The Iranian-flagged M/V Touska was transiting the north Arabian Sea toward Bandar Abbas, Iran, when it was intercepted by the guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance and issued warnings that it was in violation of the blockade, U.S. Central Command announced on Sunday.

“After Touska’s crew failed to comply with repeated warnings over a six-hour period, Spruance directed the vessel to evacuate its engine room,” the CENTCOM release stated. “Spruance disabled Touska’s propulsion by firing several rounds from the destroyer’s 5-inch MK 45 Gun into Touska’s engine room.”

U.S. Central Command published a brief video of the encounter.

U.S. Marines assigned to the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit subsequently boarded the vessel, the release stated. The Touska remains in U.S. custody.

Acknowledging the encounter in a post on Truth Social, U.S. President Donald Trump stated that “an Iranian-flagged cargo ship named TOUSKA, nearly 900 feet long and weighing almost as much as an aircraft carrier, tried to get past our Naval Blockade, and it did not go well for them.”

“The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom,” Trump added. “The TOUSKA is under U.S. Treasury Sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity. We have full custody of the ship, and are seeing what’s on board!”

The U.S. Navy blockade, which involves 10,000 troops, over a dozen warships and more than 100 fighter and surveillance aircraft, went into effect on April 13 following failed peace talks between the U.S. and Iran.

Any vessels transiting to and from Iranian ports are subject to the blockade, CENTCOM officials stated, while ships not visiting Iranian ports can still navigate the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran, meanwhile, said it would retaliate for Sunday’s incident, as tensions continued to escalate Sunday amid a fragile ceasefire.

“We warn that the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran will soon respond and retaliate against this armed piracy by the U.S. military,” an Iranian military spokesperson said, according to state media.

Iranian state media also reported that Tehran had rejected new peace talks, citing the ongoing blockade, threatening rhetoric and Washington’s shifting positions and “excessive demands.”

“One cannot restrict Iran’s oil exports while expecting free security for others. The choice is clear: either a free oil market for all, or the risk of significant costs for everyone,” Iran’s First Vice President Mohammadreza Aref wrote on social media.

U.S. forces have encountered and redirected 25 commercial vessels since launching the blockade, according to CENTCOM.

Military Times reporter Riley Ceder and Reuters reporters Daphne Psaledakis, Trevor Hunnicutt and Saad Sayeed contributed to this report.

When the media finally reported they had been brought to safety, many breathed a collective sigh of relief — and our attention quickly zeroed in on the cinematic details of the daring rescue operation.

But there’s a layer to this story we need to unpack before the news cycle moves on. Because this rescue mission carried extra desperation, extra urgency.

Our downed service members were in even more danger than they needed to be — and it’s all because America’s topmost military leadership made it that way.

I’m the spouse of an active-duty service member, leading a nonpartisan organization of military family members stationed all across the globe. Our community comprises families from all different branches, ranks, and backgrounds — including, most relevant to this story, the family members of aviators.

Many pilots and air crew members carry something on their person called a “blood chit.” It’s a panel stitched to the inside of their flight jacket, translated into multiple languages, which says:

“I am an American. I do not speak your language. Misfortune forces me to seek your assistance … please take me to someone who will provide for my safety and see that I am returned to my people.”

Rules of engagement exist in war for a reason.

They minimize harm to the unarmed. They ensure baseline humanity, in what is otherwise a tragic fog of violence. They’re not rules we unilaterally abide by just to be nice — they’re rules we rely on in return.

When a pilot deploys on a mission, and their spouse or child hugs them goodbye, this panel serves as a literal, physical reminder of the international norms meant to bring our service member home safely. It’s a promise we can feel.

When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth indulges in brash chest-thumping rhetoric — like saying our military will provide “no quarter,” “no mercy” to unarmed surrenders — it’s morally wrong (and frankly, embarrassing) for all the reasons many pundits have already said.

It’s also profoundly destabilizing for actively-serving military families. Because the military is an inherently dangerous job. Our military’s leadership is supposed to look out for the wellbeing of our service members, minimizing as much unnecessary risk to their safety as possible. Yet now, our leaders are doing the exact opposite — eroding the very foundations that safety is built upon.

Physical injury isn’t our only concern, either. Service members also encounter high risks of moral injury when the missions they’re sent to carry out are ambiguous or unjust, and when the actions they’re called to carry out diverge from what we know as right and decent.

Some injuries like these may take years to surface, but as family members of those who serve, we’re always the ones who end up shouldering the care-taking responsibility when they do.

We only call wars “endless” or “forever” if the fighting lasts longer than the public can stomach. But every war is a forever war for the families they impact.

One of the first details we learned from photos of the plane’s wreckage was that it had flown out of RAF Lakenheath in the United Kingdom. My family is currently stationed down the country road from that installation. While every military family knows what it’s like to see themselves reflected in news around war, that was especially true for my local community here.

It is imperative that our military’s highest civilian leaders restore our families’ confidence that rules of engagement will be honored by those who wear the uniform. Our loved ones’ safety depends on it.

Sarah Streyder is the executive director of the nonprofit Secure Families Initiative and the spouse of an active-duty service member currently stationed overseas.

Close drew on his own family to find the character. His cousin served multiple tours in Kandahar, Afghanistan, as a special forces member, and one conversation stuck with him.

“He said he had to go back on his third tour because he didn’t feel safe at home,” Close told Military Times. “He felt more comfortable being in situations like Kandahar because he knew who the people were around him. He knew how to behave.”

That kind of detail is exactly what writer-director Aaron Davidman was after. A first-time feature director, Davidman spent years traveling the country talking to people about guns, violence and the cost of military service before writing the script.

A conversation with a former Army captain who served in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than a decade became the seed of the story.

“He just impressed me with the real layered, nuanced, complex relationship to service, firearms, healing, reintegration,” Davidman said. “I decided to focus a story on a guy like that. What would it be like to follow a trained warrior and a reintegration through their eyes, through the experience of the veteran?”

The result is a film that resists the chest-pounding war movie template.

Slinger comes home from Afghanistan wounded and estranged from his young son, adrift in a country he trained to protect but no longer recognizes himself in. The film examines how, for some veterans, post-traumatic stress disorder and reintegration grief don’t manifest dramatically, but instead quietly erode a person from the inside.

Co-stars Joanne Kelly and Gilbert Owuor round out the film’s central trio, each character at a different point on the road back. Owuor said the dynamic mirrored something true about group identity and the loneliness that can live inside it.

“When you look closer and start to examine the different members in the group, you realize that even for them, that can start to break down depending on where you are in the journey,” he said. “And I think that’s a very scary place to find yourself.”

Kelly drew on her own family, as well, including a cousin who deployed four times to Afghanistan as a nurse. The preparation opened a conversation between them that had never happened before.

“I think it was one of the things I love about this job, the constant learning about humans, about different lives,” Kelly said.

Davidman has partnered with impact agency Picture Motion to build post-screening discussions into the release. It’s a deliberate response to the isolation the film depicts, and to a broader cultural moment the filmmakers believe demands a quieter kind of conversation than the one usually surrounding guns and military service.

“We’re not holding a screening, we’re convening,” he said.

For Davidman, the most revealing research didn’t come from one-on-one interviews but from watching veterans talk to each other.

“Watching these brothers and sisters share their stories, and they may not have even served at the same time or in the same branches, but there was a shorthand that was so informative,” he said.

That earned specificity shows on screen. “American Solitaire” doesn’t reduce its protagonist to a symbol. Slinger is a man trying to figure out who he is once the structure that defined him is gone, a challenge researchers and clinicians have long identified as among the hardest parts of coming home.

“I hope that people feel there is an accurate portrayal of veterans and of three-dimensional human beings going through real experiences,” Close said, “and that they can relate and feel less alone.”

“American Solitaire” opens in select theaters Friday and is coming to VOD at a future date. More information at americansolitairefilm.com.

Representatives from specialty courts and veterans’ legal organizations pressed Congress Wednesday for expansion of the Veterans Treatment Courts system and reinstatement of some Veterans Affairs benefits for imprisoned former service members.

They argued that while not all veterans convicted of serious crimes would benefit, those with other-than-honorable discharges or service-connected mental health or substance use disorders should have opportunities to change their lives.

Corey Schramm, an Army veteran who developed post-traumatic stress disorder after three deployments to Iraq and later was arrested following a blackout that involved a weapon, said a Kansas Veterans Treatment Court, where he underwent two years of treatment and mentorship, saved his family.

