A Pentagon official said Thursday that the Defense Department has “welcomed back more than 230 warfighters,” and the Departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force continue to work with more than 600 service members who have expressed interest.

The official did not provide a breakdown of the returnees by service.

According to the Defense Department’s web site on COVID-19 reinstatement, more than 8,700 service members were involuntarily separated for refusing the immunization after they were ordered in 2021 to get the vaccine.

Data compiled by the services in December 2022 — days before the mandate was lifted by law — showed the figure was closer to 8,400 and included 3,717 Marines, 2,041 Navy sailors, 1,841 Army soldiers and 834 Air Force and Space Force members.

Eligible service members have been allowed to rejoin the service since 2023. In January 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order allowing them to come back with “full back pay and benefits.”

Under Pentagon policy, those eligible receive back pay, allowances and any bonuses they would have earned had they stayed in the military, minus income, VA benefits and separation payments they received in the interim.

Hegseth ordered the services in December to review all the discharge cases to determine whether members were entitled for upgrades of their discharge characterizations from General (Under Honorable Conditions) to Honorable.

In March, the department extended the deadline to those interested in rejoining the service by a year, until April 1, 2027, and it cut the active-duty return to service obligation from four years to two.

“Maybe, for some, four years felt like too much given what had been done to them. We hope two entices warriors of conscience to come back,” Hegseth said in a video posted on the social media platform X.

The Defense Department announced Wednesday that it planned to convene a panel to study the decision to require the COVID-19 vaccine and will declassify and release materials related to the mandate.

The National Academy of Public Administration, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that studies management and organization, is conducting an after-action review at the request of the Pentagon, with a report expected by the end of the year.

No surveys have been conducted of the personnel who were involuntarily separated regarding why they have not returned to service. Officials told the Associated Press last year that many troops “have moved on with their lives.”

In a surprising moment that followed more than an hour of heated debate over the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act on the House floor, Rep. Chris DeLuzio, D-Pa., offered a motion to return the bill to the House Veterans Affairs Committee for review.

The vote on DeLuzio’s proposal was to precede a final vote on the legislation, which has divided veterans groups, and the chamber rejected the effort in a 210-211 vote, with one of four Republicans who initially supported it, Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., changing her vote at the last minute.

But instead of proceeding with the final vote as planned, House leadership pulled the bill, with Johnson saying a decision on the measure now will be delayed for several weeks.

Punchbowl News reported that Johnson blamed “misinformation” over the bill for his reasons to hold the vote.

“Our Veterans Affairs Committee has done a great job engaging with veterans … There still remains, though, a lot of misinformation out there, so instead of putting the bill on the floor this afternoon, we’re gonna delay it just a bit. We’re gonna have several more weeks ahead of us before we get back here in September would be my guess when we process all this again,” Johnson told reporters.

The Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, H.R. 9237, encompasses more than 60 pieces of legislation, many of which have widespread support among veterans and advocates, such as the Major Richard Star Act, which would give retired, combat-injured veterans their full Veterans Affairs disability compensation and military retirement, and the Love Lives On Act, which would continue benefits for surviving spouses of the fallen if they remarry before age 55.

But the proposal for covering the cost — enacting a planned rule that would change the requirements for disability compensation for two conditions that commonly affect veterans, sleep apnea and tinnitus, has split the veterans community and lawmakers.

Supporters say the payment proposal is vital to getting the legislation made into law while critics argue that future benefits for veterans should not be used to pay for current needs.

At least 22 veterans organizations support the bill. During a press conference Tuesday, Mario Marquez, the executive director of government affairs for the American Legion, said the proposal represents the best way forward for getting top priorities accomplished.

“Leadership is about carefully evaluating the facts making difficult decisions and accepting responsibility for those actions and those decisions,” Marquez said. “Progress only happens when leaders are willing to tackle difficult issues and keep veterans at the center of the conversation.”

But other groups vociferously oppose it, with the VFW and Disabled American Veterans leading the charge. Their representatives joined Democrat lawmakers in a press conference Wednesday to push lawmakers to vote against the bill.

Past VFW National Legislative Service Director Pat Murray said as an amputee who lost his leg in Iraq and medically retired, he would receive increased compensation as a result of the bill. But, he added, he didn’t want to “get those benefits at the expense of others.”

“We support the provisions of the Major Richard Star Act and we want the full act passed because that is what veterans deserve,” Murray said.

Prior to the planned vote Thursday, lawmakers engaged in heated debate that pitted the chairman and ranking member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee against one another. Chairman Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., said he had taken a lot of heat over the proposal but believed the bill helps “the greatest number of veterans.”

“This bill includes long-standing priorities for veterans, and importantly, it does so in a way that is paid for and capable of actually moving from here to the Senate and to the President’s desk,” Bost said. “At some point, we have to decide whether we’re going to keep talking about these promises or actually move a package that can become law.”

Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., the committee’s ranking member, has proposed pulling apart the legislation and voting separately on the provisions. Takano said that while he supports many of the legislation’s provisions, he disagrees with a proposal to raise VA home loan fees, several GI Bill initiatives, some health proposals and the payment structure.

“Let’s be crystal clear about what this bill does. It says to troops downrange right now who are in harm’s way that they have to have worse benefits than veterans have today to pay for benefits and care that other veterans have earned. That’s ridiculous,” Takano said.

VA officials confirmed to Military Times that they intend to follow through on the audiology portion of the proposed rule, which would mean that tinnitus, which currently receives a 10% disability rating, would be treated as a symptom of another condition, such as hearing loss or a traumatic brain injury, and would no longer get a standalone rating.

The officials did not address the sleep apnea portion of the rule, but a Politico reporter posted a message on X saying administration officials told her the VA has “made no move to withdraw the proposed sleep apnea rule and will be moving forward with the rule change that appeared on the regulatory agenda.”

Under the proposed rule, veterans with asymptomatic sleep apnea or a mild case controlled by treatment could receive a 0% disability rating.

Bost said that if the VA moves ahead with the 2022 proposed rule, without his legislation, the savings would return to the Treasury Department and not be allocated specifically to veterans.

The estimated savings of enacting the rule could be $57 billion over 10 years.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., raised concerns about anti-competitive tactics, questioning the practice of allowing Express Scripts — the largest pharmacy benefit manager in the United States — to have the contract as exclusive administrator of the Tricare pharmacy program, while owning and operating two mail-order pharmacies, Express Scripts Pharmacy and Accredo Specialty Pharmacy.

She questioned whether Express Scripts drives more business to itself, pushing local pharmacies out of the Tricare network and limiting beneficiaries’ access to more personalized local care.

“That is a clear conflict of interest,” Warren said during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services’ personnel subcommittee. It’s “an open invitation for Express Scripts to milk the federal government, kick out competitors, and steer big bucks to itself.”

Warren, ranking member of that subcommittee, said DoD requires the Tricare pharmacy contractor to own both a pharmacy benefit manager and a pharmacy.

The contractor, Express Scripts, receives a fixed administrative fee per prescription filled at retail pharmacies or the mail order pharmacy, said Dr. David J. Smith, a retired Navy rear admiral who is deputy director of the Defense Health Agency. The contractor can’t generate revenue from the prices of drugs, he said, and the DoD model eliminates common commercial industry profit mechanisms.

Under the mail-order program, the government buys the drugs, and Express Scripts dispenses the drugs and are paid that administrative fee. The amount of that fee, or other information about the contract, is not public knowledge, as DoD and Express Scripts consider it proprietary information.

Beneficiaries pay $14 per prescription filled through the mail order pharmacy and $16 at network retail pharmacies. That money isn’t kept by Express Scripts; it goes to the Defense Health Agency, said Adam Kautzner, president of Express Scripts and Evernorth Care Management. Beneficiaries can get their prescriptions filled at military treatment facilities at no charge.

In general, DoD has been trying to move to mail order because it’s cheaper, Smith said, and because of the convenience for beneficiaries.

DoD continues to find ways to deliver the benefit to make sure beneficiaries have access to their medication, in a “fiscally responsible way,” he said, adding that they’re also working on ways to shore up the supply chain for medications.

But as the government contractor, Express Scripts decides which pharmacies are in the Tricare retail pharmacy network and how much they are reimbursed.

Since 2022, more than 13,000 local pharmacies have left the network, leaving nearly 400,000 military families scrambling to find a new pharmacy in network, Warren said.

Currently, there are 46,000 retail pharmacies across the country that voluntarily participate in the Tricare retail pharmacy network, Kautzner said. As a result, 98% of beneficiaries have a retail option within 15 minutes of their home, he said, which exceeds the contract requirements.

Of the 46,000 pharmacies in the network, 16,000 are independent pharmacies.

Among those pharmacies that left the network was Roden-Smith Pharmacy in Clovis, N.M. Its owner, Micah Lansford, testified that the terms of the contract Express Scripts offered his pharmacy forced them out of the program in 2023.

Under the previous contract, the pharmacy had been reimbursed an average of about $0.37 below their actual cost for the 6,750 prescriptions they filled, causing the pharmacy to lose nearly $2,500 in 2022.

Under the terms of the contract Express Scripts proposed for 2023, Roden-Smith would have lost nearly $9 on average for each prescription and $60,000 for the same volume in 2023.

Lansford described the real-life consequences for the military community of. having fewer local pharmacies.

“Community pharmacies like mine provide a higher level of personal care, easier access,” he said.

He gave the example of a disabled U.S. Air Force retiree, whose caregiver relied on Lansford to review each monthly fill of medications, reconciling any changes and making sure his medications still made sense.

He also spoke of young active duty spouses who could no longer use his pharmacy drive-thru to pick up an antibiotic for their child, but are instead waiting in long lines to get onto base, hoping the antibiotic is in stock at the military pharmacy.

Greg Reybold, vice president of the American Pharmacy Cooperative, which includes about 1,500 independent pharmacies, said while Express Scripts touts the savings of the mail order pharmacy, it’s cheaper to fill prescriptions at the retail pharmacies than through Express Scripts mail order.

Filling generic drugs at Tricare retail pharmacies is cheaper for beneficiaries, and for the Defense Health Agency, he said. If for example, the drug costs the pharmacy $3, the beneficiary pays that instead of the usual $16 Tricare copay.

When 13,000 retail pharmacies left the network, he said, “the only winner was the Express Scripts mail order pharmacy,” because beneficiaries were forced to use that pharmacy.

Reybold and Lansford both called for an independent audit of the pharmacy program.

“We have a strong desire to serve these people, and want to be there for them,” Lansford said. “And we want a fair deal to provide service.”

The Pentagon announced Wednesday that Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata will draw from military personnel and civilian employees to create the panel, which is tasked with reviewing “the official decisions, coordination, planning, and execution of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate from January 2020 through January 2023.”

In a statement, Tata said the effort will help “establish permanent safeguards against future mandates.”

