perhaps some challenges that we can try to course correct over the next year.”

The Panama course, back after a decades-long hiatus, resumed in 2025 as the U.S. military shifted its focus to the Western Hemisphere. In August, the Army confirmed it had approved the small arch-shaped patch — emblazoned with the word “Jungle” — for service-wide wear on the left shoulder. It joins the Special Forces, Sapper and Ranger tabs as wearable markers of additional skill identifiers.

Those who attended the course from 1990 to 1999 at Fort Sherman, now known as Base Aeronaval Cristóbal Colón, are authorized the tab retroactively, as well as those who attended the 12-day jungle school in Oahu, Hawaii, after Fort Sherman’s closure.

The 18-day course includes classes on flora, fauna, machetes, jungle first aid, fire-starting, shelter-building, and more, but showing up and trudging through muddy terrain in crippling Panama humidity is not enough to earn the tab.

“There’s a difference between graduating the course with the tab and finishing the course,” said Lt. Col. Andrew Eagan, the officer in charge of the Jungle Operations Training Course in Panama, or JOTC-P.

Even if students fail one part of the curriculum, as long as their failure presents no medical or safety issues, they must finish the course.

“We direct that you will come and you will do the X number of days of training. There are then five critical tasks across the course that you have to pass in order to graduate with the tab,” Eagen said.

Combat Water Survival Assessment and 5K

Early in the course, participants face physical fitness tests.

The Combat Water Survival Assessment, or CWSA, requires participants to complete a variety of survival tasks in the water, including swimming in combat gear, ditching their equipment and dropping from a meters-high diving board.

The 5-kilometer run — only 3.1 miles — has proven one of the course’s toughest obstacles for many jungle school candidates. While a 5k might sound like an easy morning workout for most soldiers, the Panama 5k route covers uneven terrain underneath dense, humid canopy. Service members have 40 minutes to complete the run outfitted with full canteens, gear, a rifle and boots. Eagen said the schoolhouse saw a pass rate of 45% to 55% in the first three iterations.

Now that word is spreading about the route, the pass rate is improving. More than 80% of candidates are passing it now, Eagen said. “They’re not undervaluing the difference between 5k here and 5k at the Fort Benning course,” he mused.

Master Sgt. Dale Taylor, a former Ranger School instructor who attended the course in September, said that people approach the run mistakenly thinking it will be a Thanksgiving Day turkey trot. “It’s nothing alike,” he told Military Times from a mosquito-infested bench at the jungle school. “Never in any other assessment in the military do you know for a fact that you will walk a portion of the run,” he said, alluding to the heat, humidity and steep hills. Only “a handful of people,” he said, “could have ran that course from start to finish.”

Knots and Rope Systems

Jungle school students must also pass individual tests on knots and rope systems. Seven knots are tested, Eagan said, and they are used throughout the course. One example is the bowline knot service members tie around their chests to secure themselves on a one-rope bridge across water.

On a sunny practice day after minimal rain, the knots felt like an added step in an already tiresome water squad crossing. But participants know things can change quickly in the jungle: That gentle, bubbling creek could become a rushing waterway after a storm.

Jungle school students must also qualify independently on rope systems.

“You have to pass rope systems, which is individually being able — in a time standard — to tie a one-rope bridge and the Z-pulley system,” Eagen said. A Z-pulley system, he added, can move a dead or injured soldier in unforgiving terrain that does not lend itself to easy casualty evacuation.

The Green Mile

Water movements, traversing uneven terrain and ropes are all part of the final crucible participants must complete to earn a Jungle tab. The notorious Green Mile — in the heart of Panama’s “Green Hell” — is a more-than-four-mile gauntlet at the end of a days-long field training exercise that separates damp, dirty students from graduation.

Squads must run through muddy ground, wade through coastlines, climb dizzyingly steep hills — often with the help of ropes — carry a hasty litter and shimmy under barbed wire, all while carrying heavy rucksacks, water jugs and ammo cans.

Movements that might have been easy, even enjoyable, with a full night’s sleep and a cool temperature turn into damp, arduous slogs in the jungle. By the time the squads are stepping off for their final tasks, each person is running on minimal food and sleep. The hours-long trek reflects the course’s demanding nature and relentless bodily strain.

“The biggest difference between a student on day one and the last day is the physical toll the environment took on them,” Eagen said, adding, “[I] haven’t yet seen a student that didn’t lose double digits in weight. They are excessively skinny by graduation.”