“I was on and off probation before I went to Veterans Treatment Court, and when I showed up, I thought I was going to play the system, go through the motions. Boy was I ever wrong. … VTC is not a shortcut,” Schramm said during a hearing Wednesday before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

The first Veteran Treatment Court was established in 2008 in Buffalo, New York, to provide medical treatment, supervision and mentorship to former service members with non-violent criminal convictions related to service-connected addiction or mental health conditions.

Today there are more than 600, and the Department of Veterans Affairs employs hundreds of Veterans Justice Officers to support veterans in jails or who are on parole, probation or in the court system.

But many veterans remain unaware of programs tailored to them or lack access to available services because they were discharged from the military with general or other than honorable discharges, rendering them ineligible for many Veterans Affairs programs and benefits.

Others may have lost access to their VA benefits when they were sentenced, since disability compensation is reduced when a veteran is convicted of a felony and incarcerated for more than 60 days and VA health care benefits stop when they enter a prison health system.

Rose Carmen Goldberg, director of the Veterans Clinic at the University of Washington School of Law, argued that incarcerated veterans should have access to VA behavioral health care, which provides expertise in combat-related mental health issues, sexual trauma or other service-specific concerns.

“Access to VA mental healthcare can literally be lifesaving. Veterans with a less-than-honorable discharge who are unable to access VA mental healthcare have a significantly elevated risk of suicide, a difference that disappears if they gain access,” she said.

Goldberg proposed that imprisoned veterans have access to VA services through telehealth and she supports a bill, the “Get Justice-Involved Veterans Behavioral Assistance and Care for Key Health Outcomes to Maintain Empowerment Act,” sponsored by Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, and Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., that would do that.

“VA-furnished mental healthcare is critical because it is more effective than private sector care,” Goldberg said.

Another key to improving outcomes for veterans who leave the service is reforming the Defense Department’s Transition Assistance Program, which several panelists argued was ineffective for preparing service members for non-military life, the panelists said.

According to retired Army Brig. Gen. David “Mac” MacEwen, director of the Veterans Justice Commission at the Council on Criminal Justice, the Defense Department spends billions on recruiting and training but just millions per year on TAP.

A commission found that TAP did not prepare 44% of its attendees for transition and 22% of transitioning service members never attended.

“The result is a fragmented and under-resourced system that leaves too many service members ill-prepared for civilian life. This lack of preparation increases their vulnerability to involvement in the criminal justice system,” MacEwen said.

Committee Chairman Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., conducted the hearing to better understand how to help veterans in judicial system and prevent them from entering it in the first place.

Moran sponsored a bill that was approved in January to fully fund Veterans Treatment Courts and provided $4 million to establish a National Center for Veterans Justice.

“We need to make sure that veterans who carry scars, with wounds — visible and invisible — are not forgotten,” Moran said.

Yet many jurisdictions do not have a veterans treatment court or those in law enforcement or the court system aren’t aware of these programs. Former Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Lawton Nuss, a former Marine, said more courts are needed, noting that in Kansas, of the 89 veterans who have graduated in the past decade from the VTC program, just five have later been arrested, a 95% success rate.

According to Nuss, one of the first graduates from the Johnson County VTC was a combat veteran who told him he would “have been better off being killed in Afghanistan instead of coming home and being arrested for committing a violent crime.”

“He described his shame to me [as], ‘I went from hero to villain,’” Nuss said. “This justice-involved veteran suffered from unhealed PTSD. As has been said about such veterans, the painful paradox is that fighting for one’s country can render one unfit to be its citizen.”

The panelists also pressed for changes to the GI Bill that allow more veterans to access education benefits. According to MacEwen, the original GI Bill called for all veterans except those who received dishonorable discharges to receive education benefits.

MacEwen said that since the original language for the GI Bill was written in 1944, the VA has changed eligibility requirements.

“Congress explicitly wrote that individuals who were not discharged under dishonorable conditions should be eligible for VA care and benefits. However, the VA’s implementation has not aligned with this plain text, resulting in the unlawful denial of services to hundreds of thousands of veterans with other than honorable discharges,” MacEwen said.

Moran said he believes the VA and Defense Department must improve services for transitioning veterans but community organizations are vital to supporting veterans as well.

“All of our witnesses provide examples of why we work to support veterans when they transition out of the military, and the value they add to our communities and our country after their service when that transition goes well,” Moran said.

A global outage across Elon Musk’s satellite network affecting millions of Starlink users had left two dozen unmanned surface vessels bobbing off the California coast, disrupting communications and halting operations for almost an hour.

The incident, which involved drones intended to bolster U.S. military options in a conflict with China, was one of several Navy test disruptions linked to SpaceX’s Starlink that left operators unable to connect with autonomous boats, according to internal Navy documents reviewed by Reuters and a person familiar with the matter.

As SpaceX rockets toward a $2 trillion public offering this summer – expected to be the largest ever – the company has secured its position as the world’s most valuable space company in part by being indispensable to the U.S. government with an array of technologies spanning satellite communications to space launches and military AI.

Starlink, in particular, has proved key to crucial programs - from drones to missile tracking - with a low-earth orbit constellation of close to 10,000 satellites, a scale that provides the military with a network resilient against potential adversary attacks.

But the Navy’s mishaps with Starlink for its autonomous drone program, which have not been previously reported, highlight the challenges of the U.S. military’s growing reliance on SpaceX and the risks it brings to the Pentagon.

“If there was no Starlink, the U.S. government wouldn’t have access to a global constellation of low earth orbit communications,” said Clayton Swope, a deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Pentagon did not respond to questions about the drone test or SpaceX’s work with the Navy. The Pentagon’s chief information officer, Kirsten Davies, said the “Department leverages multiple, robust, resilient systems for its broad network.”

The Navy and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

Despite facing growing competition from Amazon.com, which announced an $11.6 billion agreement this week to acquire satellite maker Globalstar, SpaceX remains far ahead in low-earth orbit communications.

Beyond drones, SpaceX has cemented a near-monopoly for space launches and provides satellite communications with Starlink and its national security-focused constellation, Starshield, generating billions of dollars for the company.

Last month, U.S. Space Force said it had reassigned its upcoming GPS launch to a SpaceX rocket for the fourth time, due to a glitch in the Vulcan rocket made by the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance.

WARNINGS ABOUT RELYING ON SPACEX

Democratic lawmakers have warned the Pentagon about the risks of its reliance on a single company led by the world’s richest man to deliver crucial national security capabilities. More recently, the Defense Department’s disagreements and blacklisting of AI startup Anthropic quickly revealed how an over-reliance on one AI vendor could create problems should that vendor be dropped.

Reuters reported last year that Musk unexpectedly switched off Starlink access to Ukrainian troops as they sought to retake territory from Russia, denting allies’ trust in the billionaire.

In Taiwan, SpaceX faced criticism over concerns it was withholding satellite communications to U.S. service members based there, “possibly in breach of SpaceX’s contractual obligations with the U.S. government,” according to a 2024 letter sent by then-U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher to Musk, reported by Forbes at the time. SpaceX disputed the claim in a post on X.

Reuters could not determine whether SpaceX has since provided Starlink service in Taiwan to U.S. service members. The Pentagon and SpaceX did not respond to questions about Taiwan.

“As a matter of operational security, we do not comment on or discuss plans, operations capabilities or effects,” an official said in a statement.

STARLINK ‘EXPOSED LIMITATIONS’

SpaceX’s Starlink broadband has been crucial to the Pentagon’s drone program, providing connection to small unmanned maritime vessels that look like speedboats without seats, and include those made by Maryland-based BlackSea and Austin, Texas-based Saronic.

In April 2025, during a series of Navy tests in California involving unmanned boats and flying drones, officials reported that Starlink struggled to provide a solid network connection due to the high data usage needed to control multiple systems, according to a Navy safety report of the tests reviewed by Reuters.

“Starlink reliance exposed limitations under multiple-vehicle load,” the report stated. The report also faulted issues linked to radios provided by Silvus and a network system provided by Viasat.

In the weeks leading up to the global Starlink outage in August, another series of Navy tests was disrupted by intermittent connection issues with the Starlink network, Navy documents reviewed by Reuters show. The causes of the network losses were not immediately clear.