“By having members of the affected community lead the internal after-action review and further analyze how the COVID-19 vaccine mandate influenced decision-making and readiness — and making the findings public — we will ensure that the Department learns from the past and does not repeat these mistakes in the future,” Tata said.

In addition to Tata’s announcement, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pledged to declassify and release materials related to the mandate, which he said were “essential to learn the lessons of this national security event to ensure we do not make the mistakes of the past.”

The National Academy of Public Administration, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that studies management and organization, is responsible for conducting the after-action review.

According to NAPA, its report is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Hegseth said he would publish the organization’s findings by February 2027.

The COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, spreading globally across the world in a manner of months, infecting more than 779 million people in the years since and killing 7.1 million worldwide.

In the U.S., 103 million individuals have been infected and 1.2 million have died. Within the Department of Defense, 704,000 contracted COVID from March 2020 until December 2022, when the DoD stopped posting updated numbers.

Nearly 700 DoD-affiliated people, including 96 service members, 36 dependents, 417 civilian employees and 141 contractors, died.

To stop the spread of the evolving virus, the first Trump administration worked with private industry to develop a vaccine for the illness. The effort, dubbed Operation Warp Speed, fielded a vaccine within seven months, and over the course of the following year, 2 million U.S. service members were vaccinated.

But some personnel refused to get the vaccine, citing personal or religions reasons. Some felt that since they already contracted the virus, they didn’t need the vaccine, while others took issue with the relatively new technology behind the vaccines. The vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer both use messenger RNA to instruct the body to produce a piece of the virus protein to provoke an immune response.

Still others said they objected to the vaccines because they were created using cell lines developed from fetal tissue obtained in the 1970s and 1980s, although the vaccines themselves contain no aborted fetal tissue.

More than 53,000 filed for exemptions and at least 8,400 were discharged.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that allowed service members who refused the mandate to rejoin the military. From early 2023 through June 2025, 126 service members who had refused to receive the shot had returned to service.

At least 56 members of the U.S. Coast Guard who left service as a result of the mandate have returned to duty, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Although the Trump administration was at the forefront of developing a vaccine to stop the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, the second Trump administration has taken steps to alter the long-accepted vaccine schedules for children and adults.

The Department of Health and Human Services has crafted a new vaccine recommendation for children that removes flu and COVID vaccines from the regular schedule as well as rotavirus, meningitis and hepatitis A and B.

In April, Hegseth canceled the Defense Department’s mandatory flu vaccine program for service members, saying it was “just overly broad and not rational.”

The military services began drafting requests for exceptions to the liberal policy, with Tata telling members of Congress in May that the services wanted the requirement to remain in place for personnel in close quarters, including basic training, ships, submarines and training schools.

In June, influenza swept through Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, infecting 285 airmen and hospitalizing six. One recruit, Keon McDaniel, died. The Air Force has not publicly stated his cause of death.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, and seven other Democrat lawmakers wrote Hegseth Tuesday demanding answers regarding McDaniel’s death.

Castro said earlier this month the Air Force told him McDaniel’s death was a result of the outbreak.

“Politicizing the administration of lifesaving vaccines has led to the death of a service member, the hospitalization of numerous trainees, and an expensive race to retroactively provide our service members the health care they need and deserve,” the group wrote.

The Defense Department did not respond by publication regarding questions on the cost of convening a panel to review the mandate.

Years of bipartisan work on the Major Richard Star Act and dozens of other veterans bills could take a different path if it doesn’t get the votes needed on the senate floor this week.

Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., ranking member on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, told Military Times on Wednesday that Congress should abandon the omnibus package and instead advance the Major Richard Star Act and other bipartisan veterans bills individually rather than risk losing them over the funding dispute.

“If Congress cannot reach agreement on the funding mechanism, I think we can pursue each of these provisions individually,” Takano said. “I believe the Major Richard Star Act would pass in a heartbeat.”

The conflicted legislation includes the Major Richard Star Act, and the Love Lives On Act, along with expanded caregiver support, survivor benefits, community care improvements, education reforms and mental health initiatives affecting millions of veterans, military families, caregivers and survivors.

While many of those measures have broad bipartisan support, disagreement over how to pay for them has become an immovable fencepost blocking forward movement of the package.

Moran defends omnibus strategy

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jerry Moran, R-Kan., defended the legislation, telling Military.com “It takes no benefit away from anyone who is receiving those benefits,” referring to veterans already receiving VA disability compensation for tinnitus or obstructive sleep apnea.

Moran said VA had already indicated it planned to update the disability rating criteria for those conditions and argued Congress should redirect the projected savings into veterans programs rather than allowing the money to return to the broader federal budget.

“If we don’t get out ahead of that business,” Moran said, “the reduction in spending … will not be used for veterans.”

Veterans of Foreign Wars National Commander Carol Whitmore has publicly rejected that approach. “When some suggest that veterans’ benefits are too expensive, let us be clear: This is the cost of war,” Whitmore said during a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees.

Whitmore has argued that disability compensation reflects the actual cost of military service and has opposed using projected savings from future disability rating changes to finance new veterans benefits. Moran, by contrast, argues those projected savings should remain dedicated to veterans programs instead of returning to the Treasury.

Takano says bipartisan bills should move on their own

For Takano, the funding dispute should not determine the fate of legislation that has spent years building bipartisan support.

At the center is the Major Richard Star Act, which would allow certain combat-injured medically retired service members to receive both military retired pay and VA disability compensation without the dollar-for-dollar deduction. Even with broad bipartisan support, Congress has repeatedly failed to advance the bill because lawmakers have been unable to agree on a funding offset.

“We don’t need to know the pay-for at the outset,” Takano said. “That could be subject to negotiations.”

Asked what alternatives Congress should consider, Takano pointed to unobligated Department of Defense funding and other federal budget offsets.

Two paths forward for veterans legislation

The funding dispute has morphed into a massive debate over legislative strategy. Moran argues the omnibus gives Congress its best opportunity to enact one of the largest veterans legislative packages in years while preserving projected savings for veterans programs. Takano agrees many of the same bills should become law but argues they should not remain tied to a financing plan that has divided lawmakers and veterans organizations.

If Congress cannot reach agreement on the omnibus, lawmakers may face a choice: continue negotiating a single package or begin advancing many of the same bipartisan bills one measure at a time.

For Takano, the question is not whether Congress should expand veterans’ benefits. It is whether one group of veterans should shoulder the cost of another’s gains.

“All veterans have sacrificed. We shouldn’t be asking one group of veterans to sacrifice for the other.”

Under the new program, the secretary said service members aged 30 and older will be tested yearly for testosterone deficiency as part of routine health assessments. Troops under 30, meanwhile, will have the option to be tested, he said.

The decision to receive testosterone replacement therapy — if recommended by a medical professional — will remain up to the individual service member.

“It’s about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities, protecting your longevity and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight,” Hegseth said in a video posted to X.

The video did not specify if the testing and treatment would be gender-specific and appeared to connect the directive to mental wellness.

“As we know, the modern battlefield is brutal and unrelenting,” he said. “It requires and demands maximum psychological and mental readiness. And by addressing these health markers early, we’re keeping you on the leading edge of lethality and giving you the same level of support that you give this nation — the absolute best.”

The requirement marks the latest policy shift under Hegseth, whose tenure at the Pentagon has included a ban on transgender troops.

“Expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for Military Service,” a 2025 memo signed by the defense secretary reads.

Hegseth also directed the military to develop gender-neutral physical fitness standards for troops in ground-combat roles.

“At my direction, each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat MOS [military occupational specialty], for every designated combat arms position, returns to the highest male standard only,” he said in an address in Virginia last year.

Military Times asked the Pentagon whether DoD will also give female service members annual hormone screenings and access to testosterone replacement therapy to raise levels to those of a typical male service member, if desired.

The Pentagon declined to provide additional details beyond Hegseth’s announcement.

The strikes mark the latest escalation of attacks and counterattacks launched by the two sides as they vie for control of the Strait of Hormuz, which carried about a fifth of global oil and gas shipments before the war.

“At 6 a.m. ET today, U.S. Central Command forces began launching a wave of strikes against Iran,” the U.S. military said.

“The strikes are designed to further degrade military capabilities Iranian forces have used to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.”

There were no immediate reports of attacks in Iranian media. U.S. Central Command said in a statement the military had targeted coastal defense systems and cruise missile storage and launch sites on Iran’s Greater Tunb Island, and had completed the wave of strikes within around 90 minutes.

Late on Tuesday the U.S. military said it had hit dozens of military targets near the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian coastal areas in strikes lasting seven hours.

In response, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Wednesday it had struck U.S. military targets in the region, including in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.

It also threatened on Wednesday to shut off more regional energy exports, saying the U.S. “must brace for the closure of all other export corridors that benefit the U.S. and its allies.”

Hostilities have intensified since Iran said late on Saturday it had closed the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. says Iran had attacked seven commercial ships over the last week, leaving nearly a dozen crew members killed, missing or injured.

‘END OF AMERICA’S EVILS’

The war, which began with U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran on Feb. 28, triggered Iranian attacks on Gulf states that host U.S. bases and caused major disruption to global energy supplies, raising fears of a surge in inflation.

Oil prices extended gains by about 1% on Wednesday, after settling on Tuesday on a new one-month high.

An interim ceasefire deal in the conflict signed last month was meant to lead to further negotiations including on Iran’s nuclear program, and to a permanent truce, but a return to talks has faltered.

Analysts say that while the U.S. and Iran have gone back to sparring as they did before the interim ceasefire deal was signed, they are unlikely to return to full-scale war, though a risk of further escalation remains.

They say Iran is signaling it may use its Houthi allies in Yemen to shut Bab el-Mandeb, opening a new front against Washington and putting two of the world’s most vital energy arteries at risk.

As a result of the war, Iran has been trying to assert permanent control over shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and to impose fees on vessels passing through it, in what would be a major shift of the balance of power in a region where the U.S. has long acted as guarantor of security.

The IRGC said on Wednesday that the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed until what it described as “the end of America’s evils.”

TRUMP THREATENS TO HIT ENERGY TARGETS

U.S. President Donald Trump, who faces domestic pressure to avoid a full return to war, on Tuesday threatened to hit Iranian power plants and bridges next week unless Tehran resumes negotiations.

“I’ll save the energy targets for last, but ultimately we’ll hit energy targets,” Trump said.

U.S. negotiators had been in touch with their Iranian counterparts to tell them “you better make a deal,” Trump added.

As tensions escalated, Trump on Monday floated the idea of a 20% fee on shipping through the strait. On Tuesday, he scrapped the idea and said, without providing details, that he would instead seek investment deals with Gulf states.

The war has killed thousands of people and displaced millions, mainly in Iran and in Lebanon, where conflict was reignited between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said at least 30 civilians had been killed in recent days due to the U.S. strikes on southern Iran, state media reported on Wednesday.

