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.

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.

As troops look toward a future when their service might be welcome once again, individuals affected by the policy told Military Times that the year and a half time period upended their lives.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said in a June 1 ruling regarding Talbott v. USA that the Pentagon’s transgender military ban was unconstitutional and that the 30 enlisted plaintiffs involved in the case could continue to serve.

That ruling, which upheld an earlier preliminary injunction and is set to go into effect July 16, applied only to those plaintiffs.

Shortly after, on July 1, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a motion to certify Talbott v. USA as a class action lawsuit, meaning the protections would extend to all transgender service members enlisted in the military.

But not yet.

Before more than the 30 can rejoin, the certification must be complete and the district court must extend the preliminary injunction to the class. The timing of those actions remained uncertain Wednesday.

The U.S. government can fight the ruling and attempt to stall it by petitioning for a rehearing or asking the Supreme Court to intervene, but as of Wednesday, neither have happened.

Transgender civilians looking to enlist are still barred from joining the military.

Cast out

Though transgender troops were optimistic after the June 1 ruling about the future of their service, their path to get right back where they started — being allowed to do their jobs — was grueling.

Military Times spoke with 10 transgender service members who described how the forced separation process and the ensuing administrative leave pipeline pushed them into a perilous mental space.

With their lives on hold, these service members felt depression, anxiety and disillusionment over why an institution to which they had pledged their lives suddenly cast them out, swiftly and seemingly without regard for their psychiatric and professional well-being.

Service members also felt betrayed that the Defense Department used their “gender dysphoria” diagnosis to justify their separation. The term was assigned to service members during previous administrations as a medical diagnosis that allowed them to serve openly as transgender and receive gender-affirming care.

The DoD declined in an email to Military Times to comment on the situation.

Life in limbo

In 2025, after 15 years of service, one transgender U.S. Navy lieutenant was envisioning full retirement, a deserved pension and the health benefits that came along with it.

Just five more years.

Instead, they found themselves at the psychiatric ward at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after checking themself in for suicidal ideation, something they said was abnormal for them.

Eventually, they regained their footing, but the effects were lasting.

“My mental health has just been a dumpster fire,” said the lieutenant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intimate psychological struggles. “This trans ban has made me a completely different person.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 27, 2025, that paved the way for the ousting of any transgender service members with a history of “gender dysphoria.”

Sweeping DoD policy followed shortly thereafter, with service members given the opportunity to either apply for voluntary separation — which incentivized service members through bonus pay to leave on their own accord — or wait for likely involuntary separation through the new policy.

A Feb. 26, 2025, Pentagon memo said that troops with a history of gender dysphoria have medical, surgical and mental health constraints “incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.”

Service members saw it as a thinly veiled attempt to get rid of them.

Some transgender service members — the Pentagon has declined to say how many — were placed on administrative “absence,” or Permissive Temporary Assigned Duty (PTAD).

The administrative leave process, which had no precedent in the military for medical conditions, paid service members to not work and barred them from serving while they awaited their separation date.

The lieutenant was able to medically retire on May 22 after their mental health decline triggered a medical board review that deemed them eligible. They spent 16 years in the Navy, just four shy of the 20 they had aspired to serve.

Petty Officer Second Class Jaylen Joubert, a sailor who served about three years, said he was denied administrative leave altogether.

Joubert’s gender dysphoria diagnosis was given to him in October 2024, and his gender-affirming care was set to begin in February 2025. The transgender military ban executive order halted the process.

After expressing frustration to his commanding officer for being denied PTAD, he said he was involuntarily separated on April 17, 2026, due to conditions not amounting to a disability, but related to mental health and mental turmoil.

A loss of direction

Senior Master Sgt. Jamie Hash joined the military to be a part of something bigger than herself.

In 2025, with 13 years in the U.S. Air Force already under her belt, she had planned to serve at least 20 years and retire. So when Trump rolled out the ban and DoD policy ensued, she decided to reject the voluntary separation process and fight to remain.

“I don’t want to leave based on something that’s not specific to my performance or capability,” Hash said.

She has been on administrative leave since June 2025, and the leave has impacted her professional goals.

Hash had been awarded a prestigious three-year legislative fellowship in summer 2024 that allowed her to work as a liaison between the Defense Department and Congress, but the opportunity was jeopardized with the ban.

Though technically enrolled in the fellowship program, she wasn’t allowed to show up and take advantage of any its resources or perform any duties during her forced leave.

This loss of direction and purpose was commonplace for many.

For Master Sgt. Sabrina Bruce, who served in the Air Force for eight years and the Space Force for four, the military provided a second lease on life, as well as a support network that made her feel whole.

She’d realized her worth. But now that community was gone.

“Joining the military was the best thing that ever happened to me,” said Bruce. “Before the military, no one saw potential in me.”