Despite the setbacks, the upside of Starlink – a cheap and commercially available service – outweighs the risk of a potential outage disrupting future military operations, said Bryan Clark, an autonomous warfare expert at the Hudson Institute.

“You accept those vulnerabilities because of the benefits you get from the ubiquity it provides,” he said.

Ferencz, who died in 2023 at the age of 103, was just 27 with no previous trial experience when he became chief prosecutor in one of the most significant murder trials in history.

While Congress voted to bestow the medal to Ferencz in 2022, his family members were on hand to posthumously receive the honor this week during the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual Days of Remembrance commemoration at the U.S. Capitol.

“Mr. Ferencz was a tremendous force for good, a fierce New Yorker with a heart of gold and a backbone of steel, a man who saw the worst of humanity and spent the better part of a century fighting for the best of it,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., during the ceremony.

“He came face-to-face with evil, recalling the fact that he had quote, peered ‘into hell,’” Gillibrand continued. “A lesser person might have looked away. But Ben Ferencz looked harder.”

Born in Transylvania in 1920, Ferencz, who was the last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials, emigrated with his family to the United States when he was an infant to escape anti-Jewish pogroms.

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1943, Ferencz enlisted in the U.S. Army and was given the job of anti-aircraft artillery gunner.

“In their typical [Army] brilliance, being a Harvard Law School graduate and an expert on war crimes, they assigned me to clean the latrines in the artillery and do every other filthy thing they could give me,” Ferencz reminisced about the Army’s odd job placement in a 2016 interview with The Washington Post.

The outspoken Ferencz, who barely registered over five feet tall, eventually rose to the rank of sergeant as a member of Gen. George Patton’s Third Army. Action during the Normandy invasion followed, as did breaking through the Maginot and Siegfried lines, crossing the Rhine and bitter fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.

After Ferencz’s honorable discharge in 1945, Gen. Telford Taylor, then the chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials, recruited Ferencz to return to Germany and work with a team of investigators tasked with uncovering the horrors of the Nazi regime.

Tasked with gathering credible evidence of Nazi war crimes for the Army’s War Crimes Branch, Ferencz encountered the depths of human depravity. The Germans maintained meticulous death registries at the camps of Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg and Ebensee. These registries, which Ferencz was ordered to collect, contained the names of millions of victims.

“When I passed the figure of one million, I stopped adding,” he recalled in an interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “That was quite enough for me.”

It was there that Ferencz and his colleagues discovered the dossiers of the Nazi mobile death squads, the Einsatzgruppen — roving extermination squads that targeted Jews, Roma, homosexuals and political dissidents in Eastern Europe. In the subsequent trial, the International Military Tribunal determined that nearly two million Jews were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen.

“Death was their tool and life their toy,” Ferencz told the judge during the opening statement of United States of America v. Otto Ohlendorf et. al. “If these men be immune, then law has lost its meaning, and man must live in fear.”

All 22 men prosecuted by Ferencz were convicted. Most were sentenced to death.

“We’re not ready to come to you with a request. We’re still working on it. We’re working through to figure out what’s needed,” Vought told a hearing of the House of Representatives Budget Committee. “I don’t have a ballpark.”

The cost of the war with Iran, which Trump began alongside Israel on February 28, has remained an open question on Capitol Hill. An initial $200 billion request for additional funding for the war met with stiff opposition in Congress last month.

Vought appeared before the panel to discuss Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2027, with its $500 billion increase in military spending and 10% reduction for non-defense programs.

The request is intended to reflect Republican priorities heading into the November midterm elections, in which Trump’s Republicans hope to retain control over the House of Representatives and the Senate but face growing public concern about the cost of living, energy prices and the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

‘Never passed an audit’

Democrats took issue with Vought’s assertions that healthcare, education and low-income energy assistance programs were marred by fraud.

“I’m so glad you asked about fraud, because you are coming back to ask for a $1.5 trillion budget for the Department of Defense,” Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington state told the budget director. “The Department of Defense is the only federal agency that has never passed an audit ... But you’re not going after any of that.”

Vought said the administration is pursuing “inefficiencies” at the Pentagon.

“I don’t think you’re doing enough,” said Republican Representative Glenn Grothman, who called for a Pentagon audit to be completed before Congress votes on defense spending.

“There is so much arrogance in that agency,” added Grothman, of Wisconsin. “They just say we don’t have to do it on audit. We’re so damn important. We don’t care what Congress thinks.”

Vought promoted Trump’s budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning October 1 as aimed at reducing spending. He promoted Trump’s 2025 tax-cut-and-spending package known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” as an initiative that achieved $2 trillion in mandatory savings through cuts to Medicaid health coverage and food assistance to low-income families.

That bill, which extended 2017 tax cuts, will add $4.7 trillion to U.S. deficits over the next decade, while reduced immigration will add another $500 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Straight face

Representative Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the budget panel’s top Democrat, pointed to forecasts saying the legislation’s healthcare cuts would mean the loss of health coverage for more than 15 million people. Vought said they were able-bodied adults, people in the country illegally or ineligible for benefits.

“You’re going to sit here with a straight face and say they’re all illegals? They were all defrauding the system? That’s actually your position?” Boyle asked.

“Yes,” Vought replied.

Democratic Representative Scott Peters of California pointed out to Vought that the watchdog Government Accountability Office has found the administration illegally withheld billions of dollars allocated for National Institutes of Health grants, public schools and Head Start early education programs nationwide.

“Do you dispute GAO’s findings?” Peters asked.

“Yes. GAO is typically wrong. They’re very partisan,” Vought replied.

GAO disputed that claim.

“That’s not accurate,” spokesperson Sarah Kaczmarek said in an email. “GAO is an independent, nonpartisan agency that Congress has long ⁠relied on ​for fact-based analysis of federal spending and compliance with the law.”

To become law, Trump’s proposed budget needs approval from Congress at a time when Republicans are trying to overcome Democratic opposition to funding for Trump’s immigration crackdown, just months after the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Democrats have already declared the budget proposal dead on arrival, leaving government funding to closed-door negotiations between appropriators.

The defense technology firm introduced the system, known as MAYHEM 10, which expands upon its Switchblade family.

The Army in February announced a $186 million purchase that includes two variants of Switchblade one-way attack, or “kamikaze,” drones: the Switchblade 600 Block 2 variant and the Switchblade 300 Block 20 variant.

The difference is that MAYHEM 10 is multifunctional, meaning it can perform tasks in addition to striking. The new system can carry a 10-pound payload and has a range of over 62 miles, per the release.

The system is capable of 50 minutes of endurance, with a launch assembly that can be done in under five minutes, the statement says. It can also be launched from the air, ground or maritime platforms.

“By integrating advanced autonomy, multi-domain payloads, and rapid adaptability, we empower our forces to sense, disrupt, and strike with precision — even in the most contested environments,” Wahid Nawabi, AeroVironment’s chairman, president and chief executive officer, said in the statement.

Last year, U.S. soldiers tested the Switchblade 600 system, which has a range of 27 miles and is designed to engage a target using onboard cameras.

The Switchblade 300 Block 20, unlike the heavier 600 variant, is small enough to be carried in a backpack. For the first time, according to a February AeroVironment announcement, it will come equipped with an Explosively Formed Penetrator, a deadly warhead that is made to penetrate armored vehicles.

Despite the decline, however, the rate of suicides among military spouses and dependent children has actually risen slightly, the result of a declining population and continued deaths, according to the Defense Department.

According to the DoD’s 2024 Annual Report on Suicide in the Military released last month, 146 military family members, including 98 spouses and 48 dependents, died by suicide in 2023, the same number as the previous year. But the rate — 6 deaths per 100,000 people — rose from 5.8 per 100,000 in 2022 as the number of total family members dropped over the time frame.

Moreover, based on data the DoD received in 2024, the rate has increased steadily since 2011, with a rising rate of suicide among male spouses factoring heavily into the increases. In some years — 2012, 2013, 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2020 — male military spouses had higher suicide rates than the U.S. male population, according to the data.

“Male spouses accounted for nearly two-thirds of suicides among military spouses despite representing a much smaller share of the overall military spouse population (14%). These findings are similar to the U.S. population, which consistently shows ”males are more likely to die by suicide than females,” the report noted.

The Pentagon began publishing data on military family suicide in 2019 as part of a requirement in the fiscal 2015 Carl Levin and Buck McKeon National Defense Authorization Act. Lawmakers expressed concern at the time that no one knew the extent of the problem among military family members.