Iran’s army said at least seven active-duty and conscript personnel were killed in overnight U.S. strikes on the Bampur military base in the country’s southeast.

Despite a goal of 100,000 rounds per month by October 2025, the Army had only managed to produce 36,000 rounds per month as of March 2026, according to a report published this month by the Department of Defense Inspector General.

Shell production requires first building the projectile at a metal parts factory, followed by packing the shell with explosives at another facility. But this means “projectile metal part production is the limiting factor for reaching the 100,000 round-per-month goal for 155-mm artillery rounds,” the report noted.

The Army has not been able to forge enough metal parts to ramp up production of projectiles. In particular, “at a contractor-owned, contractor-operated facility in Mesquite, Texas, the contractor has been unable to produce any projectile metal parts that meet contract specifications,” the report reads.

After investing $469 million, the Army opened a modular metal parts factory in Mesquite, Texas in 2024. The Universal Artillery Projectile Lines facility — operated by General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems — was supposed to use “modern manufacturing practices, high levels of automation and digital data capture ability” to forge large numbers of large-caliber metal parts for shells, the Army announced at the time.

That optimism proved premature.

Officials at the Army’s Capability Program Executive Ammunition & Energetics, or CPE A&E, “issued the contract and accepted the risk associated with purchasing and adapting unique production equipment which had not been proven to meet U.S. specifications,” the IG report said.

To save time, the Mesquite factory tried to adapt manufacturing lines originally designed to make parts for the M107 155-mm shell — which dates back to 1958 — rather than the newer M795.

CPE A&E “accepted the risk associated with the contractor’s plan to purchase and adapt M107 metal part production equipment to produce a newer variant of the 155-mm projectile metal parts at different specifications,” said the report.

The report noted that some Army officials had concerns regarding an older ammunition plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, that included “separate ongoing problems with the contractor in terms of responsiveness, equipment maintenance, and timeliness. Those officials expressed concern to the evaluation team that ACC [Army Contracting Command] did not open the contract for the Mesquite facility to competition from other contractors.”

The bottleneck at the Mesquite plant left the Army’s three existing plants in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and Ingersoll, Canada, to try to pick up the slack.

Amid voracious expenditure of 155-mm rounds by Ukraine that depleted U.S. stockpiles, DoD issued a congressionally-mandated plan in 2022 to modernize howitzer ammunition production. DoD’s 2025 National Defense Industrialization Strategy Implementation Plan aimed at churning out 100,000 155-mm shells per month by October 2025.

The Army’s efforts have borne some fruit, with production nearly tripling to 14,000 shells per month to 36,000. By modernizing the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant and creating two new facilities in Kansas and Arkansas, the Army hopes to load, assemble and pack 140,000 155-mm rounds by December 2027.

In the meantime, the IG suggested the Army could get a refund.

The report recommended that the Army review the contract for the Mesquite facility to determine how the money was spent and whether the DoD can recoup any funds and also “determine whether the Mesquite contract was appropriately issued.”

As military leaders prepare for wars shaped by drones, artificial intelligence and rapidly shifting battlefield conditions, however, defense experts say the Pentagon still struggles to answer a more difficult question: How do you know whether a force can adapt when the unexpected happens?

Future conflicts are widely expected to unfold faster and with greater uncertainty than the wars the United States has fought in recent decades. Communications may be disrupted, battlefield conditions may shift rapidly and long-held assumptions about how wars are fought could prove wrong almost overnight.

The military has spent decades refining how it measures readiness.

Yet, many of the qualities defense experts say will matter most in future wars — judgment, initiative and the ability to adapt under pressure — remain difficult to define and even harder to quantify.

Adaptability matters more than ever

Military leaders have long understood that no plan survives first contact unchanged. The challenge, according to defense experts, is that rapid technological change is making future conflict increasingly difficult to predict.

The Pentagon has acknowledged as much.

The 2022 National Defense Strategy describes a security environment undergoing profound strategic and operational change shaped by evolving threats, emerging technologies and growing uncertainty. That uncertainty presents a dilemma for military planners.

Militaries must make long-term decisions about doctrine, force structure and expensive weapon systems years before conflict begins, said Nora Bensahel, professor of practice at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“You have to train your forces to fight in a particular way, but the odds are you’re going to be wrong,” she said. “Any prediction for the future at any point in history has always been difficult, and now with the really exponential pace of change, the odds that you get it wrong are even higher.”

Lessons emerging from Ukraine have intensified those concerns.

Bensahel said the proliferation of drones is fundamentally reshaping warfare and forcing military organizations to reconsider longstanding assumptions about ground combat. The rapid evolution of unmanned systems, she said, demonstrates how quickly the character of warfare can change.

Military leaders across the services have responded by expanding experimentation and accelerating modernization efforts.

U.S. Army leaders have cited lessons emerging from Ukraine as they adapt formations and concepts for large-scale combat operations, while the Navy has expanded experimentation with unmanned surface and undersea systems. The Air Force continues pursuing autonomous aircraft concepts and collaborative combat aircraft programs.

The limits of readiness metrics

The military tracks everything from personnel strength and training proficiency to equipment readiness and mission-capable rates. Those metrics remain essential for determining whether units can perform assigned missions.

Current readiness systems are largely designed to assess whether military units can execute assigned missions using established criteria. Army unit status reporting, for example, tracks personnel levels, equipment on hand, equipment readiness and training proficiency, while broader Defense Department readiness systems focus on resource levels and mission capability.

Military officials can readily determine whether a unit is manned, trained and equipped. Predicting how that unit will respond when battlefield beliefs collapse is more difficult.

“Readiness indicators are very important, but they can’t tell you anything about adaptability,” Bensahel said. “They’re not designed to do that.”

Current readiness systems primarily assess personnel, equipment, training and mission capability, while qualities such as adaptability, judgment and cognitive flexibility are addressed more indirectly through doctrine and leader development.

Bensahel defines military adaptability through three interconnected elements: doctrine, technology and leadership. All three, she argued, must evolve as conditions change if military organizations are to remain effective.

What adaptive leaders look like

Army doctrine offers one institutional answer. Although adaptability is not formally measured, military doctrine incorporates many of its core characteristics through the concept of mission command.

Mission command encourages subordinate leaders to exercise disciplined initiative, accept prudent risk and adapt their actions to changing conditions while operating within a commander’s intent. Rather than prescribing exactly how tasks must be accomplished, mission orders are intended to maximize freedom of action and enable leaders to respond when battlefield conditions change.

Mission command doctrine also teaches many of the behaviors associated with adaptive leadership. Leaders are expected to think critically, exercise disciplined initiative, accept prudent risk and empower subordinates to make decisions when circumstances change unexpectedly.

Military leadership frameworks describe adaptive leaders as individuals capable of critical thinking, learning agility, decentralized decision-making and operating amid uncertainty while building trust and empowering subordinates to act independently when conditions demand it.

Embedding those qualities across a force of more than two million service members and civilians presents a different challenge.

Bensahel argued that the U.S. military has not always adapted quickly enough during recent conflicts. Although junior leaders frequently demonstrated adaptability during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, she said senior leaders and institutions were often slower to adjust to changing battlefield realities.

Lessons emerging from Ukraine have heightened concerns about whether military organizations can adapt quickly enough to rapidly changing battlefield conditions. Battlefield innovations can now emerge, proliferate and alter combat operations in a matter of months, rather than years.

Technology alone won’t improve adaptability

Much of the debate surrounding future warfare focuses on emerging technologies. Bensahel argued that adaptability ultimately depends less on hardware than on mindset.

“The most important thing for military leaders up and down the chain of command need to have in order to be adaptable is flexibility of thinking” and the ability to try new solutions when existing approaches fail, she said.

Developing that mindset requires organizations to tolerate experimentation and, at times, failure.

“If you want to get leaders in the habit of trying new things that might or might not work, you have to have some tolerance for failure,” Bensahel said.

That can be difficult inside large military institutions, where bureaucratic processes, oversight requirements and organizational culture often reward certainty and discourage failure. Without experimentation, adapting to changing conditions becomes significantly more difficult, Bensahel said.

The Defense Department has spent decades building lessons-learned systems and preserving operational experience through archives, after-action reviews and institutional repositories.

Collecting information is no longer the central challenge, according to Ben Connable, a retired Marine Corps intelligence officer and former RAND researcher. Instead, he said, the problem is turning information into knowledge and embedding those lessons throughout the force.

“There’s almost a belief that knowledge now exists in this kind of ether,” Connable said. “We don’t really have to do much with it anymore.”

Organizations can accumulate enormous amounts of information while still struggling to translate that information into institutional learning, Connable said.

“The more digitization we have ... the worse we’re actually doing at synthesizing it for knowledge,” he said.

Connable explained that military education often relies heavily on historical examples while placing less emphasis on extracting lessons from more recent conflicts.

“We’ve done a particularly poor job of transmitting recent cases into modern knowledge,” he said. “The lessons that you fail to learn, you wind up repeating.”

Graham, 71, died unexpectedly Saturday from an aortic dissection, according to a preliminary report from the Washington, D.C., Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. The South Carolina senator had returned hours earlier from a trip to Ukraine, where he sought to negotiate new sanctions against buyers of Russian oil.

In a Truth Social post Saturday, President Donald Trump called Graham “one of the greatest people and senators” he had ever known.

“He was always working and was a great American patriot,” Trump wrote.

Trump added later that the country had “lost a great man.”

“We lost a great person, a kind person, a very smart person … Everything for him was about work. It was about loving the country,” Trump said.

In a statement Sunday, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., remembered Graham as a “polarizing” figure, but also as an intellectual who devoted himself to his causes.

“Theodore Roosevelt’s famous ‘Man in the Arena’ concept certainly applies to Senator Graham, who relished the dust, sweat, and challenges of public life,” Reed said in a statement. “One day, we’d be fiercely debating the Iraq war and the next day he’d be the lone Republican on the floor sticking up for a judicial nominee from Rhode Island. And in both instances, he’d bring his same keen intellect, high-level energy, and effectiveness to bear.”

Graham, a foreign policy hawk known for staunchly defending Israel and Ukraine, joined the Air Force in 1982 shortly after finishing law school at the University of South Carolina.

In the first two years of his career, he garnered national attention for uncovering problems with drug testing procedures at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, that included the mishandling of samples and the discharge of innocent airmen from the service.

The effort was highlighted in a report by 60 Minutes in 1984 and earned then-Capt. Graham an Air Force Commendation Medal.

Graham then spent four years in Germany before leaving active duty in 1988 and returning home to join the South Carolina Air National Guard.

Two years later, Graham was activated for the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War to provide support for service members preparing for deployment at McEntire Air National Guard Base.