Depression and suicidal thoughts plagued her for several months during the administrative leave process, which finally ended in December 2025 when she officially voluntarily separated.

Army Maj. Erica Vandal, who separated on Jan. 1, after nearly 15 years of service, described the administrative leave process as a “state of limbo.”

Vandal said she was still figuring out who she was as a person outside of the military. She was currently filling the void with advocacy work, she said, and continuing to search for something that fulfilled a sense of purpose similar to what the military offered.

Nicolas Talbott, the lead plaintiff in Talbott v. USA — the high-profile case challenging the ban — joined the Army National Guard in March 2024 and commissioned as a second lieutenant.

It took him nearly a decade to enlist after legal battles and the shifting policies of different presidential administrations, including both of Trump’s.

Talbott told Military Times that serving his country was the best job he’d ever had, combining every field of study he was passionate about: national security, counter terrorism and high-stakes environments that require precise decisions.

But after serving less than one year, his future in the military was once again cast into doubt.

“Stuck in a constant state of limbo has become the norm for me,” Talbott said.

The process wasn’t only grating for his mental health, but difficult for those around him too, including family members. They’d witnessed him work hard for everything he’d gotten, and then they watched as he found himself in what they viewed as an unfair situation.

Grooming, uniform standards

Several service members described administrative leaves and separation processes that felt designed to disrespect and humiliate them, as it barred them from donning the uniform they’d worn since their transitions.

The military made them adhere to the grooming standards of their gender assigned at birth during retirement ceremonies and graduations from prestigious military schools, they said.

U.S. Space Force Col. Bree Fram officially retired on Dec. 31, 2025, after serving for nearly 23 years. She opted to voluntarily separate once she realized the Trump administration would no longer allow her to serve.

Fram was the first openly serving transgender service member to be promoted to the rank of colonel. Despite the momentous achievement, she wasn’t allowed to wear her uniform during her retirement ceremony on Jan. 8, 2026.

Inexplicably, the DoD changed her military records on Dec. 1, 2025, to reflect her gender assigned at birth, not her actual gender, Fram said. Had she walked across the stage in the female uniform she’d been wearing for years, she would’ve been brought up on charges because it would now violate Uniform Code of Military Justice regulations barring opposite-gender uniforms.

Instead, she wore a business suit.

“These were the uniforms that we bled into, that we sweat into, that we were denied even that small dignity of wearing,” Fram said.

Her service dress uniform and boots were placed on a table off to the side as she walked across the stage.

About two weeks before her gender was denied publicly, she dealt with what she said was another slight. She was summoned to the Pentagon by a lieutenant general deputy chief of space operations.

In the meeting, which lasted 15 minutes, the lieutenant general told Fram that the official support she’d requested for her retirement ceremony — which included an honor guard and a band, both very common for ceremonies — would not be granted because there were concerns it would have the appearance of being political.

The officer then reminded Fram that she was still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which Fram found unusual.

“I took this very much as a warning or a veiled threat, to be be silent, to not talk about these things,” Fram said.

Army Infantry Major Kara Corcoran has served for over 18 years and is currently involved in the involuntary separation process.

In May 2025, she graduated from the School of Advanced Military Studies after completing an esteemed one-year master’s degree program that trained her to become an operational planner.

But she was informed by her chain of command that senior leadership had prohibited her from crossing the stage with her peers during graduation unless she adhered to male regulations and standards, in keeping with the new DoD policy.

“Cruelty was the point,” Corcoran said of the rule.

She was given an option to have a separate ceremony, or just be given her diploma instead.

She borrowed an old friend’s male uniform, cut her long hair into a pixie cut the day before the graduation ceremony and walked across the stage.

“You’re not gonna take away something I’ve earned,” Corcoran said. “If you think that cutting my hair is going to affect my identity, you don’t understand the strength and resilience of transgender service members.”

Bait and switch

Nearly all of the transgender service members who spoke to Military Times transitioned after joining the military, but in order to begin gender-affirming care, they had to receive a diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” from a doctor.

Gender dysphoria is defined by the Mayo Clinic as a “feeling of distress that can happen when a person’s gender identity differs from the sex assigned at birth.” But the clinic also notes that while some transgender people experience gender dysphoria, others feel comfortable with their bodies and gender identities.

“Not all transgender or gender diverse people experience gender dysphoria,” the clinic says.

The diagnosis was now being used to cast out transgender troops.

Many of the service members who spoke to Military Times said they either never had gender dysphoria but agreed to the diagnosis as a way to receive gender-affirming care, or they had experienced the feeling in the past but had not after transitioning.

Using the diagnosis against them was an unfair bait and switch, many said.

Staff Sgt. Athena N. Knight served in the U.S. Marine Corps for 14 years and opted for voluntary separation. She was honorably discharged on June 30, 2026.