The data is important because in addition to tracking the deaths, it acknowledges the problem and can influence prevention efforts, explained Carla Stumpf Patton, vice president of suicide prevention and postvention for Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, or TAPS,

“We’re acknowledging the mental health care around family members and dependents, which oftentimes [i]s overlooked,” said Stumpf Patton, whose first husband, Marine Sgt. Richard Stumpf, took his own life in 1994. “There’s so much more emphasis around prevention and education efforts on service members and not enough focus on the family as a system, so the fact that we are [tracking] that is critical.”

According to the report, 98 spouses died by suicide in 2023, including 67 spouses of active-duty personnel, 18 Reserve spouses and 13 National Guard spouses.

More than a third were on active duty themselves in dual military marriages and another quarter were veterans. The findings are significant because both the military and veterans populations have experienced increases in deaths by suicide in the past 25 years coinciding with the decades-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Given differences in population size and demographics, comparing Service member and military spouse suicide rates may be misleading. For example, a majority of male military spouses who died by suicide had a history of military service,” the report noted.

According to the report, 48 dependents died by suicide, including 31 who were under age 18. Seventeen of those deaths were ages 18 to 22. The latter group is notable, according to the report authors, because although that age group makes up just 7% of the dependent population, it accounted for 35% of the suicide deaths among dependents.

“This finding aligns with U.S. population trends, as suicide rates are typically higher among young adults,” the report stated.

The report contains data for 2023, the most recent year that information is available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That same year, the suicide rate for the U.S. general population was per 14.1 per 100,000, more than twice the military family rate, according to the CDC.

The report also found:

• Firearms were used in nearly 70% of the suicide deaths of military spouses, while asphyxiation or hangings accounted for 44% of dependent deaths, followed by firearms.
• 81% of the spouses were under age 40.
• More than 60% of military dependents who died by suicide were male.
• Suicides declined for military dependents, falling from 53 in 2022 to 48 in 2023, a rate of 3.5 suicides per 100,000 in 2022 to 3.2 per 100,000 in 2023.

The authors also noted the unique aspects of military life that have an impact on children’s mental health.

“Military dependents face their own unique life experiences such as the stress of having to change schools every few years or the worry that comes with a parent being deployed. The impact of these stressors may vary with age,” they wrote.

Stumpf Patton noted that while the numbers are specific and drawn from state and federal resources, they may not show the entire picture of military family suicide because often suicides are not recorded accurately on death certificates or another cause of death may be listed.

The DoD and the military services have implemented numerous programs to prevent suicide among military members and promote the self-storage of firearms, mental health treatment and spouse employment to address issues in military families that could lead to self-harm.

Stumpf Patton said the DoD has taken tremendous steps in the past two decades to support service members and families affected by suicide.

She added, however, that even with resources available, the community needs to continue to reduce risk, increase safety and foster a sense of community to support military families.

“Access to quality care, making sure we can increase support systems, making sure that it’s known to military family members that the services are there, that they can trust in those services [and] that they are not alone” are important, Stumpf Patton said.

TAPS and other organizations that support military families are critical to reducing suicides in the military, she added.

“When we can support all of those after a suicide loss, including the immediate family members, we always are trying to reduce risk and increase safety and ultimately save lives,” she said.

Frank Ross Talbert, most recently with the Army’s Explosives Ordinance Disposal at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was indicted on 21 charges in 2024 after federal agents searched his home and found firearms made from illegally imported parts.

As part of a plea agreement filed with the U.S. District Court, Talbert pleaded guilty to 17 of the charges, including smuggling, possessing an unregistered machine gun and numerous violations of the Arms Export Control Act.

From 2019 to 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol intercepted 16 of the approximately 350 foreign shipments made to Talbert, all of which were suspected to contain firearms or firearm parts, the plea agreement says. In the intercepted packages, CBP agents discovered illegally imported pistol grips, hand guards, buttstocks, sights, muzzle devices, gas tubes and inert rifle grenades, among other parts.

Over the years, Talbert used variations of his name and his wife’s name for the shipments, as well as different locations, in an effort to avoid detection by CBP, according to the plea agreement.

The shipments were made when Talbert was stationed at Fort Hamilton, New York, where he served as an improvised explosive device threat mitigation advisor to the United Nations.

Talbert’s shipments continued while he was stationed at Fort Campbell and residing in Clarksville, Tennessee.

After the seizures by CBP, agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives searched Talbert’s Clarksville home in 2023 and found five firearms made from illegally imported parts, court documents say. They also discovered shipping boxes containing illegally imported equipment from various countries, including Russia, and a work station with “large amounts of shipping supplies indicative of being engaged in the business of dealing without a Federal Firearms License.”

Authorities learned Talbert had a “significant presence” on online forums where members could sell, purchase and discuss firearms.

“Defendant is a high-ranking career member of the military with a sophisticated knowledge of guns,” the plea agreement reads. “His text messages and postings on gun websites indicate defendant understood what he was importing.”

According to the agreement, prosecutors will move to dismiss the remaining four charges against Talbert, which included firearms trafficking, transporting prohibited weapons without a license, dealing in firearms without a license and another charge of possessing an unregistered machine gun.

Talbert’s sentencing hearing is set for Aug. 10.

The name pays homage to the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe — Native American tribes whose members attended the 2026 Army Aviation Warfighting Summit where the new name of the Bell MV-75 tiltrotor aircraft was announced, according to an Army statement.

The naming comes as the Army accelerates the aircraft’s development timeline, pushing to field the new platform years ahead of earlier projections.

Army officials said the name reflects both the aircraft’s intended capabilities and the Cheyenne tribe.

“The Cheyenne tribes represent a resilient warrior culture and embodies the key attributes of the MV-75,” said Brent Ingraham, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, at the Nashville summit.

Created for use in the Pacific theater, the new assault aircraft will be the Army’s first conventional tiltrotor aircraft and is designed to fly at speeds over 300 miles per hour. It can carry up to 14 soldiers and support an external load of up to 10,000 pounds, according to the Army.

The 101st Combat Aviation Brigade out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, is expected to field the new aircraft in 2027.

The name Cheyenne was previously used for another assault aircraft that was developed in the decades before but never entered service, according to the Army Historical Foundation.

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, a Pennsylvania Democrat and former Air Force Officer, has introduced the Women Add Resourcefulness and Resilience to Improve Operational Readiness (WARRIOR) Act, which would prohibit the military services from excluding service members from any “occupational speciality, career field, or assignment” on the basis of sex.

Houlahan was joined by Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a former Army Ranger and paratrooper, and Rep. Maggie Goodlander, D-N.H., a former Naval intelligence officer. Others among the 36 cosponsors include Reps. Gil Cisneros, D-Calif; Pat Ryan, D-N.Y.; Mike Thompson, D-Calif., and Derek Tran, D-Calif. All are military veterans.

The bill, which lacks Republican sponsors, is explicitly described as a response to the Pentagon review and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s comments casting doubt on the ability of women to perform in keeping with established standards in ground combat roles.

“The WARRIOR Act proactively affirms women’s qualifications to serve in combat,” according to a statement from Houlahan’s office. “The legislation amends outdated law from 1996 and 2006 to ensure that women are judged on their skills, performance, and the gender-neutral standards that women in combat are already meeting and exceeding. In so doing, the WARRIOR Act prevents any exclusion of women in our Armed Forces.”

In addition to prohibiting gender-based exclusion from jobs, the bill would require the Secretary of Defense to submit an annual report to the House and Senate Armed Services committees outlining any changes to occupational standards enacted in the previous year, “including a description of how such change predicts performance of actual, regular, and recurring duties of a military occupational specialty.”

The report must also include how many members were involuntarily moved to new jobs or separated from the service “for reasons other than discipline or pursuant to a sentence of a court-martial.”

It includes an 18-month evaluation period to add new job standards, and creates categories designed to ensure that military occupational standards reflect job requirements, separating skill categories into technical, tactical, cognitive and physical.

The bill further calls for the Pentagon to provide the committees with a copy of the combat effectiveness review, which originally was set to be completed by the Institute for Defense Analyses, but was just this month reassigned to Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

According to an NPR analysis, about 4,500 female service members now serve in ground combat roles in the Army and Marine Corps.

The lawmakers rolled out the legislation at the end of March, surrounded by leaders of a range of progressive veterans organizations, including those focused on supporting female and minority veterans.