Representatives of Canada, Croatia, Egypt, Japan, Kuwait, Morocco, Albania and Panama signed a statement of intent to join the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Marketplace during a ceremony Tuesday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Retired Gen. Robert Brown, president and CEO of AUSA, said that the signing brought the total number of participating nations to 33. The marketplace was launched in March 2026 with nine European signers and continues to grow across regional allies and partners.

“With today’s signing, the marketplace is now truly a global effort,” said Brent Ingraham, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. “It’s not a concept or a pilot program or some distant future. It is live.”

Since the marketplace was stood up, it has processed $800 million in transactions.

More recently, the Army awarded counter-UAS contract vehicles worth $7 billion through the marketplace, Ingraham said. The Army also operates a C-UAS Marketplace developed and operated by the Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401) for digital procurement of counter-drone systems.

The initiative comes in response to a rapidly evolving drone threat in which inexpensive drones have forced U.S. and allied militaries to answer with expensive missiles, Ingraham said. He emphasized a collaborative approach with partners and layered drone defense, including sensors, command and control, electronic warfare, interceptors, directed energy and rapid adaptation.

“There is no silver bullet,” Ingraham said. “None of us can do it alone.”

The marketplace is intended to deliver validated commercial capability to U.S. and partner forces at speed. Soldiers can browse and purchase UAS equipment based on specific tactical needs, evaluate system performance data and provide operator feedback.

The digital platform operates as a government-to-government framework to create a “fast lane” for foreign military sales of equipment that has been pre-vetted for cybersecurity and exportability, according to Ingraham.

Acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle, who attended the signing ceremony, said the drone marketplace was “connecting soldiers directly with builders and removing the bureaucratic middlemen.” Telle’s comments follow a Monday address to AUSA where he touted Army efforts to streamline acquisition.

The acting secretary further emphasized that the global drone marketplace builds on the Army’s demand for open architecture systems.

Telle said the Army needs to elevate open architectures beyond the tactical systems to “the strategic level,” saying the drone marketplace is a “great step forward” in sharing tactics, techniques, procedures and equipment with partners.

The soldiers, drawn from across the force, voluntarily applied and were selected to reclassify as MOS 40D Tactical Space Operations Specialists, the Army said.

“We had nearly 3,000 soldiers apply, and selected over 600 of the most capable, professional soldiers in the Army,” Command Sgt. Maj. Rickey Jackson, command sergeant major of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said in the release. “We drew talent from Military Intelligence, Air Defense Artillery and the Signal Corps, but the 40D MOS is open for anyone to apply.

“Ultimately, we are looking for soldiers who master their current jobs and consistently stand apart from their peers.”

The Army announced in January that it was opening applications for the specialty to soldiers in grades E-4 through E-9 across the active-duty Army, National Guard and Army Reserve.

Previously, the service temporarily pulled soldiers from other specialties to help with space operations. However, the soldiers’ experience was often lost when they returned to their original branches.

“For too long, enlisted soldiers with specialized space training and experience rotated through critical space assignments, eventually returning to their basic branches,” Lt. Gen. John L. Rafferty, commanding general of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said in a separate release. “The rotational system served the U.S. Army well in the past but will not meet the demands of the future, which requires a professional and sustainable approach to training, career progression and leader development for Army Space soldiers.

The Army’s Space Operations Branch was officially established in June, bringing together the newly-created enlisted occupational specialty and functional area 40As, the Army’s Space Operations Officers. Though 40As have been part of the force since 1999, they have not had enlisted peers until now.

The newly minted Tactical Space Operations Specialists will receive training at the Space and Missile Defense Center of Excellence in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

“Our space operations soldiers bring unmatched value to the Army and joint force because of the education and training they receive to execute space integration and interdiction missions — specifically counter-SATCOM, stratospheric warfare, navigation warfare and counter-sensing,” Col. Felix Torres, commandant of the Space and Missile Defense Center of Excellence, said in the release.

Space systems, the Army said, help soldiers with navigation, weather, communication and early warnings.

Soldiers in the 1st Space Brigade, the Army’s only singularly-focused space unit, have theater missile warning capabilities and long-distance satellite communications, for example.

Operation Jailbreak, which began in May and concluded in late August, staged two major events that brought contractors, operational units and Army technical experts together to fast-track the future of unmanned tactical networks.

“The completed effort dismantled longstanding system silos, proving that autonomous platforms, sensors, weapons, and command-and-control (C2) technologies can exchange real-time data seamlessly across disparate vendors,” the Army said after the final initiative concluded.