Knight said she never had clinical gender dysphoria and didn’t meet the criteria for the ban.

“I don’t have gender dysphoria, I’m just transgender,” Knight said.

She was given the diagnosis under Defense Department Instruction 1300.28 “In-Service Transition for Transgender Service Members,” but explained it was because it provided the only path to receive necessary gender-affirming care.

The difference was similar to the distinction between someone being depressed and clinically depressed, Knight said. They’re not the same.

Someone could experience symptoms of gender dysphoria and not have clinical gender dysphoria.

Using gender dysphoria to expel someone from the military not only confused the service members it affected, but it also didn’t make sense legally, advocates said.

“There’s not one other medical condition that results in automatic discharge from the military,” said Shannon Minter, who works for the National Center for Lesbian Rights and is the lead attorney in the Talbott v. USA case.

Master Sgt. Logan Ireland, who’s served for 15 years in the Air Force, said he’s never felt dysphoric about his gender.

But based off DoD policy under the Trump administration, he faced separation despite wanting to continue serving.

Ireland initially applied for retirement after the Air Force extended the possibility of early retirement for transgender service members with 15 to 18 years of service.

He received retirement orders from the Air Force in June. But then, several months later, the Air Force issued a memorandum saying his application for early retirement was denied. Voluntary separation was offered, but Ireland didn’t want it at that point.

He is suing the Trump administration with other service members from the Air Force and Space Force over what they say is a loss of early retirement benefits.

“I had to get the diagnosis of gender dysphoria in order to continue serving in the military authentically as male,” Ireland said. “So for me it was a checkbox.”

Even though he had the diagnosis, it was easily curable through hormones and living as his authentic self, which he said he was doing.

“I’m a male,” Ireland said. “I live happily, healthfully as a male. There’s zero issue with me having a gender dysphoria diagnosis in a past medical history, because it’s already been corrected.”

Question of return

The Talbott v. USA ruling is set to go into effect Thursday, but if the class action is certified, it remains unclear what the protections mean for service members who voluntarily separated but want to return now that the ban was ruled unconstitutional.

Regardless, transgender troops have expressed mixed feelings about returning to an organization that rejected their service to their country.

“I don’t think I’ll get back in uniform unless something drastic happens,” Knight said.

She expressed concern about having to return the money she was given by the military as an incentive to voluntarily separate. She also wasn’t sure about going through a potentially complicated reenlistment procedure, given the disability rating she received upon exiting the service.

The Navy lieutenant who sought help at Walter Reed said they didn’t want to rejoin the military after it turned its back on them. But at the same time, serving another four years would get them to 20 and allow them to receive a significant upgrade in retirement benefits.

As of last week, they were considering all their options.

Corcoran was unequivocal in her commitment to returning — if given the chance.

“I want to finish out my 20 years and do my job, and be able to be a productive teammate,” Corcoran said. “The whole point of why I joined the military was to serve my country.”

Four thousand soldiers in Area North Barracks are opening windows, turning on fans or using other tools to beat the heat while the base grapples with pump issues.

On July 10, deep-well pumps supporting Army installations in central and northern Oahu started experiencing problems.

According to the garrison, only one pump is currently pushing water to the surface. To maintain essential water services, water chiller systems have been turned off. Without the chiller systems — which make up almost 40% of the daily water use — the barracks do not receive central air conditioning. The incident was initially reported by Task & Purpose.

According to the National Weather Service, temperatures for the remainder of the week range from the mid-70s to the upper-80s.

Units are able to move troops to MWR facilities with central air conditioning, according to the service, but as of Sunday, no units had done so.

Repairs are underway, but an exact timeline for when the pumps will be fully functional again was not provided.

The cause of the issues has not been definitively identified, however “age and extreme heat due to ventilation system repairs are believed to be part of the cause,” said Nathan Wilkes, the garrison’s external communications chief.

The installation is prioritizing keeping safe drinking water available.

Barracks and residential housing have access to drinkable water, and plumbing and sanitation systems are operational. Wilkes also said the installation has paused irrigation systems pulling from Area North water supply.

Family housing still has air conditioning and water access, Wilkes added.

The garrison’s commander, Col. Rachel Sullivan, was scheduled to host a town hall on the installation’s Facebook page on Tuesday.

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.”

The restructuring will also create the Army’s first operational unmanned aircraft system, or UAS, battalion at Fort Hood, where new hangars will support the larger HADES jet aircraft.

The move will begin in Fiscal Year 2027, when the brigade headquarters and two battalions relocate to the installation, followed by the remaining battalion and companies the following fiscal year.

The Army said the relocation stems from a 2018 operational gap analysis that found its legacy aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or AISR, fleet lacked necessary range and sensor capabilities.