“Since the founding of our nation, women have proudly and honorably served in defense of our country. This commonsense update to gender-neutral occupational standards reflects what we already know to be true: women are a force multiplier across the military,” Kyleanne Hunter, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said in a released statement.

“As the fastest-growing group of recruits, ensuring women remain eligible to serve in all roles is not only grounded in science — it’s essential to our national security. IAVA is encouraged to see standards that reflect both our nation’s mission and the modern force that serves it,” she concluded.

At this point, there has been no proposal to reverse the military-wide policy that opened up combat roles to women in December 2015. Likewise, it’s not precisely clear how policy will follow Hegseth’s dictum last September that women in combat roles meet “the highest male standard.”

In a separate statement, Crow cited his experiences serving alongside female service members on deployments.

“When I deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, I served alongside badass women who risked their lives to protect our nation,” he said. “Anyone willing to put on the uniform and defend this country deserves our support.”

The move places U.S. forces at the center of a key global shipping route after President Donald Trump on Sunday said the U.S. Navy would blockade the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime corridor through which much of the world’s oil shipments flow.

The blockade began Monday morning and applies to all vessels coming and going from Iranian ports, the command said on social media, adding on Tuesday that six merchant ships had followed orders to turn around. Vessels not engaging with Iranian ports remain free to navigate the Strait of Hormuz.

CENTCOM, the military command responsible for overseeing operations in the Middle East, said the endeavor has also included upwards of 100 fighter and surveillance aircraft. Some other assets involved include guided missile destroyers, unmanned aircraft and a littoral combat ship.

The command confirmed Tuesday in a separate statement that 3,500 sailors and Marines aboard the USS Tripoli were in the Arabian sea as part of the blockade.

The amphibious assault ship arrived in the Middle East in late March.

Defense analysts have warned that enforcing a military blockade could stress the two countries’ brittle ceasefire and push Tehran — or Iran-aligned groups — toward retaliation. A blockade of this scale, experts also said, would be difficult to sustain over a long period of time and could impact energy prices, which in turn may influence the U.S. midterm elections.

Trump on Sunday also said U.S. forces would stop any vessel that paid an Iranian toll, but it is unclear if that pronouncement has been implemented.

The 100-year-old South Carolina native received the National Order of the Legion of Honour on April 9 from Anne-Laure Desjonquères, the French consul general, who noted “Mr. Cook, you are a true hero — your example gives us inspiration for the future and your legacy provides a moral compass for generations to come.”

First established by Napoleon Bonaparte in May 1802, The Order is the highest decoration in France and is divided into five degrees: Chevalier (Knight), Officier (Officer), Commandeur (Commander), Grand Officier (Grand Officer) and Grand Croix (Grand Cross).

Roughly 10,000 Americans have been awarded France’s highest distinction, with most recipients being World War II veterans who played a role in liberating France.

“There is no way that I can even attempt to explain the feeling,” Cook said at the ceremony. “As far as I’m concerned, I am so unworthy. I want to be a representative of the people who didn’t come back. They are the ones who paid the real sacrifice.”

For three years, from 1942 to 1945, daylight bombing runs by the 8th’s Flying Fortresses over Nazi Germany unleashed 697,000 tons of bombs.

Of that total, more than 47,000 were from the 8th.

Of that 47,000, the 379th Bomb Group — of which Cook was a part of — dropped 26,459 tons.

The effort to pry the claws of the Third Reich from Europe was met with deadly resistance, prompting torturous contemplation of one’s own mortality while being confronted with casualty totals that, by war’s end, would exceed 115,000 personnel from the U.S. Army Air Force.

Despite such odds, Cook told the WWII Veterans History Project, “Anytime I got in that plane and we took off, I told myself that I’m coming home. That was my attitude.”

Enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1943, Cook had dreams of becoming a P-38 fighter pilot. However, according to Cook’s account in the WWII Veterans History Project, he washed out of cadet training for what the Army called a “negative attitude regarding military aviation.”

Undeterred, the slender, 138-pound Cook found his way back to aviation, this time as an aerial gunner in the belly of the four-engine bomber.

“To me that was the most comfortable place in the plane. I was accustomed to that. I fit in it pretty good,” Cook told ABC 25 Columbia.

Flying with the of 524th Bomb Squadron, 379th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force out of Kimbolton, England, Cook participated in the bombings of enemy rail yards, airfields, factories, communication centers, synthetic fuel factories, rocket sites and enemy troop concentrations within France, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Holland.

According to the South Carolina legislature, the 379th’s combat record “was the most successful of all the 8th Air Force heavy bomber groups. The unit held records as far as bomb tonnage dropped … and exceeded all other United Kingdom-based Bomb Groups in the total number of missions flown, carrying out 330 missions between May 1943 and May 1945.”

Cook participated in the air cover during the Battle of France, bombing enemy positions from Normandy through the breakout at St. Lo, as well as during the Battle of the Bulge and the Allied assault across the Rhine River into Germany.

“We would bomb just about anything that would disrupt the [German] war effort,” he explained to the Veterans Project.

Cook flew his last mission — his 35th — on Feb. 16, 1945, and was discharged in October of that year. The veteran returned home to Lexington, South Carolina, where he ran a jewelry store for more than 20 years before his retirement in 1983.

“The Lord’s just been good to me,” said Cook at the ceremony last Thursday. “I have really enjoyed life, and I just thank the Lord for what he’s done for me.”

The six-month independent review, commissioned by Undersecretary of Defense Anthony Tata in December, was originally set to be performed by the Institute for Defense Analyses, a Washington, D.C.-area nonprofit that administers three research centers supported by federal funding. The effectiveness study, according to a Pentagon official, was set to kick off with the 10-year anniversary of Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s lifting of the ban on women in ground combat roles at the end of 2015.

This review, the official told Military Times on Monday, is “in line with standard [Department of War] practice for evaluating the effects of significant policy changes.”

But a reevaluation of study requirements has led to a reassignment of the work, the official said.

“The Department has since recognized the need to incorporate combat-relevant field tests, based on established tasks, conditions, and standards, into the independent review to produce the comprehensive data required for this effort,” the official said. “DoW has engaged the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to assume responsibility for the study from IDA, effective April 2026. JHU/APL, a University Affiliated Research Center, has the capability to examine existing personnel and operational data, as well as conduct the field tests, ensuring a unified effort that will further posture our warfighters to meet mission objectives.”

JHU/APL will now complete work over the next 12 months to inform what’s now being called the “Performance, Readiness, and Integrated Mission Effectiveness Assessment,” according to the Pentagon. The assessment will use established analytical techniques “to identify the dominant drivers of combat performance variance in ground combat units and provide evidence-based findings to inform force design, training, physical standards, and readiness decisions,” the official said.

A request for information to JHU/APL for more details on the study and data collection milestones did not receive an immediate response.

Pentagon officials emphasized the long tradition of conducting reviews of policy changes, citing specifically an internal assessment of the 2010 Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal that was conducted in 2021, and reviews by the Pentagon-connected Rand Corporation of the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 and the Blended Retirement System of 2015.

Historically, these analyses have been used to evaluate major changes and their impacts, but have not carried with them the possibility of reopening the matter for potential reversal. It’s not clear that the same considerations are in play here.

In a December memo first reported on by NPR, Tata described the review as gauging “the operational effectiveness of ground combat” elements and the impact of permitting women to enter the roles.

Leaders of the Army and Marine Corps were asked to provide the Institute for Defense Analyses with a broad slate of data ranging from training performance to command climate; and metrics showing individual service members’ readiness to deploy.

An email from Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson at the time also appeared to open the door to changes based on the review, saying the Pentagon “will not compromise standards to satisfy quotas or an ideological agenda — this is common sense.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth expressed opposition to women serving in combat roles in his 2024 book “The War on Warriors,” saying they couldn’t meet the physical requirement and adding, “We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”

His Senate confirmation hearing in 2025 softened the stance. He said then that women would continue to have access to ground combat roles, “given the standards remain high.”

In September, he announced that ground combat jobs would be reserved for those who meet “the highest male standard.”

The Pentagon official said the pending combat effectiveness review, now to be carried out by JHU/APL, showcased the military’s commitment to “continuous learning and improvement.”

“These types of studies enable the Department to maximize our efforts in support of peace through strength,” the Pentagon official said Monday. “The ‘Performance, Readiness, and Integrated Mission Effectiveness Assessment’ is expected to further this tradition, increasing the lethality and readiness of the force.”