Graham continued to serve in the Air Force after he was elected to the U.S. House in 1994 and the U.S. Senate in 2002, although a 2015 analysis by The Washington Post found that from 1995 to 2005, he received credit for 108 hours of training, less than a day and a half per year.

Graham told the publication that he called the period his “wilderness years,” in which he struggled to find his place in the Reserves while working as a legislator. He was not paid during that period and only collected retirement points during that time.

Once he established himself in the U.S. Senate, however, Graham spent congressional breaks on short-term duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he worked on Rule of Law issues.

In addition to his Air Force Commendation Medal, Graham earned a Meritorious Service Medal for his work at Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany and was awarded a Bronze Star for service as a senior legal adviser in Operation Enduring Freedom.

Graham retired as a colonel from the Air Force Reserves in June 2015 just as he announced his candidacy for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. He suspended that effort six months later.

Graham and his sister, Darline, were orphaned in 1977 following the deaths of their parents. In 1982, after he joined the Air Force, Graham formally adopted his sister, nine years his junior, to ensure that she had access to Tricare health care coverage and other military benefits.

On Monday, Trump proposed that Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, fill his seat through Jan. 3, 2027, the remainder of his term. Graham was running for reelection in November.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach thanked Graham not only as a senator but “as an Airman.”

“I had the privilege to serve alongside him in combat, where he was a phenomenal officer and [judge advocate general]” wrote Wilsbach on X on Monday. “What an asset we had with a sitting member of Congress, who was an air-minded Senator ... On behalf of all Airmen, we send condolences to the Graham family.”

“I have delegated tasking authority to the War Department’s Office of General Counsel, empowering OGC to request and receive all information, records, and support across the department concerning media leak investigations,” Hegseth said in a Monday social media video.

The move comes a few months after President Donald Trump threatened to jail the journalists who leaked information regarding the missing airman from a downed F-15E fighter jet over Iran.

The president said the administration was looking for the “leaker” in an April press conference, alleging that it was unknown to Iranian officials there was a the missing pilot in their country until the information was shared with a U.S. media outlet.

“We’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘National security. Give it up or go to jail,’” Trump said at the time.

Trump criticized the leak, saying it put the rescue mission at risk as the government of Iran announced an award for anyone who could capture the U.S. pilot.

He did not name a specific news organization, but The New York Times and Axios, among others, were the first to report on the missing pilot.

“The security of our nation cannot be a bargaining chip for those who seek momentary headlines,” Hegseth said in the video. “Access to confidential and secret information is a sacred trust, and those who betray that trust will be met with the full force of the law.”

“The trends are moving in the right direction,” Jerry McGinn, who co-authored the study for the Center for Strategic and International Analysis think tank, told Defense News.

However, the study — described as a progress report on reforms to the defense manufacturing and acquisition system — still found numerous problems with ramping up and sustaining wartime production.

For example, “according to several measures — manufacturing lead times, critical munitions and materials stockpiles, and supply chain security — the U.S. industrial base has a long way to go to achieve resilience,” warned the analysis by CSIS’s Center for the Industrial Base.

CSIS did find measurable improvements since November 2025, when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth vowed to “transform the entire acquisition system to operate on a wartime footing.”

Hegseth also promised to “inspire American industry to become a wartime industrial base that focuses on speed and volume.”

Most striking is the number of new companies in the defense field.

“Roughly 10,000 new firms have entered the market in the past two years and nontraditional companies received over $120 billion in contract obligations in FY 2025, adding competition and innovation to the sector,” CSIS noted. “Munitions contract obligations have risen 330 percent since FY 2010. Spurred by this increased demand and depleted inventories, the Pentagon is signing multiyear agreements with munitions producers and suppliers on a historic scale.”

The military is also responding to depleted stockpiles of expensive guided weapons that have been rapidly consumed by the Iran and Ukraine wars.

The Pentagon’s 2027 budget request for munitions allocated 49% to low-cost munitions — defined as costing less than $600,000 apiece — rising to 70% by 2031.

The U.S. is also strengthening its defense supply chain, such as “multiyear procurement agreements, direct-to-supplier investments, and leaner acquisition pathways,” as well as investing in defense companies such as L3Harris Missile Solutions, according to CSIS.

However, while this signals government commitment to defense production, it “also complicates competitive dynamics within the industry as new entrants and established suppliers alike seek to meet rapidly growing demand for munitions at scale.”

Also notable is federal investment in rare earths, which has seen production soar from 95 tons in 2022, to 8,900 tons in 2025. Nonetheless, “the erosion of domestic rare earth manufacturing capacity and the rise of Chinese control took decades to unfold, however, and it will take several years of enduring effort for the United States and its allies to build, scale, and sustain the production capacity of these key defense inputs.”

Exports of U.S. arms, or cooperative multinational projects such as the F-35 fighter, have also become a pillar of America’s defense industry. Foreign Military Sales, or FMS, have more than tripled, from less than $20 billion in 2015 to more than $80 billion in 2025.

The Trump administration wants to take this further with the “America First Arms Transfer Strategy,” launched in February 2026.

“The United States will use foreign purchases and capital to support domestic reindustrialization, expand production capacity, and improve the resilience of the United States defense industrial base,” the White House executive order declared.

Ultimately, the federal government can control defense production through the products it demands, the prices it is willing to pay, and the incentives it offers.

“It’s a monopsony,” McGinn said. “Government sets the market. Government can regulate the market. So, if the government wants different outcomes, it changes how it buys.”

House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Bost of Illinois and Rep. Jack Bergman of Michigan, wrote Collins July 1 saying the VFW’s use of the cartoon raised questions regarding the organization’s “fitness to represent claimants before the department.”

They asked Collins to review whether the VFW’s accreditation was consistent with serving as a veteran service organization, examine whether the VFW’s licensing of imagery to vendors for commercial sales was appropriate and look into commercial arrangements the VFW has made with businesses such as Grunt Style, which sells t-shirts emblazoned with the editorial cartoon.

The cartoon, which depicts suited “bureaucrats” — presumably the VA — and the “media” pointing rifles at two veterans with the subtext “punishing veterans,” “removing benefits” and “‘waste and fraud,’ was developed last year in response to a series of articles in the Washington Post on disability claims fraud but has resurfaced following the VFW’s opposition to legislation sponsored by Bost that would reduce future benefits for veterans afflicted with tinnitus and sleep apnea.

Bost has taken issue with what he said is the violent nature of the cartoon.

On Wednesday, he accused the VFW of inciting political violence with the imagery and called on VFW to remove the cartoon from social media, stop the sale of shirts and affirm its “commitment to fact-based advocacy.”

“Every organization has the right to advocate for or against pending legislation in Congress. That right, however, carries a corresponding responsibility to do so in a manner that promotes informed civic debate rather than imagery that can reasonably be interpreted as glorifying or normalizing political violence,” Bost and Bergman wrote.

The letter was first reported by Liz Hartman, a former Marine and veterans advocate, on her All Due Respect Substack column.

The VFW opposes a portion of the proposed Take Care of America’s Veterans Act that would increase benefits for thousands of veterans but cover its cost by instituting changes to the disability ratings requirements for sleep apnea and tinnitus for veterans moving forward.

The VA accredits numerous veterans service organizations such as the VFW, the American Legion, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America to help veterans file disability claims.

By law, only individuals and organizations accredited by the VA can file an initial benefits claim on a veteran’s behalf, and they are not allowed to charge them for work related to filing a claim. Once a claim is denied, veterans may hire attorneys or companies to appeal the decision.

The VFW employs thousands of veteran service officers to provide this service.

In the past decade, a number of private, for-profit companies have stepped in to assist veterans with the claims process, for a cost. The companies, which aren’t allowed to assist with claims filing, instead provide help gathering evidence to support initial claims and then help veterans on appeal.

But there is evidence that some of these companies have broken the law and are extracting fees from veterans with initial filings.

In May, a federal judge found the company Veterans Guardian operated as an unaccredited agent, engaging in deceptive business practices. In the class action suit, plaintiffs alleged the company collected more than $250 million in fees from veterans.

Bergman has introduced two bills that would allow firms such as Veterans Guardian assist legally with initial claims, capping fees at $12,500.

Both Bergman and Bost also have received political donations from political action committees affiliated with Veterans Guardian.

In response to questions from Military Times, VFW General Counsel John Muckelbauer said neither Bost nor Bergman reached out to the group before sending the letter. According to Muckelbauer, the VFW believes its advocacy campaign against a portion of the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act is consistent with its mission.

“We are confident that our advocacy is entirely consistent with our responsibilities as an accredited veterans service organization. Speaking forcefully on behalf of veterans is not separate from our mission. It is one of the principal reasons Congress chartered this organization more than 125 years ago,” Muckelbauer wrote in an email Thursday.

He added that the letter challenges that advocacy and nothing in it “identifies allegation[s] that the VFW or any of its accredited representatives violated VA accreditation requirements, acted unethically, failed to competently represent a single veteran, or otherwise failed to satisfy the standards applicable to accredited veterans service organizations.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs did not respond to a request for comment by publication.

Lessons from Ukraine and growing concerns about potential conflict with China have intensified the Defense Department’s focus on what officials call “information and decision advantage” — the ability to make informed decisions quicker and more accurately than an adversary.

Through its Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control initiative, known as CJADC2, the Pentagon is dedicating billions of dollars in artificial intelligence, advanced battlefield networks, data integration and autonomous systems designed to accelerate commanders’ decision cycles.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the department’s goal is to “put the best systems in the hands of warfighters” so leaders have “the systems that support what you need for maximum lethality.”

Still, future battles are expected to be rife with degraded communications, disrupted networks and information overload. The war in Ukraine highlights those challenges.

Military analysts studying the conflict have documented instances in which Ukrainian units have been forced to adapt after Russia‘s electronic warfare disrupted communications and drones altered battlefield visibility. Rapidly changing conditions pushed small-unit leaders to make consequential decisions with incomplete information and limited guidance. In those moments, information was plentiful, but certainty was elusive.

As the U.S. military modernizes for large-scale combat against technologically sophisticated adversaries, experts are asking one fundamental question: Is the Pentagon investing as heavily in honing human instincts as it is in developing the technologies to support them?

No ‘perfect’ information

Retired Army officer John Spencer, executive director of the nonprofit Urban Warfare Institute, believes the U.S. military has significant advantages to address the challenge.

“I travel the world and observe militaries all around the world, and there is nothing like the American soldier and the American system,” Spencer said.

However, Spencer said, none of the U.S. military’s technological advances changes a basic truth: “When you strip away everything, it comes down to those base characters of selfless service, duty, honor to the country,” he said. “If you don’t have the character, you don’t have anything.”

Recent wars in Ukraine and elsewhere have reinforced another enduring lesson, Spencer said. Battlefield effectiveness depends on the unit of the teams making decisions, not simply the speed of at which those decisions are made.