“HADES will enable the Army and Joint Force to conduct long-range sensing to enable the execution of long-range precision fires,” said Maj. Gen. Timothy Brown, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command.

HADES is a crewed, next-generation AISR system that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to process data, the release said. The system will be fielded aboard new jet aircraft.

The service plans to purchase up to 11 custom Bombardier Global 6500 jets for the HADES program, Military Times reported in January. According to an Army Request for Information, the new jets must be able to fly at a sustained speed of 450 knots at an altitude of 51,000 feet. They must also be able to carry a minimum payload of 14,000 pounds for at least 12 hours.

HADES’s introduction follows the Army’s retirement of approximately 60 turboprop ISR aircraft. The Army said it is “pursuing” ATHENA-R/S jet platforms in the interim until HADES is fielded.

According to the Army, the changes will increase personnel at Fort Hood by 1,228. It will also decrease personnel at Fort Bliss, Texas, by 242; Fort Gordon, Georgia, by 638; Fort Stewart, Georgia, by 186; and Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, by 162.

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.”

Born in Breslau, Germany (present day Wrocław, Poland), the Jewish-born Cohn and his family found refuge in the United States in 1938. Cohn was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943, just one month after his 18th birthday.

Sworn in as an American citizen during basic training, Cohn was originally assigned to the 87th Infantry Division before receiving orders as an infantry replacement and was sent to England, France and then all the way to the front line in Belgium.

While stationed near Bastogne, despite trying to distance himself from his native tongue, Army officials learned German was Cohn’s first language. He was subsequently plucked from the infantry ranks and sent to Le Vesinet near Paris. Unlike the Ritchie Boys — U.S. Army recruits who possessed German, Italian and Japanese language skills and immigrants who had fled Europe and Asia for the U.S. — who received a minimum of eight weeks of training, Cohn was slated for a two-week course which was then cut down even further.

“I had one week of training, and I became a full-fledged intelligence agent, well-trained,” quipped Cohn.

“The first night was the scariest night of my life,” Cohn recalled in a conversation with the Friends of the National WWII Memorial. “Not because we were bombarded or anything. Or shot at. It was all the rumors that were coming in.”

Speaking to an audience during a Nov. 13, 2024, conversation with historian and author Alex Kershaw, Cohn recalled, “I was given a rifle and a flashlight and told to go to a small dirt access road and make sure to not let any Germans come in. So, I get in the middle of road, and I stand there and a vehicle comes and I halt, and the driver asks, ‘What the heck you doing there?’ I say, ‘I’m making sure you’re not a German.’ He said, ‘if I was a German, you’d be dead.’

“I thought that was a good point. I go into a ditch in the road. The next vehicle comes. They don’t hear me. They go right by. I’m not doing my job. Now, what am I supposed to do? I’m up. I’m down. I don’t know what to do. Thank goodness around midnight they called me back in.”

For Cohn, the Bulge would hardly be his last time in combat. He saw action during the Rhineland campaign and was among the U.S. soldiers who met the Soviets at the river Elbe in Magdeburg, Germany.

Post-war, Cohn joined the Army Reserve and commissioned as a second lieutenant, deploying to Korea and Vietnam before retiring as a colonel in 1978.

Cohn’s celebration of life will take place on July 15 at the Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C.

The mission to China was expected to last through early September, with an investigative team working in Hunan province while field operations are conducted in Guangshi province bordering Vietnam, according to DPAA officials.

The presence of a new recovery team in China marked another milestone in the slow evolution of China’s cooperation on the MIA issue since agreeing in 2008 to give limited access to records of the People’s Liberation Army that might aid in searches.

Since the 2008 agreement, there have been about 10 searches in China, and in February 2024 China acknowledged for the first time that Chinese specialists were assisting in the site surveys.

“Over the years, committed to the humanitarian spirit, the Chinese side has provided assistance for the U.S. military to search for the remains of its missing personnel in China,” Zhang Xiaogang, a Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman, said at a regular press briefing in February 2024.

Currently, there are believed to be about 678 unresolved cases of missing U.S. personnel in China from World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War and the Vietnam War. Over the years, DPAA officials have made repeated pledges to reduce the number of unresolved cases and get as many answers as possible to the families of the missing but those promises have now run up against the hard numbers in the defense budget.

At an annual briefing for the families last month, DPAA Director Kelly McKeague detailed the funding shortfalls in his remarks to the families and in a series of charts. DPAA’s budget of $185 million for Fiscal Year 2025 was reduced to $167 million in FY26, and was projected to come down again to $160 million in FY27.

The result would be that the 27 recovery and investigative teams that were in operation in Vietnam in FY2025 would be reduced to a total of seven in the projected FY2027 DPAA budget, McKeague said.