Spc. Caleb Godbold and Sgt. Drew Schorsch finished first after completing a host of physical, technical and cognitive tasks at Fort Benning, Georgia, over the last week.

Ranger school is widely viewed as the Army’s premier leadership and small unit tactics course. The monthslong course has a high failure rate and its graduates earn a coveted Ranger tab — worn on the left shoulder sleeve of Army uniforms — that shows the soldier completed the school.

The competition, known formally as The Lt. Gen. David E. Grange Jr. Best Ranger Competition, pits two-man teams of Ranger graduates against each other.

On Sunday, the Army published the final standings for the 61 teams, with 75th Ranger Regiment taking the top three spots.

Godbold and Schorsch faced a gauntlet of events including marksmanship, land navigation and medical tasks while under sleep deprivation and fatigue.

First conceived in 1981 as a “Ranger Olympics,” the Best Ranger Competition began in 1982 at Fort Benning. Initially limited to members of the Ranger community, the competition later expanded to include Ranger-qualified soldiers from across the force.

In 2025, the competition welcomed its first female competitor, 1st Lt. Gabrielle White, who placed 14th with her teammate, Capt. Seth Deltenre.

Female soldiers were not allowed to attend Ranger school until 2015, when the schoolhouse opened to all soldiers, regardless of gender.

Staff Sgt. Tyler Johnson and Sgt. Spencer Harrell took first place at the annual competition, which was last week at Fort Benning, Georgia, becoming only the second Marine Corps team to win the event and the first since 2009.

In a lighthearted nod to the long-running joke about Marines and crayons, the winners posed with a Crayola 24-pack on the trophy, drawing delighted reactions on social media.

Two-man sniper teams from across the United States and partner nations were eligible to participate in the multiday competition, which tests long-range marksmanship, target detection, reconnaissance and reporting, and movement under stealth and concealment, according to the Army.

The experience also serves as a forum for service members to exchange tactics and best practices.

The International Sniper Competition was hosted from April 7-10 as part of the Army’s Infantry Week.

The competition in Georgia differs from the U.S. Army Special Operations Command International Sniper Competition, which was held in North Carolina in March.

The U.S. military is paving the way for the regular deployment of high-energy laser weapons on American soil for air defense amid the expanding threat of low-cost weaponized drones.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Defense Department have reached a “landmark safety agreement” regarding the use of laser weapons to counter unauthorized drones at the US-Mexico border following a safety assessment that concluded such countermeasures “do not pose undue risk to passenger aircraft,” the FAA announced Friday.

The assessment and resulting agreement were the direct result of two laser incidents along the southern border of Texas in February, which prompted the FAA to abruptly close nearby airspace amid concerns over the potential impact on civilian air traffic. The incidents involved the U.S. Army’s 20 kilowatt Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL), a vehicle-mounted version of defense contractor AV’s LOCUST Laser Weapon System.

In the first incident, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol personnel used an AMP-HEL on loan from the Pentagon to engage an unidentified target near Fort Bliss, triggering an airspace shutdown above El Paso on Feb. 11. In the second, U.S. military personnel used an AMP-HEL near Fort Hancock to neutralize a “seemingly threatening” drone that turned out to belong to CBP, spurring another shutdown on Feb. 27.

“Following a thorough, data-informed Safety Risk Assessment, we determined that these systems do not present an increased risk to the flying public,” FAA administrator Bryan Bedford said in a statement. “We will continue working with our interagency partners to ensure the National Airspace System remains safe while addressing emerging drone threats.”

The “first of its kind” safety assessment, conducted in early March by the FAA and the Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401) counter-drone organization at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, reportedly yielded two significant conclusions: 1) the LOCUST’s automatic shutoff mechanism will consistently prohibit the system from firing under unsafe circumstances, a point that AV executives have emphasized in recent weeks, and 2) in the event of a system failure, the laser beam itself cannot inflict catastrophic damage even on aircraft flying at its maximum effective range, let alone those at cruising altitudes.

Here’s how Aaron Westman, AV senior director for business development, described the LOCUST’s safety protocols in a company blog post on March 23:

Every time an operator presses the “fire” button, the system runs through a series of automated checks. Some examples include:

• Is the laser pointing away from protected “keep-out” zones?
• Are all internal subsystems operating within safe parameters?
• Is the system properly locked onto a target?
• Are safety interlock switches engaged?
• Are all software safety checks satisfied?

Each of these checks acts as a safety “vote.”

If any subsystem registers a “no vote,” the laser simply will not fire. An operator can press the trigger — and nothing happens. The system refuses to engage until all conditions are verified as safe.

These automated safeguards are built into both the hardware and the software of the system.

Here’s how DefenseScoop described the LOCUST’s potential effects on passing airframes based on an account from Army Col. Scott McLellan, JIATF-401 deputy director, of the testing at White Sands:

McLellan said the evaluation involved “localized” firing of the AMP-HEL from various distances at the fuselage of a Boeing 767 airliner that testers lugged on to White Sands to assess the system’s damaging effects, “or lack thereof” on aircraft material. He said it aimed to “disprove some myths” about the capability, noting “that energy clearly dissipates over time and space and doesn’t have the effect everyone thinks it does as far as lasers are concerned.”

A JIATF 401 spokesperson said the laser was fired at its “maximum effective range for up to 8 seconds” at the grounded fuselage, “demonstrating that even at full intensity, the laser caused no structural damage to the aircraft.”

As drone warfare spreads beyond distant conflicts, laser weapons are an increasingly attractive domestic countermeasure. While kinetic interceptors and electronic warfare may be considered suitable for chaotic battlefields, their potential for collateral effects makes them far too risky for consistent domestic applications. And even if collateral damage wasn’t a concern, expending expensive missiles on the 1,000 cartel-operated drones that cross the border with Mexico monthly is economically unsustainable, especially for a Pentagon that’s already rapidly burning through munitions as part of Operation Epic Fury against Iran. On paper, the argument seems obvious: Why not save those critical interceptors for high-end threats overseas and let domestic laser emplacements, with their deep magazines and minimal cost-per-shot, pull counter-drone duty at home?

Using laser weapons for domestic air defense wouldn’t be unprecedented. France deployed two 2 kw High Energy Laser for Multiple Applications – Power (HELMA-P) systems to secure the airspace over the country’s Île-de-France region during the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics. This past September, China’s People’s Liberation Army deployed several laser weapons across Beijing during a major military parade marking the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat at the end of World War II. As of January, the U.K. Ministry of Defense was reportedly drawing up plans to build a domestic laser screen, albeit composed of lower-power laser dazzlers, to protect military installations and other critical infrastructure. The Pentagon has even already considered laser weapons to reinforce the airspace above Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s residences at Fort McNair in Washington following a series of unauthorized drone incursions there.

Indeed, there’s a distinct possibility that laser weapons could see increasing domestic applications amid the U.S. military’s growing appetite for novel drone defenses. On April 2, JIATF-401 announced that it had funneled $20 million in counter-drone systems like the Dronebuster EW handset and Smart Shooter computerized riflescope to the U.S.-Mexico border in just four months.

Days later, the task force announced $100 million to enhance counter-drone capabilities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup starting in June “to protect stadiums and fan zones in 11 cities across nine states,” part of larger $600 million surge in counter-drone systems that also allocated $158 million to “defend the nation’s highest-priority defense critical infrastructure.”

With the Pentagon asking for $580 million in R&D funding just for JIATF-401 in its fiscal year 2027 budget request (and potentially $800 million in procurement cash), the task force appears poised to explore any and all possible solutions to the drone problem — and operationally, the FAA-Pentagon safety agreement helps establish laser weapons as a viable option.

That said, the safety agreement on its own is unlikely to open the floodgates for a sudden spate of laser weapon deployments along the U.S.-Mexico border, let alone for major events like the World Cup or critical infrastructure just yet. First, the agreement doesn’t appear to clarify who has final say in authorizing a laser engagement when U.S. military, CBP and FAA jurisdictions overlap — the precise ambiguity that yielded February’s airspace closures and, until resolved, will complicate future engagements during a fast-moving crisis. Second, the U.S. military’s arsenal of operational laser weapons is currently limited despite a stated goal of rapidly fielding new systems at scale within three years. Even with clear plans to surge directed energy research and development for homeland defense under President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome for America” missile shield, the age of sleek beam directors quietly standing watch along the US-Mexico border remains a long way off.