The first three-week event began in May, bringing 600 people and 50 defense companies to Fort Carson, Colorado.

Former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said the idea for the initiative came after he traveled with then-U.S. Army Europe and Africa Commander Gen. Christopher Donahue to allied training sites in Germany to observe how Ukrainians integrated drones, sensors and shooting platforms onto a single network.

Driscoll resigned on Aug. 31, after allegedly butting heads with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Donahue unexpectedly relinquished command of U.S. Army Europe and Africa in July and retired in August.

Driscoll and Donahue observed Ukrainian military utilizing one network that allowed different systems and technologies to exchange data and information without any software barrier.

This, in turn, sped up the ability to identify and destroy targets.

Within 30 days of the first Operation Jailbreak event at Fort Carson, the Army began fielding system integrations with service members in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility.

Alex Miller, the Army’s chief technology officer for Operation Jailbreak, lauded the strides in technology by describing a nightmare hypothetical involving everyday power adapters for civilians.

“Imagine if every accessory you have—light bulbs, toasters, TVs—had a different way to connect,” Miller said at a May 28 media roundtable. “You couldn’t just plug the light bulb in; you had to go find a special cord to plug it into the wall.”

Miller likened the scenario to the siloed information exhanges, explaining that it placed too much pressure on soldiers to act as the adapter and said communication between unmanned machines could change that.

The second and final exercise, Operation Jailbreak Falcon Fury, concluded on Aug. 28 in Tampa, Florida, after a several-week sprint that began on July 27. Seventy companies utilized more than 150 pieces of technology.

Major defense contractors took part, including Epirus, which showcased how its Leonidas high-powered microwave system, which melts drones, could integrate into a wide command-and-control network that hosts other autonomous systems.

Despite massive technological shifts, that paradigm still holds, which is why the U.S. Army and Navy have teamed up to keep systems operational — even in the extreme cold of the Arctic.

As the Department of Defense eyes greater operability in the far north, these low temperatures can wreak havoc on equipment and machinery (and toilets), with ice becoming enemy No. 1.

Which is why the Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center, or NAVFAC EXWC, and the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, or CRREL, began working with both branches to field a rapidly deployable Triple Container rigid-wall shelter system usable in temperatures as low as -50 degrees Fahrenheit.

The already fielded version can operate in temperatures as low as -15 degrees Fahrenheit. The team focused on different configurations of thermal wrappings, insulation and other components to ensure that parts of the kit’s components that are particularly vulnerable to cracking and freezing — hoses, valves, bladders and pumps — were able to withstand the greater threshold for cold, according to a recent Army release.

The result, per the release, far exceeded the objectives, with the TRICON-based system staying operational down to -65 degrees Fahrenheit.

Testing took place in CRREL’s New Hampshire-based Extreme Cold Chamber, a 288-square-foot cold room capable of reaching temperatures as low as -90 degrees Fahrenheit, per the release. While military units typically have to wait until the Alaskan winter reaches its peak to simulate similar conditions, the controlled environment allowed the research team to create conditions similar to those of the real world.

“Our armed forces live and operate in extremely cold and difficult conditions, so having these facilities operational is important for their physical and mental health while serving in the Arctic and other high-north environments,” said Dr. Dan Tague, a research chemist at CRREL, one of seven U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center laboratories.

In 2024, the DoD released its “Arctic Strategy,” citing “Major geopolitical changes are driving the need for this new strategic approach to the Arctic, including Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the accession of Finland and Sweden to the NATO Alliance, increasing collaboration between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia, and the accelerating impacts of climate change.”

The region, according to the report, had become “a venue for strategic competition,” and a space where the United States intends to build a more persistent presence.

The latest successes with TRICORN-based systems provide, beyond the obvious comforts for personnel stationed in the Arctic — Toilets! Laundry! Showers! — an expanded operational footprint for the U.S. military as a whole, according to James Pilkington, a project manager in NAVFAC EXWC Expeditionary Technical Department.

“This extends the operational range of base camps in terms of geographic locations and durations,” said Pilkington. “In turn [it] extend[s] force posture.”

The test, or Neurocognitive Assessment Tool, is computer-based and records neurological activity, such as attention, concentration, reaction time, memory, processing speed and decision-making. Testing started in 2024 in response to reports about the effects that routine weapons training can have on the brain, including traumatic brain injury.

Active-duty, National Guard and Reserve soldiers in high-risk military occupational specialties, including combat engineers and explosive ordnance technicians, as well as troops operating heavy weapons systems, must take the assessment every year, starting soon after they enlist. All other soldiers are required to test every three years.