McKeague also told the families that DPAA effectively had a new boss. McKeague would remain as director but he would report directly to controversial retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Tata has called former President Barack Obama a “terrorist leader” and said he believed Obama was a Muslim.

In an interview with Military Times, McKeague pledged to work closely with Tata and said he had urged the families to press their representatives to support a bill proposed by Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., to boost the DPAA’s budget by $40 million.

The bill has been attached to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act policy measure but there is no guarantee that the money will actually be appropriated.

Over the years, the recovery missions in China have had limited success, but McKeague pointed to what had been the unresolved case of Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Morton Sher, of Greenville, South Carolina.

Sher died at age 22 when his Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter was shot down on Aug. 20, 1943, and crashed in Hengyang City, Hunan province.

At the time of the crash, local villagers put up a makeshift headstone with Chinese markings at the site of the crash. Despite this, a postwar search proved unsuccessful and Sher was officially classified him as killed in action and unrecoverable.

At the time of the crash, Sher was flying for the Army Air Forces 76th Fighter Squadron, 23rd Fighter Group, 14th Air Force, where many of the Flying Tiger veterans had gone after the volunteers disbanded.

According to the Defense Department, while flying in October 1942, engine trouble forced Sher to bring his aircraft down near a Chinese village, where the villagers greeted him with celebration and ordered up a feast, with Sher providing the entertainment. They later escorted him through nearby mountain villages back to his base.

Sher later recounted the experience in an Army newsletter that was picked up by the Associated Press: “I sang a few American songs for them and they were highly pleased. The banquet turned out to be one of the biggest surprises of the trip.”

In a letter home the day before he was shot down, Sher told his parents that he was turning down a chance to come home and take a job as an instructor. “I let another pilot take that instructing job, for I find things too exciting here to leave right now,” Sher said in the letter.

Sher’s remains were eventually identified on June 11, 2025.

In a statement, Air Force Col. Brett Waring, commander of the 476th Fighter Group at Moody AFB, said that “None of us knew Morton Sher. We didn’t know his name until recently, but as soon as we learned of his coming home, we leapt at the opportunity to honor him and support his family. The bond that we share never dies, and no one is left behind or ever forgotten.”

“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.”

Munkhzaya, a finance technician assigned to the 125th Finance Battalion, 8th Theater Sustainment Command, returned to Mongolia for the multinational exercise hosted by the Mongolian Armed Forces and co-sponsored by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

The exercise brings together military personnel from 18 nations to improve United Nations peacekeeping training.

“Khaan Quest gives service members from multiple nations the opportunity to meet each other, share cultures and build relationships,” Munkhzaya said in a release.

Because of his fluency in both English and Mongolian, Munkhzaya was selected to support the exercise by helping bridge communication gaps between forces.

“I explain why the U.S. Army does things a certain way, and I also explain the Mongolian perspective,” Munkhzaya said. “It helps connect both forces.”

While participating in the event, Munkhzaya reenlisted in the U.S. Army during a ceremony held inside a traditional Mongolian ger, or yurt, at Five Hills Training Area, on July 2, 2026.

The people in Mongolia welcomed Munkhzaya back home in a U.S. uniform.

“They thanked me for sharing the Mongolian side with the U.S. Army, and that made me feel comfortable coming back this year,” Munkhzaya added.

Munkhzaya said he grew up wanting to study in the United States. After graduating from high school in Ulaanbaatar, he moved to California alone, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics with a minor in business from California State University, Sacramento.

Although he had opportunities for a civilian career, Munkhzaya wanted a different path.

“I joined the Army because I wanted the military lifestyle,” Munkhzaya said. “I wanted more discipline. I thought it would help me grow as a person.”

In a statement on social media, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said “carry on Patriots,” after announcing that “the suspension of all involved South Carolina pilots has been lifted.”

Late Thursday evening, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted “We’ll fix this. Carry on, Patriots,” in response to a video of the incident posted by a social media user whose caption expressed surprise over the suspension.

The flight was part of a July 4th holiday demonstration called “Salute from the Shore.”

When Military Times reached out to the Army National Guard for additional details on Friday, they deferred to Parnell’s statement.

In a Thursday statement posted to social media, the South Carolina Army National Guard said that the Apache pilots’ suspension was “a routine, non-punitive safety measure - not a disciplinary action,” and that the crew members were in good standing and continued to report for duty.

“In military aviation, temporarily pausing flight duties during an investigation is a standard safety procedure that protects both our aircrews and the public,” the Guard said.

U.S. Rep. Russell Fry, R-South Carolina, lauded the Pentagon’s statement clearing the pilots, after seemingly blaming onlookers for filming the event. “Breaking: America’s most advanced attack helicopter has one unexpected weakness—A beach Karen with a phone," he said in a Thursday statement.