The FAA agreement may end up laying the foundation for a true domestic laser air defense architecture — a “Laser Dome” in all but name. Whether the U.S. military actually builds it, however, will depend not just the Pentagon’s promise to deploy laser weapons at scale, but whether Washington can finally sort out who’s in charge when a beam crosses into civilian airspace.

In the link between distance and ease of aggression, there’s a direct relationship between empathy, physical proximity of the victim and the resultant difficulty and trauma of the kill, according to Lt. Col. Dave Grossman in his 1995 study “On Killing.”

For Vietnam veteran Eugene “Gene” Marion Simmers, a close proximity to death and the actions he wrought haunted him for more than fifty years.

Simmers was drafted soon after he graduated from Granville High School in Ohio in 1966. Serving as a combat medic with Company A, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, Simmers received a Silver Star for heroism after his unit found itself trapped as it approached a booby-trapped bridge over a rice paddy near Mo Duc, Vietnam.

“Upon hearing the explosion,” according to his Army citation, “Specialist Simmers rushed to the front of the company and came under intense sniper fire from scattered positions in the area. After taking momentary cover, he maneuvered through the hostile fire and administered first aid to those wounded in the explosion.

“Despite enemy fire impacting all around him, he moved throughout the area to aid his fellow soldiers. His courageous actions were directly responsible for saving the lives of his comrades.”

When asked about his memory of the incident in 2014 by a local news outlet, the Newark Advocate, Simmers recalled, “I just knew I had seven guys hit, and I had to do whatever I could to keep them alive.”

“War’s a bitch,” Simmers went on. “I was just doing my job, and they gave me a medal for it.”

However, up until his death on Nov. 28, 2022, it was not the lives of those men he saved that stayed with him, but that of an elderly Vietnamese woman he had killed during the war.

While the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death remain unclear, what is evident is the weight of her death on Simmers’ psyche.

The simple etching on his gravestone is short — but poignant. The burden of decades-long grief and trauma:

In memory of the elderly woman I killed in Vietnam.

Forgive me. I’m so sorry.

Gene Simmers

President Donald Trump, in a social media post after no deal emerged from peace talks this weekend in Islamabad, said the U.S. Navy “will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz.”

The U.S. military’s Central Command later said the blockade will only apply to ships going to or from Iran, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. It will take effect on Monday at 10 a.m. in Washington, CENTCOM said.

Trump also said U.S. forces would interdict vessels that have paid tolls to Iran, even if those ships are now in international waters.

“No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The ultimate goal, Trump said, would be to pressure Iran to end its effective closure of the strait, a choke point for about 20% of the world’s oil, to all but the countries that secure safe passage from Tehran.

If Trump’s strategy succeeds, he would eliminate Iran’s greatest point of leverage in negotiations with the United States and clear the strait again for global trade, potentially lowering oil prices. But a blockade, experts say, is an act of war that requires an open-ended commitment of a significant number of warships.

“Trump wants a quick fix. The reality is, this mission is difficult to execute alone and likely unsustainable over the medium to long-term,” said Dana Stroul, a former senior Pentagon official during the Biden administration now at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

IRANIAN RETALIATION

The U.S. military has not offered basic details yet about the blockade, including how many U.S. warships will enforce it, whether warplanes will be used and whether any Gulf allies will assist in the effort. Central Command declined to respond to requests for comment.

With enough warships, the U.S. Navy could set up a blockade that intimidates many commercial tankers from trying to power through with Iranian oil, experts say.

But would the United States be prepared to board and seize — or even damage or sink — ships that try to break the blockade? What if they carry oil for China, a major power, or U.S. partners such as India or South Korea?

And what would Iran do? Retired Adm. Gary Roughead, a former chief of U.S. naval operations, cautioned that Iran could fire on ships in the Gulf or attack infrastructure of the Gulf states that host U.S. forces.

“I honestly believe that if we begin to do it, that Iran will have some kind of a reaction,” Roughead said.

Iran’s threats to shipping have caused global oil prices to skyrocket about 50% since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28.

Trump said on Sunday that the price of oil and gasoline may remain high in the United States through November’s U.S. midterm elections, which could see Trump’s Republicans lose control of the U.S. Congress if there is a public backlash. The war has already been unpopular.

GAS PRICE PROBLEM

Frustrated by Iran’s refusal to end the war on his terms, Trump on Sunday also floated the possibility of a resumption of U.S. strikes inside Iran, citing missile factories as one possibility.

U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, questioned the strategy, noting Iran could send speedboats to mine the strait or put bombs against tankers.

“How is that going to ever bring down gas prices?” Warner asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Thousands of U.S. military strikes have severely weakened Iran’s military. But analysts say Tehran has emerged from the conflict as a vexing problem for Washington, with a more hardline leadership and a buried stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

Trump threatened on Sunday that “any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards responded with a statement warning that military vessels approaching the strait will be considered a ceasefire breach and dealt with harshly and decisively, underlining the risk of a dangerous escalation.

Stroul said the crisis will require a long-term, international effort to resolve.

“Over the long run, this will need to be resolved through diplomacy and international political will,” she said.

Trump also said in a post on Truth Social that the U.S. would interdict every vessel in international waters that had paid a toll to Iran, and begin destroying mines that he said the Iranians had dropped in the strait, a choke point for about 20% of global energy supplies that Iran has blocked.

“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.

“I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” Trump added.

“Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!” he added.

Each side had earlier blamed the other for the failure of talks to end six weeks of fighting that has killed thousands, roiled the global economy and sent oil prices soaring.

“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” Vice President JD Vance, the head of the U.S. delegation at the weekend talks, said earlier.

“We’ve made very clear what our red lines are,” Vance added.

IRAN CITES LACK OF TRUST

Iran’s Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who led his country’s delegation along with Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, blamed the U.S. for not winning Tehran’s trust despite his team offering “forward-looking initiatives.”

“The U.S. has understood Iran’s logic and principles and it’s time for them to decide whether they can earn our trust or not,” Qalibaf said on X.

The talks, after a ceasefire earlier in the week, were the first direct U.S.-Iranian meeting in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Vance said Iran had chosen not to accept American terms, including not to build nuclear weapons.

“I could go into great detail, and talk about much that has been gotten but, there is only one thing that matters — IRAN IS UNWILLING TO GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR AMBITIONS!” Trump said later.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said “excessive” U.S. demands had hindered reaching a deal. Other Iranian media said there was agreement on a number of issues, but the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program were the main points of difference.

‘IMPERATIVE’ TO MAINTAIN CEASEFIRE

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said it was “imperative” to preserve the ceasefire that was agreed last Tuesday as the sides attempt to wind down a war that began on February 28 with air strikes by the U.S. and Israel on Iran.

Israeli security cabinet minister Zeev Elkin told Army Radio that more talks were still an option, but added: “The Iranians are playing with fire.”

In a brief press conference, Vance did not mention reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Even as the talks took place, U.S. ally Israel continued bombing Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, insisting that that conflict was not part of the Iran-U.S. ceasefire. Iran says the fighting in Lebanon must stop.

The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah rocket launchers overnight into Sunday and black smoke could be seen rising in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday. In Israeli villages near the border, air raid sirens sounded, warning of incoming rocket fire from Lebanon.

IRANIAN DEMANDS

Tehran is demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz, payment of war reparations and a ceasefire across the region, including in Lebanon, according to Iranian state TV and officials, as well as the release of its frozen assets abroad.

Tehran also wants to collect transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz.

Despite the differences in Islamabad, three supertankers fully laden with oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, shipping data showed, in what appeared to be the first vessels to exit the Gulf since the ceasefire deal.

Hundreds of tankers are still stuck in the Gulf, waiting to exit during the two-week ceasefire period.

Trump’s stated goals have shifted, but as a minimum he wants free passage for global shipping through the strait and the crippling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program to ensure it cannot produce an atomic bomb.

Tehran has long denied seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

“We’re now starting the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, adding that “all 28” of Iran’s “mine dropper boats are also lying at the bottom of the sea.”

Minutes before Trump’s post, reports started to emerge about the presence of U.S. Navy ships in the strait.

An Axios journalist, citing an unnamed U.S. official, posted that “several” U.S. ships had crossed the strait on Saturday, though Iranian state TV soon after reported a denial from an official with Iran’s military.