Medical professionals use the data to monitor service members’ cognitive health throughout their military careers, allowing them to spot significant changes, including potential brain injuries.

“[The NCAT] is an important part of taking care of soldiers, but what this does is, it sets a baseline for reaction times and for memory,” Jordan Gillis, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment, said in a release. “By establishing a baseline for all soldiers, we’re able to monitor brain health, as well as … let medical providers help with treatment, if required.”

According to the Sept. 30 release, the Army is expected to publish a directive about the Neurocognitive Assessment Tool and a broader overpressure program, which includes hazard assessment, exposure tracking, risk mitigation, cognitive monitoring, information management, illness and injury reporting and training and education.

“The takeaway is we are trying to take care of soldiers and monitor their health,” Gillis said. “And if there is an impact, we’ll be able to treat them.”

Reaching the milestone of 97% of soldiers being tested on the NCAT “demonstrates our commitment to cognitive safety, medical readiness and warfighting capability,” Gillis added.

The announcement of the milestone came just one month after the Government Accountability Office released the findings of its investigation into the ability of military services to provide the baseline cognitive assessments. Across the services, the Defense Department is hampered by staff shortages and a lack of technology needed to conduct the assessments, the GAO found.

The Pentagon announced in April that it will begin a one-year pilot program to test a new cognitive assessment tool, an app that service members can use to complete assessments. DoD officials said the app will be less resource-intensive than current assessments and will help improve the services’ ability to track exposures.

But according to the head of U.S. Army Recruiting Command, the new soldiers struggled to hold up their end of the deal.

The service’s decades-old Hometown Recruiter Assistance Program has been suspended, Lt. Gen. Johnny Davis confirmed at a forum hosted by the Association of the United States Army.

And while he said it’s being “looked at” for possible next steps, he also described the built-in problems keeping the service from getting its money’s worth.

“I would tell you, when the program was initiated and really delivered to the Army years ago and executed, that we had some good return on investment — about, you know, one or two percent,” Davis said in response to a question at the forum.

“But, bottom line, what we’ve learned over the years is that 20, 30,000 young superstars, when they were headed back home, were good; they got to go home,” he added. “But they weren’t really working with the recruiters as much as we wanted them to.”

Davis said leaders understood the “human element” of what was happening, in that new graduates were eager to reconnect with family and friends in what amounted to additional uncharged leave. But, he added, the Army had to consider what it was getting out of the arrangement.

Likewise, he said, the Army has in the past allowed National Guard and Reserve soldiers to return home for non-charged leave during the holiday break known as the Christmas Exodus on the understanding that they would support Army recruiting as ambassadors during that time.

“During that Christmas holiday, was there a lot of recruiters in the recruiting stations working with them? No,” Davis said. “So we’re really thinking through: is this return on investment, and is it worth the cost to the Army? Or can we take those funds and spend them in other ways to help our men and women.”

Davis said leaders were now “looking at other ways” to help soldiers get coveted hometown leave apart from the hometown recruiting program.

Army recruiting social media pages began discussing the suspension of the Hometown Recruiter Assistance Program in January, though the service has not publicly addressed the move until now.

HRAP dates to the 1980s. In its most recent form, soldiers had to be selected and approved for the program by a company commander.

In a 2022 Army news release, a recruiting center station commander in Missouri, Staff Sgt. Colton Dunbar, said the success of the program came down to “how the soldiers are leveraged.”

“We try to get the most out of them while they’re here by bringing them to the high school where they graduated and their communities to show everyone that this person was in your community six months ago as a civilian, but look at them now,” he said in the release. ”It helps to break down any barriers because they know that person in uniform — it helps show we are people just like everybody else.”

But from early on in the program, a lack of success metrics and specific service requirements have limited HRAP’s success.

A 1983 study from the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences found that it was hard to evaluate the usefulness of program participants, because it was hard to track their impact outside of foot traffic to the recruiting office.

It also suggested, though, that there were nevertheless non-quantifiable benefits to having new soldiers present and visible in their hometown.

“Aides are credited for individuals they brought to the recruiter who subsequently enlist, but the total effect of the aide’s efforts is more subtle than the sum of their recruits,” the study found. “For example, aides can ‘plant seeds’ or lay the groundwork months in advance of an enlistment decision and receive no credit for an enlistment that occurs months after his or her departure.”

The Army hasn’t said when it will make final decisions on the way forward for HRAP.