The Pentagon’s move comes months after Hegseth seemingly lifted the suspension of pilots filmed hovering near Kid Rock’s Tennessee mansion in April.

The New York Times reported that Hegseth and Kid Rock flew around the Washington D.C., area in an Apache the following month and lawmakers have since failed to get answers into why the earlier suspension was lifted.

The directive, signed by Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, limits official social media accounts to a set list of higher-level organizations, effectively ending the digital footprints of many subordinate units.

In a Wednesday statement, the Army said the move was intended to “ensure a clear, unified voice, reduce operational risk, and improve information access for Soldiers, Families and the public.”

The service said the policy does not end documentation at the unit level and that content will be published through higher-level accounts and official Army platforms.

Exceptions to policy may be considered, the memorandum said, if they “demonstrate a mission critical imperative unmet by existing accounts or other means of communication (such as website post, email, or direct engagement).”

The Army said the policy did not affect soldiers’ personal social media accounts.

The move follows a broader push across the Defense Department to centralize military communications. Last month, Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao announced a service-wide communications strategy, arguing that the Navy is “in a fight for the narrative” against its adversaries.

The Pentagon has also sought to impose restrictions on journalists, leading The New York Times to sue over what it described as unconstitutional restrictions on the press.

Correction: A previous version of the story incorrectly stated that bases and recruiting stations were not included in the list. The story has been updated.

The USS Constitution, named by George Washington and built with copper bolts forged by Paul Revere, was launched in 1797. The three-masted heavy frigate earned is famous nickname — “Old Ironsides” — during the War of 1812 after an astonished American sailor reportedly watched British cannonballs bounce harmlessly off the ship’s exceptionally thick oak hull and shouted, “Huzzah, her sides are made of iron!” according to the National Park Service.

While the wooden ship remains a symbol of durability and strength, its longevity would not be possible without a special 40 acres of land set aside for the care and maintenance of the ship from Naval Support Activity Crane.

According to National Geographic, NSA Crane dates back to the Franklin D. Roosevelt New Deal-era, when the U.S. government, in the depths of the Great Depression, purchased unfarmable land across the U.S. and reforested them for the purpose of creating jobs. NSA Crane was among the plots of land purchased by the FDR administration, and its 40,000 acres of hills was soon swarming with workers planting a wide variety of oak, hickory, poplar, maple and ash trees across the acres of Crane.

The onset of the war in 1939 prompted the U.S. Navy — whose weapons and munitions at the time were housed in Delaware — to seek a location that a potential enemy could not strike by sea.

Central Indiana was the ticket and so the government purchased another 30,000 acres surrounding NSA Crane.

The first administrative buildings on the base, according to Nat Geo, were dedicated in December 1941 — just a few days before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

But it wasn’t until the nation’s bicentennial in 1976 that NSA Crane reentered the Navy’s consciousness.

With attention returning to the storied, yet aging USS Constitution, NSA Crane’s concentration of high-quality white oak caught the Navy’s eye.

The oak forest is one of the few in the United States that contains centuries-old oak long and thick enough to provide the necessary lumber for the hull of the hulking Constitution.

Mature trees anywhere from 110 to 125 years old and 120 to 130 feet tall are needed for the ship that requires near constant maintenance. Its two most recent dry dock restorations — concluding in 2017 — required the felling of 114 white oaks.

Today, 40 acres of the park have been dedicated to keeping the warship afloat, where much of the timber is harvested, and it remains the only forest in the U.S. that is owned and managed by the Navy to support its fleet of old wooden ships.

The luscious fruit’s lure was seemingly so overpowering for one young black bear this week that it abandoned the wilderness and ventured through the sliding doors of an Alaskan commissary.

In a video widely circulated on social media, the hungry bear sauntered around the front section of the Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson’s Exchange, or JBER, shopping mall at 9:00 am before settling on a peach, savoring its ambrosial succulence and promptly leaving the building.

Maria Galvez, a spokesperson for the 673rd Air Base Wing, confirmed the unconventional shopper’s excursion, which was first reported by Task & Purpose, and said that “Conservation Law Enforcement officers were notified and arrived on scene to shoo the bear towards Ship Creek and deeper into the wood line.”

According to the post’s wildlife program manager, the bear was simply foraging in a non-aggressive manner.

Galvez said the base replaced all dumpsters with bear resistant variants in May and has since had fewer calls about wild animals.

Still, according to Conservation Law Enforcement Officer Marshall Hickman, seven bears had to be euthanized on JBER so far this year when they became habituated to human activity and thus posed a threat.

The video comes just months after two soldiers were injured by a bear during a land navigation exercise in a remote training area on the post.

A day after the incident, The Alaska Department of Fish and Game said the encounter seemed “to be a defensive attack by a bear recently emerged from a den.”