Cohesion, Spencer said is the most important factor and “the glue that holds it all together.” Speed alone is not enough.

As the Pentagon pursues increasingly sophisticated tools to improve battlefield awareness, he cautioned against assuming leaders will ever possess perfect information.

“The all-seeing eye is a myth,” he said.

A screen can never give the whole battlefield picture, said Jon Macaskill, a retired Navy SEAL commander who saw two decades of war.

“The picture from above is never the whole picture,” Macaskill said, adding “the guy on the ground who actually understands the terrain and the people on it is worth more than any feed.”

Macaskill cautioned that as the post-9/11 generation retires from the military, it risks losing experience that cannot be fully captured in doctrine, after-action reports or lessons-learned databases.

That instinct includes understanding “how fast a situation can come apart, how communications degrade under stress, how the picture you think you have and the real picture can drift apart in minutes,” Macaskill said. “When the people with that kind of knowledge and experience hang it up and walk away, that judgment leaves with them.”

Learning under pressure

The question now is whether military institutions can intentionally develop those instincts before the next war demands them.

On that point, Macaskill is not sure.

He and other experts question whether institutional training alone can fully replicate the intuition forged through years of combat experience. Macaskill argues that some of the most important aspects of combat leadership resist codification.

“Doctrine can’t tell you how to keep a 19-year-old calm enough to do his job when the rounds are coming in,” he said. “It can’t tell you how to make a call with half the information you’d want, knowing people will live or die based on whether you got it right. A manual can teach you a procedure but it can’t teach you humility.”

For decades, military educators have attempted to build strong judgement through demanding training designed to stress leaders long before they encounter combat, a method with which Spencer agrees.

The Army veteran argues that sound decision-making cannot be meaningfully developed without placing leaders under pressure.

“If you want to test character and judgment, you have to put people under stress,” Spencer said. “The worst thing you ever want to hear is somebody to say, ‘This is the first time I’ve had to do this.’”

Stresses of future wars

Defense leaders and military strategists expect future conflicts against peer adversaries to involve long operations and sustained cognitive demands on leaders at every level.

Bailey Weis, a former Marine who completed Infantry Training Battalion and later participated in Marine Special Operations Command assessment, said demanding military environments reveal that effective decision-making depends less on motivation than on stability.

“Can you perform when you are uncomfortable for long periods, when no one is adjusting anything for you, and when feedback is minimal?” she asked.

Weis said one of the biggest misconceptions about high-performance military environments is that aptitude is revealed during a single event.

“It is cumulative fatigue, load carriage, sleep deprivation, and repetition. That is where separation really happens,” she said.

Drones, artificial intelligence and advanced battlefield networks may transform the mechanics of war, but according to Spencer, Macaskill and Weis, future battlefields will still demand leaders capable of making sound decisions when communications fail, plans unravel and information is incomplete.

“You either meet the standard under load, under fatigue, over time, or you do not,” she said.

As the post-9/11 generation leaves the force, the military’s challenge will likely not be teaching leaders how to use new technologies, but rather ensuring they develop the instincts, character and judgment future wars will still require.

Despite rapid advances in technology, Spencer said one military advantage has endured across centuries of warfare: cohesive teams.

“History shows that small-group togetherness is our strength,” he said. “We still need groups of men and women who are cohesive and care about each other, and that’s not a given on the modern battlefield.”

The Veterans of Foreign Wars has used the cartoon to protest a portion of the Take Care of America’s Veterans bill that would pay for new benefits by altering requirements for sleep apnea and tinnitus disability ratings.

Although veterans who currently get compensation for the two conditions would not see a change to their ratings as a result of the legislation, the VFW has opposed the provision because it would reduce future benefits to pay for other veterans’ programs.

Last week, the organization posted an ad on its social media platform for t-shirts for its Honor the Contract campaign. The shirts, made by Grunt Style, feature a political cartoon created by the VFW last year that shows suited “bureaucrats” (presumably VA employees) and the “media” pointing rifles at two veterans with the subtext “punishing veterans,” “removing benefits” and “‘waste and fraud.’”

VFW officials said the illustration was created primarily in response to a series of articles by the Washington Post on fraud and abuse in veterans benefits and disability compensation as well as visits this year to Capitol Hill by VFW leadership.

But on Wednesday, House Veterans Affairs Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., said the VFW was inciting political violence with the imagery. He called on VFW to remove the cartoon from social media, stop the sale of shirts and affirm its “commitment to fact-based advocacy.”

“The recent inflammatory, fearmongering, and dangerous political rhetoric from the Veterans of Foreign Wars is inappropriate and must end immediately,” Bost said in a statement. “While I respect the First Amendment rights of every American, including those who work at VFW and have served in uniform, suggestions that VA’s dedicated workforce – or the media – or anyone else are actively shooting and punishing service members and veterans is unacceptable and creates a dangerous, politically charged environment that can put lives at risk.”

VFW officials said the organization has used some iteration of a firing squad cartoon dating to 1933.

“The VFW has never apologized for forcefully defending veterans and we are not about to start now,” VFW National Commander Carol Whitmore said in response to Bost’s statement.

“Political cartoons have long been part of American public discourse because they communicate difficult truths in memorable ways. When bureaucrats take aim at veterans’ earned disability benefits, we will continue to use every tool available to ensure veterans’ voices are heard,” Whitmore added.

The Take Care of America’s Veterans Act includes more than 60 bills that would improve compensation for medically retired combat veterans and the spouses of fallen troops who decide to get remarried before age 55, among other proposals.

The legislation is supported by at least 23 military, family and veterans organizations, including the American Legion, the Military Officers Association of America, the National Military Family Association, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, the Elizabeth Dole Foundation and more.

The coalition wrote a letter June 29 to the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees supporting the legislation but also asked for more details regarding the sleep apnea and tinnitus proposal, saying that “under ordinary circumstances it is not an approach we would support.”

“This comprehensive package reflects years of bipartisan and bicameral work to improve care, benefits, and services for the veteran community. Republicans and Democrats have authored elements of the bill, and we believe it represents one of the most thorough efforts to deliver non-partisan support and relief to both broad and narrow segments of the communities we serve,” the groups wrote.

Disabled American Veterans and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America have joined the VFW in opposing the provision that addresses paying for the legislation, which could reduce disability compensation payments to veterans by $57 billion over the first 10 years.

“Veterans have earned their benefits through service and sacrifice,” Dr. Kyleanne Hunter, CEO of IAVA, said in a statement. “They should not be forced to pay for new initiatives through reductions to benefits they already rely upon, and we should never indicate to one set of veterans that their service is worth less than any other.”

To cover the cost of the legislation, which includes the widely supported Maj. Richard Star Act that would give medically retired combat veterans their full military retirement pay and Veterans Affairs disability compensation without an offset, the bill would implement a 2022 proposal to the VA’s ratings schedule for sleep apnea and tinnitus.

Under the legislation, veterans with asymptomatic sleep apnea or a mild case controlled by treatment would receive a 0% to 10% disability rating.

Similarly, tinnitus, which currently receives a 10% disability rating, would be treated as a symptom of another condition, such as hearing loss or a traumatic brain injury, and would no longer get a standalone rating.

Supporters argue that the legislation would not cut benefits and instead would protect them. Republican Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, Senate Veterans Affairs Committee chairman, told Military.com that the VA planned to implement the new sleep apnea and tinnitus regulations by the end of the year.

“If we don’t get out ahead of that business, the reduction in spending...will not be used for veterans,” ” Moran told the outlet.

Democrat lawmakers say the proposal does amount to cutting veterans benefits, saying the method for paying for the bill’s cost is a “shell game.”

“The Republican plan cuts existing veterans’ benefits to fund new ones — asking the next generation of veterans to pick up the tab for the last. That’s not progress; that’s a shell game that takes money out of veterans’ pockets. Caring for veterans is the cost of war. We cannot make compromises on the backs of veterans,” said Rep. Mark Takano of California, ranking Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

The House was to consider the bill the week of June 22 but the planned vote was postponed. The House returns to session July 13.

The Senate has not scheduled a vote on the bill.

“DOD plans to invest over $2.4 trillion to develop and acquire its costliest weapon programs,” according to the Government Accountability Office’s 2026 annual report on major defense acquisition programs, or MDAP.

“Schedule delays persisted across MDAPs, signaling overly optimistic time frames,” according to the GAO report, which examined 104 of the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons programs. “The overall average time frame to deliver a capability increased this year to over 12 years. Further, several MDAPs have not set new delivery dates or are delaying critical interim milestones.

“By keeping delivery dates static, these programs raise questions about how realistic their estimates are. This means the 12-year average will likely increase in the future.”

If that sounds familiar, the 2025 annual report found that the DOD “continues to struggle with delivering innovative technologies quickly and within budget.”

However, the 2025 study seemed particularly concerned by rising costs of weapons due to inflation in the U.S. economy. In that regard, the 2026 analysis revealed a mixed price picture, with 46 of 72 programs reporting increases totaling $122 billion, and 16 reporting decreases totaling $47 billion.

GAO’s 2026 report seems more focused on program delays, especially in middle tier of acquisition, or MTA, projects that are intended to quickly jumpstart fielding of weapons within five years. The Pentagon is investing more than $49 billion across 23 of the most expensive MTA projects.

But GAO found that many systems are being slotted into the MTA despite the technology being too immature to be fast-tracked.

“For example, between 2018 and 2025, 18 out of 40 programs have entered the MTA pathway with immature technologies,” the report stated.

Many were lower than Technology Readiness Level 6 (prototype stage), and some were less than TRL 3 (proof of concept stage). Of eight current MTA projects, GAO deemed seven to be technologically immature, including the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile and the Next Generation Persistent Overhead Infrared sensor.

Thus, “programs are increasingly using the MTA pathway to mature technologies, when the intention of the pathway is to prototype and or field a residual capability within two to five years,” Shelby Oakley, GAO’s director for contracting and national security acquisitions, told Defense News.

“This is why we are not seeing capabilities fielded any faster,” Oakley said.

Among specific program issues, the Navy’s MQ-25 Stingray carrier-based unmanned aircraft has a 2.5-year delay to “initial operational capability and a 26-month delay to the end of initial operational testing,” GAO found. Changes to the design based on testing could push deployment out even longer.

For the DDG(X) destroyer, the Navy has yet to offer an acquisition strategy that details the assumptions behind the project.

“As such, the Navy’s business case for the DDG(X) program is not apparent,” GAO said. The DDG(X) is also likely to be affected by shipyard delays in building the Arleigh Burke-class Flight III series, which are up to 55 months behind schedule.

The Air Force’s B-52 radar modernization program, meanwhile, is beset by “cost increases and schedule delays.” The Air Force is opting to enter production with “very little development flight testing completed.”