Trump has repeatedly said that American forces have destroyed Iran’s navy and air force while crippling its ballistic missile and nuclear programs.

But fear of Iranian attacks on shipping over the past several weeks has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a critical conduit for global oil supplies. Throttling the strait has disrupted global energy markets.

U.S. gasoline prices have spiked even though most of the oil that flows through the waterway does not go to the United States.

Representatives from the U.S. and Iran began talks hosted by Pakistan in Islamabad on Saturday amid a fragile ceasefire in the conflict.

Marvin Glen Shields was born in Port Townsend, Washington, on Dec. 30, 1939. After high school his family moved in 1958 to Hyder, Alaska, where he worked in a gold mining project for the Mineral Basin Mining Company.

On Jan. 8, 1962, he enlisted in the Navy, choosing the multi-training of a construction battalion member, or Seabee. After training at Naval Air Station Glynco, Georgia, and Port Hueneme, California, he graduated as a naval construction mechanic in May 1963, and served his first assignment at Okinawa from Nov. 18 to Sept. 1964.

On Nov. 1, 1964, Construction Mechanic 3rd Class Shields swerved into harm’s way when he was assigned to Seabee Team 1104 of Naval Construction Battalion 11.

After final training, on Jan. 22, 1965, he and his nine-man unit transferred to Saigon, Vietnam, just 10 days later. From there, Team 1104 was transported 55 miles north to Dong Xoai, where it joined the 11 members of Army Special Forces Team, A-342, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, in constructing a fortified Special Forces camp.

Further reinforcing the area were 200 local anti-communist Montagnards and 200 soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).

The area was also crawling with enemy troops, ranging from local guerrillas to full-fledged infantry units trained and organized in North Vietnam before returning south. The latter included the reinforced 272nd Regiment, about 2,000 strong, which on the night of June 9, 1965, set out to eliminate the compound at Dong Xoai.

Soon, every defender at Dong Xoai was fighting for his life.

As described in his citation, that included Shields, who was wounded early in the fighting as was the commander of Team 1104. In spite of that: “Shields continued to resupply his fellow Americans who needed ammunition and to return the enemy fire for a period of approximately three hours, at which time the Viet Cong launched a massive attack at close-range with flame throwers, hand grenades and small-arms fire.”

Though wounded a second time during this attack, Shields assisted in carrying a more critically wounded man to safety, then rejoined the fighting for another four hours.

Then a call came up from 2nd Lt. Charles Quincy Williams who, with the wounding of his commander, had taken charge of the Special Forces troops. He needed a volunteer to join him in a sally to eliminate a well-placed Viet Cong machine gunner whose accuracy was endangering the lives of all personnel in the compound.

Without hesitation, Shields volunteered for this hazardous mission. Proceeding toward their objective with a 3.5-inch rocket launcher, Williams and Shields closed to approximately 500 feet and Williams succeeded in destroying the machine gun emplacement.

As the Green Beret and the Seabee made their way back to their defensive positions, however, Shields was hit a third time and Williams twice more.

After a grueling 14-hour siege, Dong Xoai’s defenders were finally evacuated. In the process, Williams eventually recovered from his injuries. Shields was not so fortunate, dying before he reached Saigon. On June 19, he was buried in the presence of a Marine honor guard in Gardiner Cemetery, Washington.

Although the 272nd Regiment finally overran Dong Xoai, the VC knew enough not to hold it long against an enemy with complete air superiority. As far as casualties went, postwar statistics testify to the overnight siege’s butcher bill.

The Americans claimed to have killed 300 VC and captured 104 weapons, while Vietnamese records claimed the loss of 134 men killed and 290 wounded. On the South Vietnamese side, 416 of the ARVN and Montagnards stationed in and around the compound were killed and 176 wounded and 233 missing.

Of the Americans, nine Special Forces troops were killed and of the Seabees, besides Shields, Petty Officer 2nd Class William C. Hoover was killed in the VC’s opening mortar attack. All seven surviving Seabees were wounded.

On Sept. 13, 1966, Shields’ family traveled to the White House, where President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him a posthumous Medal of Honor. Later, on June 5, 1966, Charles Q. Williams was alive to receive his Medal of Honor. Shields’ name was later christened to the guided missile frigate USS Marvin Shields (FF-1066), as was Camp Marvin Shields Construction Battalion Support Base in Okinawa.

The Army Data Operations Center’s April 3 debut is part of an enormous push to further integrate data and machine learning into military operations, according to a Pentagon release.

The armed forces have used data from military, intelligence and business sources for the past several years.

Historically, that has been a somewhat cumbersome process, as different datasets are often separated from one another, necessitating different security clearances, or housed on different systems. The ADOC is meant to mitigate those issues, functioning as a kind of information hub.

“We don’t have a data problem. We have a data management problem, and data becomes the ammunition that we need to provide to our senior leaders in order for them to make quick and informed decisions and gain decision dominance,” Lt. Gen. Jeth Rey, deputy chief of staff for the Army G-6, said in the release.

The office will be housed under Army Cyber Command, the release states. It is scheduled to run as a pilot for six months, with the Pentagon potentially adopting it as a model, DefenseScoop reported.

OTHER INITIATIVES

The establishment of the ADOC, meanwhile, is just one step in a series of separate initiatives undertaken by the service in recent years to embrace AI’s role in the battlefields of tomorrow.

Experts say broadening the technology’s application is long overdue.

“Most of the AI development had all been toward enemy-centric targeting, looking for and refining that enemy target and helping us basically build out target sets and hit more faster, essentially target more faster in one way or another,” Wes Bryant, a former U.S. Air Force joint terminal attack controller and Pentagon whistleblower, told Military Times.

“But you didn’t really have much of anything related to the civilian environment,” Bryant continued. “That was one thing we were working on at the [Pentagon’s Civilian Protection] Center of Excellence — looking at ideas for AI integration in civilian environment mapping, in updating no strike lists in given areas.”

Jon Lindsay, associate professor at the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said that AI is best suited to more mundane organizational tasks, such as “planning, intelligence, logistics administration.”

The Department of Defense has also put out contracting opportunities for commercial data centers on four U.S. military bases.

Two bases, Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, and Fort Bliss, Texas, have entered into agreements already, according to a March 2026 release.

Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Bragg, North Carolina, are also listed as potential sites for the data centers, which provide the computing power and hardware for AI models and cloud services.

Under the agreements, the data centers would be operated by civilian firms but would provide computing power for the military’s use, according to Task & Purpose.

Those data centers are part of a government-wide effort to pursue “a golden age for American manufacturing and technological dominance,” per a July 2025 executive order.

The effort to achieve artificial general intelligence is a “race that has a very short-term horizon,” Ismael Arciniegas Rueda, a senior economist at the RAND Corporation, told Military Times.

Housing the data centers on Army bases could provide an extra level of security for the centers, which are vulnerable to cyber and kinetic attacks.

But they also present potential downsides to the communities where they are built, like tremendous energy consumption.

That, combined with an aging power grid, is likely to drive up energy costs in the surrounding areas.

The agreement came after the FAA conducted testing in New Mexico on the laser system used by the Pentagon and Homeland Security Department and validated that proper safety controls are in place and do not pose undue risks to passenger aircraft.

Two earlier incidents posed serious concerns.

The U.S. military errantly shot down a government drone with the ​laser-based system on Feb. 25, leading the FAA to expand an area in which flights are ​barred around Fort Hancock, Texas.

The incident followed the Feb. 18 decision by the FAA to halt all flights for 10 days at the nearby El Paso airport because of the use of ​the Pentagon laser system by a Homeland Security agency without completion of an FAA safety review. The ​El Paso shutdown order was lifted by the FAA after about eight hours following ‌the ⁠White House’s intervention.

“Following a thorough, data-informed Safety Risk Assessment, we determined that these systems do not present an increased risk to the flying public,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said on Friday.

The Pentagon has said there are more than 1,000 drone incursions along the U.S.-Mexico border each month. ​U.S. security officials have increasingly ​expressed alarm about ⁠the use of drones by Mexican cartels to drop drug packages or surveil trafficking routes.

Several media outlets reported last month drones were seen over Fort McNair in Washington where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live.

There is no indication the Pentagon plans to deploy the laser at the base, which is close to Reagan Washington National Airport.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth last month called on federal watchdogs to review the ​decision-making process leading to the use of the systems and the ​FAA’s decision ⁠to close airspace.