In 2022, a soldier was attacked by a bear near the same base and subsequently died from his injuries.

The process, demonstrated earlier this year at the Army’s Benét Laboratories in New York, uses electrochemical machining, or ECM, to carve the barrel’s 48 spiral grooves without the cutting tool ever touching the steel.

Officials said the no-contact technique leaves the bore in ideal condition for bonding a protective coating that shields the barrel from the extreme heat and erosion generated during firing.

“The protective coating applied to the bore is the primary defense against the extreme thermal and erosive environment inside a firing cannon,” said Christopher Mulligan, a materials engineer at Benét Laboratories.

“Without a perfect bond, the protective coating would fail under the stresses generated by high-energy propellants used in modern artillery and quickly degrade the underlying barrel steel,” he added.

Instead of cutting hardened steel with conventional tooling, ECM uses a cathode cutter, salt water and low-voltage electricity to dissolve metal. In a single pass, the process cuts all 48 rifling grooves inside an M284 cannon barrel.

Christopher Humiston, ECM project lead at Benét Laboratories, called the process “a significant advancement in cannon production” because the cutting tool experiences virtually no wear, reducing maintenance costs and the need for replacement tooling.

He added that ECM also allows engineers to produce complex rifling profiles that were previously impossible to manufacture, including grooves with varying depths in hardened steel.

Army officials said the technology was developed through a partnership between Benét Laboratories, part of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Armaments Center, and its industry partners.

The Army plans to install an ECM machine on the production line at Watervliet Arsenal, a more than 200-year-old facility and the Army’s only manufacturer of cannon barrels.

As demand surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Congress approved $1.7 billion to modernize the arsenal and expand its production capacity.

The ruling marked the end of a yearslong effort to return him to military custody.

Spc. Oliver E. Board, 33, disappeared after the Army charged him with fraudulently procuring family separation pay, which is a monthly allowance to help families offset expenses when a service member’s job forces them to be apart for over 30 days.

At the same time, Board was also under investigation for having lewd communications with a 14-year-old, a charge that was withdrawn after the victim decided not to participate.

A military judge sentenced Board to 326 days of incarceration and a $3,925 fine with 180 more days in jail if left unpaid. He was given a bad conduct discharge from the service.

Board will be jailed at the Midwest Joint Regional Confinement Facility at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the Army announced.

The United Kingdom Metropolitan Police took the fugitive into custody after receiving tips from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children that Board had been associated with possession and distribution of child pornography in 2024.

In December 2025, Board was returned to the U.S. military and was subsequently court-martialed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for desertion and the other charges. The office said the child pornography allegation is under consideration for a potential second trial.

At the time of his desertion, Board was an activated reservist who was demobilizing from Title 10 orders. He was recalled to duty due to the investigation and assigned to the General Fort Leonard Wood Community Hospital.

The Army Criminal Investigation Division investigated the case, the office said, also thanking law enforcement in the United Kingdom.

Board’s sentence follows the conviction of another former U.S. soldier for desertion — in addition to rape and indecent assault — after living on the run for nearly three decades.

Barely a year later, the California native found himself part of a small reaction force advancing through thick jungle near Duc Phong in Phuoc Long Province, in response to Vietnamese communist soldiers threatening another American platoon. What followed was a counterattack that put D Company in jeopardy, in which Alvarado played a vital role.

As his platoon moved toward the ongoing fight, Alvarado detected enemy movement and opened fire. In spite his swift reaction, he and his troopers found themselves pinned down by heavy small arms fire and blocked from joining the endangered platoon they’d come to assist. It soon became clear that a large, well-armed component of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) was targeting his platoon for overrunning as well as the men they were trying to rescue.

Alvarado’s next action was to charge forward through a storm of machine gun fire in order to engage the enemy. Suddenly, a grenade exploded nearby, wounding and temporarily stunning him. Regaining his wits, however, he killed the North Vietnamese grenadier just as another barrage wounded him again. Nevertheless, he continued his forward crawl under heavy fire to pull several wounded comrades back within the perimeter they had hastily formed.

Evaluating the situation and deciding his unit needed to break away from the larger enemy force, he began maneuvering forward alone to cover the disengagement.

Although he was knocked to the ground repeatedly by exploding satchel charges, he continued advancing and firing, using his rifle and grenades to silence several PAVN positions, including a machine gun nest. Taking shelter in a dangerous forward position, he persistently laid suppressive fire on the enemy until the communists, rather than his platoon, broke contact.

Just afterward, however, his comrades-in-arms discovered that he had succumbed from his wounds. He left behind a wife and daughter.

The engagement at Duc Phong cost D Company four men killed and 26 wounded. Alvarado’s all-out, ultimately sacrificial role in saving his platoon from possible disaster did not go unnoticed among his fellow Air Cav troops.