The Army’s Mid-Range Capability program, which uses mounts Navy missiles and vertical launch tubes in Army vehicles, has “identified three additional critical technologies, all of which are immature.”

There are questions on “whether the return on investment is worthwhile for the four batteries planned for production by the Army,” the GAO stated.

In May, U.S. and Nigerian forces conducted military operations in northeastern Nigeria that killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, the second-in-command of ISIS globally.

That followed a U.S. strike on Christmas Day against the militants ordered by President Donald Trump, who said they had been targeting Christians in the African country.

Addressing a conference of African defense chiefs in Angola on Thursday, AFRICOM Commander Gen. Dagvin Anderson described May’s joint U.S.-Nigerian as a model for future security cooperation in Africa.

“We have withdrawn much of our forces that were just there for that operation, but are continuing the partnership that Nigeria has asked for to help continue with the intelligence sharing,” Anderson told journalists during a U.S. State Department-hosted briefing after the conference.

Anderson said the operation, in Nigeria’s Lake Chad Basin region, demonstrated Washington’s approach of providing specialized capabilities while allowing African partners to lead security operations.

He said cooperation with Nigeria had helped significantly degrade Islamic State’s leadership, adding that the impact had extended beyond West Africa because of the militant group’s international network.

The operation disrupted not only local commanders but also broader Islamic State communications and operations, he added.

“Nigeria has been very active since that operation in May,” Anderson said. “They continue to prosecute targets themselves.”

He added that Nigerian military pressure, combined with efforts to publicize the operation, had encouraged additional defections and surrenders among ISIS fighters in northeastern Nigeria.

The three-day conference in Angola’s capital, Luanda, was attended by military leaders from 35 African countries, alongside representatives from the U.S. and Brazil.

Word broke June 23 that the four-star general had submitted his retirement papers after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth personally requested that he resign, according to multiple reports. The Army has yet to provide a definitive reason for the change.

Donahue’s predecessor, Gen. Darryl Williams, held the post for nearly two and a half years. Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie, Donahue’s deputy, took over in an acting capacity Thursday after a farewell ceremony at the Clay Kaserne headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Within days of the news, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, held a phone call with Donahue and published a farewell on his personal social media accounts, thanking the outgoing official for creating a partnership that he said delivered long-range systems, strengthened Ukraine’s air defenses and saved thousands of Ukrainian lives.

The two military leaders have worked together since the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, when Syrskyi, then chief of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, directed the defense of Kyiv and Donahue led the 82nd Airborne Division into southeastern Poland. Their partnership has only strengthened over the years, Syrskyi said.

“In the most challenging moments of our war for freedom and independence, Chris Donahue has proven himself not only as a military leader but also as a man of his word and honor,” Syrskyi wrote on Telegram.

“Ukrainian warriors will always hold General Donahue in the highest esteem.”

The farewell, meanwhile, lands at a fraught moment in U.S.-Ukraine relations. The Trump administration has questioned the value of Kyiv’s fight in the past, even as the U.S. military incorporates more Ukrainian battlefield know-how amid its war with Iran.

Now, the American general who built the Army’s support machinery for Ukraine is out, and Syrskyi’s public tribute shows Kyiv knows what it stands to lose.

According to two U.S. officials cited by CBS News, Donahue “had earned the ire” of Hegseth, and the two men met in person only once, in February 2025.

Asked about accusations that Hegseth forced the general out over a personal grudge, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell provided no explanation.

“General officers and flag officers serve at the pleasure of the president and the secretary of war,” Parnell told the Daily Beast on Sunday. “They always have and always will.”

The departure extends a shake-up that has removed or replaced at least a dozen senior military leaders since Hegseth took office, with many of the moves made without public explanation.

U.S. President Donald Trump praised Donahue in January, when Fox News host Brian Kilmeade visited the general’s Wiesbaden headquarters and put Donahue on the phone with the president as his soldiers gathered around, according to Stars and Stripes.

“You’re doing a fantastic job,” Trump said. “Your reputation is great.”

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine is among those seeking a presidential waiver so Donahue can retire at four stars, a rank he has held for fewer than the three years federal law requires to retire at that grade, two sources told CBS News.

The Wiesbaden headquarters itself is officially being downgraded to a three-star command, part of Hegseth’s push to cut the number of four-star billets, Stars and Stripes reported. U.S. Air Forces in Europe lost its fourth star in a similar move last year.

Donahue has said nothing publicly about the circumstances of his exit, and the subject went unmentioned at Thursday’s ceremony. He thanked his troops in his farewell remarks, instead.

“I love this team — it has been the honor of a lifetime to be a part of it. I’m proud of what we built and I have absolute confidence in what you will build next,” Donahue said, according to an Army release.

Donahue was promoted to four stars in December 2024, when he took over U.S. Army Europe and Africa and, with it, command of NATO’s Allied Land Command in Izmir, Turkey. The combined headquarters developed the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative, a warfighting concept that integrates allied land forces, drones and data under NATO’s defense plans for its eastern flank, according to the Army.

Donahue “saw the need to change, developed a plan, inspired others and built the processes to ensure it endures well beyond his tenure — and allies have bought in,” Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe, said at the ceremony, according to the Army release.

Donahue was also the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan, photographed in night vision boarding the final C-17 out of Kabul in August 2021.

Brett McGurk, who served as special presidential envoy to the coalition against the Islamic State, told CBS News that Donahue is “among the most consequential commanders of his generation,” and retired Gen. Tony Thomas, a former head of U.S. Special Operations Command, called him a “generational leader.”

The ouster has drawn criticism from retired military leaders and lawmakers across the aisle.

The “decision to force [Donahue] out says far more about Hegseth than it does about General Donahue,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., wrote in a post on X last week, calling the move “yet another unforced error from a Secretary leading the Pentagon with bro-culture bravado rather than restraint, humility and careful stewardship of the finest fighting force in the world.”

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Europe, called Donahue the “best soldier in the Army today” in his own post. “Kremlin and terrorist organizations will be relieved to know that he will soon be gone.”

European officials fear the exit foreshadows a U.S. drawdown from the roughly 80,000 American troops on the continent, Newsweek reported.

The news came out just days after Hegseth criticized European allies over low defense spending and announced a six-month review of U.S. forces in Europe.

Retired Adm. William McRaven, who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, wrote in The Atlantic that the dismissals “raise a real risk that senior officers will be overly cautious about providing their best advice and, therefore, that the chance of military miscalculation will grow dramatically.”

Lt. Gen. Kevin Admiral, who leads the Army’s III Armored Corps, is the frontrunner to permanently replace Donahue in Wiesbaden, a U.S. military official told Newsweek, though no final decision has been made and the nomination would require Senate confirmation.

Donahue will formally hand the NATO post to its deputy, British Lt. Gen. Jez Bennett, at a July 9 ceremony in Izmir, Turkey. Bennett will serve as acting commander until another American officer is assigned, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe spokesman Col. Martin O’Donnell told CBS News.

Donahue closed his farewell remarks with a question.

“When people ask me, ‘Hey CD, what was it like to be a part of United States Army Europe and Africa?’ I only have to tell them how proud and unbelievably grateful I am to have been a part of the United States Army’s premier warfighting headquarters.”

The Army has not given a reason for the leadership change. Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie will serve as acting commander until Donahue’s successor is nominated by the Senate and confirmed by the president, according to the Army.

“I love this team — it has been the honor of a lifetime to be a part of it. I’m proud of what we built and I have absolute confidence in what you will build next,” Donahue said. “So, when people ask me, ‘Hey CD, what was it like to be a part of United States Army Europe and Africa?’ I only have to tell them how proud and unbelievably grateful I am to have been a part of the United States Army’s premier warfighting headquarters.”

The West Point graduate previously lead the XVIII Airborne Corps and the 82nd Airborne Division. In 2021, he oversaw the U.S.’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

A night vision photo of the general stepping onto the final C-17 out of Kabul became an emblematic image of the decades-long war.

Donahue’s departure comes amid sweeping leadership changes at the Pentagon. Since assuming office, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has removed or replaced at least a dozen senior leaders.

Vietnam Veterans of America, a national veterans service organization is pushing back against the use of an “Honor and Remember” flag because of a resemblance to the Bolshevik Communist flag and the flag flown by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the group claimed.

The organization argued July 2 that the flag “cannot serve as a positive symbol” for veterans who fought against communism. The flag shows a gold star on a red background — imagery reminiscent of multiple communist movements, VVA argued in a public statement.

“For Vietnam veterans especially, the striking resemblance to the flag flown by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and seen in all the images of North Vietnamese tanks invading Saigon on April 30, 1975, is impossible to ignore,” the group wrote.

A proposal in the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, an annual, must-pass defense policy and budget bill, aims to exempt the Honor and Remember flag from a law that prohibits the display of any unapproved flags at military installations.

If passed, the flag would be included in a list of approved flags that also includes state flags, military service flags and the National League of Families POW/MIA flag, among others.

The Honor and Remember flag was created by George Lutz after the death of his son, Army Cpl. George “Tony” Lutz, who was killed by an enemy sniper in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2005. Since its creation, 29 states have adopted the Honor and Remember flag as an official symbol.

Separate from the NDAA, an effort is underway to designate the Honor and Remember flag as a national symbol of remembrance for service members and veterans who died as a result of their military service.

The proposal — originally introduced by Reps. Don Davis, D-N.C., Jen Kiggans, R-Va., and Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., along with 16 other cosponsors — was endorsed by the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in February and referred that month to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

That bill mandates that the flag be displayed at federal sites, including the U.S. Capitol, White House and national cemeteries on Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Independence Day and other holidays.

“The brave men and women who laid down their lives in service to our nation deserve our deepest gratitude and lasting remembrance,” Kiggans said in a February statement. “While we can never fully repay the debt we owe them, we must always ensure their legacy is honored.”

VVA National President Tom Burke argued the idea has not been adequately discussed.

The American flag already represents the sacrifices of Americans who have died in defense of the nation, he contended in a statement.

“Rather than creating confusion and strife regarding official national symbols by introducing new federally recognized commemorative flags, VVA encourages Congress to direct its efforts towards policies that directly benefit Gold Star families, survivors, wounded veterans, and those currently serving,” Burke said.

The group’s position appeared to have deviated from its stance on the flag in 2009, when it granted permission in a letter to Honor and Remember, Inc., led by Lutz, to use the VVA logo on its website in a public show of endorsement.

The effort to use the flag as a national symbol has the support of numerous other veterans organizations, including AMVETS, POW/MIA Families, Abbey Gate Coalition and Brothers Keeper Veteran Foundation, as well as NASCAR and the National Hockey League.

In a 2025 letter of support, the Abbey Gate Coalition — a group of Gold Star families of service members killed at Abbey Gate in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2021 — wrote that the Honor and Remember flag would fill a gap in national symbols dedicated to fallen troops and their families.

“The United States Flag represents our freedom. The POW/MIA flag reminds us of those who never returned home, but there is still no national emblem that speaks solely to the sacrifice of the fallen and the grief carried by the families,” the group wrote.

“The Honor and Remember Flag would fill that gap. It is not political. It is not divisive. It is a simple, powerful message of remembrance, gratitude, and love from a grateful nation.”

The U.S. Army is moving ahead to meet the Defense Department’s direction to cut the number of military moves.

Army officials announced they’re cutting more than 12,000 relocations in fiscal 2026 and more than 13,600 in fiscal 2027, in an effort to provide more stability to soldiers and their families.

The Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force haven’t established specific numbers of military moves targeted for reduction in 2026 or 2027, service officials told Military Times. All noted that their reviews are ongoing, and key milestones for the Navy and Marine Corps are tied to implementation in 2027.

Pentagon officials ordered the military service branches in May 2025 to cut by half the amount of money spent on Permanent Change of Station, or PCS, moves by fiscal 2030. DOD spends about $5 billion every year on these moves, which include the physical moves of household goods, as well as allowances and other entitlements related to moving.

It’s not just DoD that spends money on PCS moves.

Many service members face financial burdens every time they move, and they’re generally uprooted every two to three years. A recently released Military Family Advisory Network survey conducted in late 2025 found that 60% of active duty families who had made a PCS move in the previous two years paid more than $1,000 out of pocket, above what they were reimbursed. That was an increase over the survey conducted in 2023, when 45% reported paying that much out of pocket.

Half of those reported the extra cost was attributed to re-purchasing consumable supplies that couldn’t be shipped. They also cited utility deposits, rental deposits, hotel stays, rental cars and new vehicle purchases.

Pre-move costs like house hunting and preparing their home for a move added to the burden, said Gabby L’Esperance, vice president of research and evaluation for the Military Family Advisory Network.

The financial burden is just one consequence of being uprooted, with moves contributing to spousal unemployment and difficulty finding child care, in addition to other challenges.

‘Much-needed predictability’

Defense officials outlined that the services will target “discretionary moves,” such as PCS moves within the United States, overseas and individual service member travel. The services are directed to reduce these discretionary move budgets by 10% in fiscal year 2027, 30% in fiscal 2028, 40% in fiscal 2029 and 50% by fiscal 2030. The reductions will be based on the fiscal 2026 budget, adjusted for inflation.

DoD specified the percentage of reductions in the budget, not the number of moves.

Do military families really need to move so much?

In announcing the relocation reductions on June 15, Army personnel officials said various efforts are underway, such as incentives for stabilization to reduce unnecessary moves. Some pilot programs, like the Armor Crewman MOS (19K) stabilization at Fort Riley, Kansas, and Fort Bliss, Texas, offer bonuses for certain soldiers to remain at their current locations.

Among other things, Army officials are undertaking a broad review of professional military education to find ways to reduce PCS requirements. Their effort emphasizes expanding distance learning options and using options to allow soldiers to complete courses without having to relocate.

Their PCS reduction efforts are part of their larger Human Resource Continuous Transformation initiatives. The shift will keep warfighting formations intact longer, officials said, and will help them build “more lethal, cohesive teams, boost overall readiness, and provide much-needed predictability for soldiers and their families.”

The Army’s long-standing High School Stabilization program, which allows families to stay at one duty station through a child’s senior year, benefited about 4,000 soldiers in the past year, officials said. Another program, the Stabilization Retention Option, allowed about 6,200 soldiers to stay at their duty station in fiscal 2025.

The Navy recognizes the importance of reducing PCS costs while maintaining sailor well-being and operational readiness, said Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Stuart Phillips. Officials are “reviewing policies, procedures, and efficiencies to maintain lethality, readiness and overall effectiveness” in line with the DoD’s direction to reduce the amount of money spent on PCS moves, he said.

The Marine Corps’ ability to reduce moves “is constrained by the need to ensure the right Marines are in the right billets at the right time,” said Marine Corps spokesman Maj. Jacoby Getty.

“Every PCS move is tied to a validated operational requirement, including unit readiness, force distribution, professional military development, and global mission demands,” Getty said. “The Marine Corps operates with a highly specialized force structure and limited personnel inventory, which requires deliberate movement of talent across the force to meet operational requirements worldwide.”

Air Force officials said they are reviewing their internal assignment policies to identify efficiencies. They added that their objective is to “optimize resources without compromising our global power-project, space operations and mission-generation capabilities.”

In a Tuesday press conference, Reps. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., and Gil Cisneros, D-Calif., announced their joint amendment’s introduction, calling it pertinent to military readiness and the well-being of American troops.

“That is almost 300 future airmen and women who would not be finishing their training at their expected date,” Cisneros, a former under secretary of defense for personnel readiness, said in the briefing. “This has completely set back the Air Force’s expected recruitment class from entering the future squadrons on time.”

This move comes after a flu outbreak sickened hundreds of trainees at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and killed one. Castro, whose district houses Lackland, confirmed that 284 trainees contracted the flu, four have been hospitalized and one has died.

Over a week ago, the Air Force announced that the training wing at Lackland suffered a localized outbreak over the three weeks prior but did not mention how many trainees contracted the flu.

Keon McDaniel, a basic military trainee from the 737th Training Support Squadron at Lackland, died on June 16 at Brooke Army Medical Center due to a medical emergency. Lackland officials said an investigation into the cause of his death is currently underway. Air Force officials declined at the time to comment on if his passing was related to the flu outbreak.

But Castro, who requested an investigation into McDaniel’s death in relation to the flu, revealed Tuesday that the Air Force confirmed that the trainee did die from the outbreak on base, according to a release.

“This is a tragedy that could have been prevented were it not for the reckless actions of Secretary [of Defense Pete] Hegseth,” Castro said in the statement.

The outbreak caused lawmakers to express concern over the current optional flu vaccine policy for service members and Pentagon civilian personnel that went into effect in April, two months before the outbreak.

Hegseth announced that service members would no longer be required to get the annual flu vaccine, citing the prior policy as “overly broad and not rational.”

Last week, the Pentagon granted exceptions to policy requests, or ETPs, to military services and some federal agencies, allowing for the slight reversal to be included into Hegseth’s guidance.

The services with ETPs granted by Under Secretary of Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata include the Department of the Army, Department of the Navy and Department of the Air Force.

Given that the Marine Corps and Space Force are under the Department of the Navy and Department of the Air Force, respectively, the services are also included in the exceptions.

The Pentagon declined to comment on if all trainees would be required to get the flu vaccine or when the exceptions were requested and granted. The Associated Press reported that all trainees for basic military training would now be required to receive the vaccine, citing a Pentagon official.

Castro confirmed in the Tuesday briefing that the Air Force’s exception to vaccinate all trainees was not approved until after the outbreak occurred even though it was requested about a month prior.

Houlahan said that there has been no indication of flu outbreaks at bases other than Lackland, but it is considered an “ongoing concern.”

“Now, nothing’s ever perfect. You could get the vaccine, and you still may get the flu or any other disease that may come forth, but it does make a difference,” Cisneros, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said in the press conference.

The representatives that brought forth the amendment last week criticized their Republican counterparts for previously rejecting the measure’s inclusion in the final NDAA rules package, prompting another push to revert the policy to again require all service members to receive a flu vaccine.

The NDAA is currently moving through both chambers of Congress, with the House and Senate versions awaiting full consideration on their respective floors.

Modeled after similar legislation the permits service members to sue DoD for damages caused by military medical malpractice, the proposed Military Sexual Trauma Accountability Act would let service members and veterans file civil claims for negligence over service-related sexual trauma.

Service members are barred from suing the federal government for injury or harm that occurs as a result of military duties under the Feres doctrine, a legal precedent based on a 1950 Supreme Court ruling on several service-related cases of injury.

But in late 2019, Congress passed a law that gave service members and surviving families the right to file medical malpractice claims against the Defense Department for harm or negligence caused by a military physician or civilian contractor in a military health facility.

Bill sponsors Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and John Kennedy, R-La., would carve out another exception to Feres and allow service members to hold the DoD accountable when it fails to prevent, investigate or was otherwise negligent in sexual misconduct cases.

“It makes no sense that civilians can seek justice from the government when the warriors who have sacrificed everything to protect our nation cannot. Our landmark legislation would right this wrong by tearing down the barriers that prevent members of the military and veterans from engaging the justice system to demand accountability and finally begin to heal,” Shaheen said in a statement.

“Service members give up a lot to defend this country, but they should not have to give up their right to hold the government accountable when its negligence contributes to sexual assault or harassment,” Kennedy said.

The legislation is supported by several veterans advocacy groups, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, the Service Women’s Action Network and Protect Our Defenders.

Service members filed 6,973 reports of sexual assault that occurred during military service in fiscal 2024.

Protect Our Defenders, which is representing at least 82 plaintiffs in a case that involves Army gynecologist Maj. Blaine McGraw, who faces 273 charges, including secretly photographing and taping his patients, noted in a media release that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that sexual assault cannot be treated as “incidental” to military service, but that decision only applies to the Ninth Circuit.

“The Military Sexual Trauma Accountability Act would extend that principle to every service member in every court in the country,” Protect Our Defenders advocates said.

According to the group, the Congressional Budget Office estimates 120,000 service members would file successful claims under the proposed bill in its first decade.

Under the provision of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that allowed service members to file medical malpractice claims against military health facilities, some patients have prevailed, although not the legislation’s namesake, Master Sgt. Richard Stayskal, whose claim was denied by the U.S. Army.

According to the Army, since 2020, 351 claims have been filed, with 45 settled or pending settlement and 160 denied. Roughly 146 claims remain open or pending determination.

The service did not provide an amount for the total payout of the 45 claims.

“We recognize that behind every medical claim is a soldier or family member deserving our utmost respect. Consequently, the Army treats the medical claims process not merely as a legal mechanism for addressing grievances, but as a vital catalyst for systemic improvement, utilizing thorough reviews to enforce rigorous safety protocols and uphold our duty to our personnel with the highest level of integrity,” spokeswoman Heather Hagan wrote in an email Monday to Military Times.

Between January 2020 to February 2026, 184 medical malpractice claims were filed against the Air Force, and of those, 25 were approved, including 11 that were related to another claim, for a total reward amount of $2,159,895.93.

The Navy has received 250 medical malpractice claims since 2021 and approved 14, with a total payout of $5,364,882.86.

A Navy spokesman added that the service rejected 138 claims for reasons that included failing to provide required information or filing a claim outside the statue of limitations.

The time frame for filing is two years.

From Jan. 1, 2020, to October 2022, the Navy had received 146 claims from sailors, Marines or their families who sought more than $1.1 billion in compensation. The service denied 58 claims and settled one for $250,000.

Under Feres, service members may not file a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act for injuries or mishaps that are incidental to service including, training accidents and other on-duty harms.

This immunity has previously been extended to military contractors providing services in combat zones as well, but in April, the U.S. Supreme Court upended earlier rulings by affirming an Army soldier’s right to sue a military contractor whose employee detonated a suicide bomb on Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in 2016.

In the decision, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the contractor’s argument — that it had immunity in wartime under federal law that shields the military from being sued for combat-related decisions — swept “too broadly.”

Thomas has argued for years that the Feres decision should be reconsidered. In 2025, he penned a strongly-worded 14-page dissent after the court rejected a case that would challenge the doctrine, calling the law “indefensible” and “senseless as matter of policy.”

Editor’s Note: This story was updated June 30 to include information on malpractice claims filed to the U.S. Navy.

Former Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, now undersecretary of defense for Personnel and Readiness, was initially met with skepticism on the budget cuts at the annual DPAA briefings for the families of those lost during the Vietnam era. Tata sought to mend fences, however, by pledging to work for restoration of about $40 million in DPAA cuts as proposed in a bill currently before Congress.

Tata first had to convince a skeptical audience member who questioned whether he would follow through on his promises.

“I’m up here telling you — please let me go look at the legislation. That’s my commitment,” he said. “I absolutely support increasing the budget for DPAA. The more money, the more questions we can answer for you.”

Tata, who previously commanded the 82^nd and 101^st Airborne Divisions, and was deputy commanding general of the 10^th Mountain Division in Afghanistan, was referring to a bill introduced by Sen. Deb Fisher (R-Neb.) to restore $40 million in funding to the DPAA. The bill was attached to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act.

Budget cuts and fuel shortages caused by the war in Iran already resulted in the cancellation in April of searches for the missing in Laos.

“Due to significant impacts resulting from fuel shortages in Laos, DPAA was forced to cancel four recovery teams that were planned for April 27 through June 10,” a DPAA release at the time stated.

Tata sought to assure the audience of family members that he had the “full unmitigated support” of President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in his new mission, one in which former Army Maj. Gen. Kelly McKeague, director of the DPAA, will report directly to him.

“I will do anything possible to help Kelly and his team,” said Tata, whose past inflammatory remarks, including calling former President Barack Obama a “terrorist leader,” led to the withdrawal of his nomination to the post of under secretary of Defense for Policy during the first Trump administration.

McKeague said the main thing Tata could do would be to lobby for increased funding for the DPAA budget, which has gone from $185 million in Fiscal Year 2025 to $167 million in FY2026, and is projected to be capped at $160 million in FY2027, according too DPAA.

The lack of funding has forced DPAA to cut the number of recovery and investigative teams operating in Vietnam from 27 to seven; from 13 to five in Laos; and from three to one in Cambodia, a DPAA release said.

The $40 million DPAA was seeking from the Fisher bill was a pittance compared to the size of the overall defense budget, which was expected to come in at upwards of $1 trillion, McKeague said.

“It’s chump change, it’s peanuts,” McKeague said. The added funding, meanwhile, would allow him to boost the number of recovery teams.

Tata also touched on another issue that has stymied and infuriated families of the missing for decades — the red tape blocking the declassification of records that could hold information on their loved ones.

Tata said there was “very little reason” why the military “should be withholding any records. I’m super committed” to getting answers, he told the audience.

Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the House and Senate — the “Bring Home Our Heroes Act” — to overcome the bureaucratic hurdles that often make access to information difficult for families.

According to language in the bill, the legislation would “establish an independent Missing Armed Forces and Civilian Personnel Records Review Board to identify missing personnel records, facilitate the transmission and disclosure of these records, and review any decisions by federal agencies to postpone declassification for purposes of protecting sensitive classified material.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) in a statement noted that the “bipartisan Bring Our Heroes Home Act takes meaningful steps to ensure that vital records are preserved, responsibly declassified and made accessible so that families can finally gain the clarity they deserve.”

The Army signed contracts with 62,050 recruits, or 101.72% of its goal, while the Navy brought in 44,096 recruits, exceeding its target by more than 8%. The Air Force recruited 30,166 airmen; the Space Force brought in 819 Guardians; and the Marine Corps met its goal of 26,600 recruits.

Collectively, the five services achieved 103% of their active-duty recruiting mission, according to Pentagon officials.

After several years of recruiting shortfalls, military leaders have highlighted recruiting gains in congressional testimony, public remarks and service announcements.

For new recruits and the units waiting to receive them, however, signing a contract is only the first step. Recruits must still complete initial training, occupational schooling, technical certifications and, in many cases, security clearance requirements before joining the operational force.

As recruiting numbers improve, questions remain about how long it takes recruits to become mission qualified and contribute to military readiness.

How quickly recruits move from accession to operational qualification can affect force generation, unit staffing and long-term readiness planning.

Military leaders routinely report recruiting totals and accession goals, but the time required to transform recruits into fully qualified service members can vary significantly by specialty, training requirements and follow-on certifications. Those timelines help illustrate how quickly recruiting gains translate into trained personnel available to operational units.

Little public info on path to readiness

There is no single timeline for becoming fully mission capable. Training requirements vary significantly by specialty, with some support and administrative fields producing qualified service members in a matter of months, while highly technical and special operations pipelines can take more than a year and, in some cases, several years.

To determine what information is publicly available about how recruits become operationally ready, Military Times reviewed readiness documents, service training materials, congressional reporting requirements and Government Accountability Office reports.

The services routinely publish recruiting totals, accession targets and shipping figures. Army, Navy and Air Force leaders regularly testify before Congress about recruiting performance and often release updates throughout the year.

As of publication, Military Times was unable to identify a publicly available, department-wide metric measuring how long it takes recruits to become fully mission capable.

The absence of publicly available reports does not indicate whether the department tracks those timelines internally. Among the systems DoD uses to assess readiness are the Defense Readiness Reporting System and the Chairman’s Readiness System. Those systems primarily focus on unit personnel, equipment, supplies, training and mission capability.

GAO reviews of military readiness describe DoD readiness assessments that include personnel, maintenance, training and mission-capability measures. In a 2023 review, GAO reported that resource readiness ratings measure the status of personnel, equipment, supplies and training, while mission capability ratings assess whether units can accomplish their designed missions.

Military Times asked the Department of Defense whether it maintains a department-wide metric measuring the average amount of time required to move recruits from accession to operational qualification and, if so, whether that information is reported to Congress or made publicly available. In response, Pentagon Press Operations referred Military Times to the military services for information on accession-to-readiness timelines.

Requests for additional information were also sent to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Space Force regarding whether they track the amount of time required for recruits to become fully mission qualified and whether those data are reported outside the services.

Federal law requires the Defense Department to maintain a comprehensive readiness reporting system.

Under 10 U.S.C. § 117, the secretary of defense must ensure the system objectively measures the capability of the armed forces to carry out national defense missions and includes assessments of unit readiness, training establishments and defense infrastructure. The statute also requires readiness policies to be applied uniformly across the department through a single authoritative reporting system.

The law does not explicitly require reporting on the amount of time needed to move individual recruits from accession to full mission qualification. Military Times was unable to identify publicly available documentation showing that accession-to-readiness timelines are included as a standardized department-wide measure.

Timing differs by service and specialty

Military officials do not generally define readiness solely by branch. Training pipelines are largely determined by occupational specialty.

Training timelines vary widely. Some support specialties may require only a few months of initial training, while combat arms, technical and specialized career fields often require substantially longer pipelines. Highly technical career fields, including cyber, intelligence and nuclear specialties, can require 12 months or more of schooling and follow-on qualifications, depending on specialty and qualification requirements. Special operations pipelines frequently extend well beyond a year.

Army recruits complete Basic Combat Training, followed by Advanced Individual Training in most specialties, while some combat arms occupations use One Station Unit Training, which combines both phases.

Depending on military occupational specialty, follow-on schooling can last from four weeks to more than a year. Infantry recruits complete One Station Unit Training, which typically lasts about 22 weeks.

Marine recruits spend approximately 13 weeks at boot camp before moving to Marine Combat Training or the Infantry Training Battalion, and then occupational specialty schools. Depending on specialty, Marine training pipelines can extend for several additional months.

Navy recruits complete approximately nine weeks at Recruit Training Command before reporting to “A” schools. Job training ranges from several weeks to more than a year, particularly in highly technical communities such as nuclear propulsion.

Air Force recruits complete 52 days, or roughly seven and a half weeks, of Basic Military Training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland before entering technical training. Depending on specialty, technical training can last from several weeks to many months, particularly in cyber and special warfare career fields.

Space Force Guardians attend Air Force Basic Military Training before entering specialized technical pipelines focused on cyber, intelligence and space operations.

Completing occupational training does not necessarily mean a service member is immediately considered fully mission capable. Newly assigned personnel often complete additional local certifications, field exercises and collective training requirements after arriving at operational units.

Navy officials said readiness is generally measured through demonstrated proficiency rather than time spent in training. Capt. Candice Tresch, public affairs director for the Chief of Naval Personnel, said sailors first complete initial training, and then continue qualifying at their commands through warfare qualifications, emergency drills and unit-level training.

“There’s really no specific [timeline], in six months you go from the street to proficient sailor,” Tresch told Military Times. “It’s a continuous progression.”

Tresch said qualification timelines vary by specialty, command and operational requirements. Operational demands can also accelerate or extend training schedules.

“It’s not really time-based. [It’s] can you do the mission?” she said.

Constraints to military training, readiness

Government Accountability Office reports, congressional testimony and publicly available military documents describe factors affecting military readiness and training, including schoolhouse capacity, instructor availability, maintenance requirements, security clearance processing and equipment availability.

Recent GAO reviews identified training limitations, personnel shortages, maintenance delays, sustainment challenges and infrastructure constraints affecting readiness across the force.

One GAO review examining sailor-led ship maintenance found that the Navy did not track and report certain personnel data, including the number of sailors assigned to ships but unavailable for duty. GAO recommended that the Navy collect and report additional personnel information to improve oversight and the quality of information provided to Congress.

The services already report numerous readiness measures, including personnel levels, training status and mission-capability rates. Military Times did not identify publicly available documentation showing that those readiness measures include standardized timelines for moving recruits from accession to full mission qualification.

Congress receives regular updates on recruiting performance and unit readiness. Military Times did not identify publicly available documentation showing whether Congress receives standardized, department-wide data on how long recruits take to become fully mission capable.

The services routinely publish detailed recruiting data, including accession totals, shipping figures and boot camp graduations. Whether DoD also maintains or publicly reports a standardized measure tracking how long recruits take to become fully mission capable remains unclear.

Navy officials told Military Times that readiness is generally measured through demonstrated proficiency rather than a fixed timeline and said qualification timelines vary by specialty, command and operational requirements.

At publication, the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps and Space Force had not responded to Military Times’ requests for comment.