“I was Leonard’s squad leader,” remarked William Lytle during an interview. “Us, as surviving members of the 2nd platoon, never forgot him on this day.”

Alvarado was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, as well as the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Air Medal and Army Commendation Medal with “V” device.

A re-evaluation of his record, however, made it clear that his sacrifice had been underrated. With the passing of the Defense Authorization Act, his daughter, Lenora, was called to the White House in Washington, D.C. on March 18, 2014, to see his DSC upgraded and receive the Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama. His remains rest in his home turf, at the Greenlawn Cemetery in Bakersfield.

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.”

That’s according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, which found that three versions of the augmented-reality “all-weather fighting goggle” developed between 2018 and 2025 were deemed not ready for fielding and will stay in a warehouse rather than ever reaching soldiers.

The news, tucked within the GAO’s annual weapons systems assessment, was first reported this month by Task and Purpose. The watchdog agency did note that the vision of IVAS is not completely dead; the prototype will be transitioned to a separate effort with similar goals related to improving soldier awareness, and development will begin again. But that leaves almost 10,000 pricey headsets that appear bound for shelf real estate next to the Ark of the Covenant.

“An Army evaluation reported that soldiers found the headsets difficult to wear and noted that they did not perform better than existing equipment,” the GAO report said. “As a result, the nearly 10,000 units that were produced are obsolete and will remain in storage.”

Those 10,000 units include versions 1.0 and 1.1 of IVAS. Version 1.2, which “was expected to address reliability and wearability issues identified in the previous versions such as comfort and low-light performance,” according to the report, will be used instead to inform the new rapid prototyping effort, known as Soldier Borne Mission Command.

Some 400 of the version 1.2 goggles will inform the design of SBMC, in a contract now held by Anduril, who received funding from IVAS in April after the Army reprogrammed the money. Microsoft had previously held the contract.

Anduril announced it had gotten the $159 million contract award for initial prototyping last September, saying the award represented “the largest effort of its kind to equip every soldier with superhuman perception and decision-making capabilities—fusing the best of night vision, augmented reality, and AI into a single system.”

Like IVAS, SBMC aims to overcome the challenges built into legacy night-vision goggles, including lack of a common networked picture and battlefield data integration, resulting in siloed information.

Anduril’s solution, which it touted as developed with the benefit of 260,000 hours of soldier input from the IVAS program, purports to give troops “superhero-like abilities” with an augmented-reality battlefield picture overlaid onto advanced night vision capabilities.

Yet despite the billions invested in IVAS over seven years, the end result was worse than the legacy headsets it purported to replace, investigators found.

“While IVAS used limited elements of leading practices in its prior efforts, the program’s minimal implementation of these contributed to IVAS concluding with no fielded capability. Problems that users reported with the 1.0 and 1.1 versions were not adequately addressed in 1.2,” the report found. “These included poor performance in low-light conditions and the added weight on users’ helmets. The program’s failure to adequately incorporate user feedback into design updates resulted in a product that users report is less useful than legacy equipment.”

Investigators faulted the program for moving into production with “limited evidence from testing in an operational environment” to show that the goggles actually did what the soldiers needed them to do. After a wave of negative feedback on the 1.0 version of IVAS, the program did not even conduct operational testing on the 1.1 version, the report said.

“This runs counter to our prior work, which found that systems-integrated testing in an operational environment helps ensure product designs meet user needs before significant funding is spent on production,” the report stated.

Moving forward, according to the report, the new contractor, Anduril, will conduct continuous operational assessments on the latest version of the goggles, getting user feedback from brigades via the Army.

“The program expects to use these assessments to collect feedback and inform the first phase of SBMC, which aligns with leading practices to make improvements in subsequent iterations,” GAO investigators said.

After a day in which huge crowds mourned Iran’s slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the holy city of Qom, U.S. Central Command announced that it had begun a series of strikes intended to impose what it called heavy costs. “Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire,” CENTCOM said on X.

Iranian media reported explosions early Wednesday local time in the southern port city of Sirik, on Qeshm Island, and in Bandar Abbas. The reports said strikes hit a commercial pier in Sirik and fishing piers in both Sirik and Bandar Abbas.

A U.S. official told Reuters that strikes targeted Iranian air defense systems, coastal surveillance systems, surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles and drone launch sites.

The incidents were only the latest threat to the ceasefire agreement the U.S. and Iran struck last month, pausing the conflict that started in February with U.S. and Israeli strikes across the Islamic Republic. In a potentially major blow to that agreement, Washington moved on Tuesday to withdraw a key concession that had allowed Iran to sell oil on international markets.

Oil prices rose more than 3% after the U.S. announced the move.

A U.S. official said earlier negotiators continued to work in good faith toward a final agreement with Iran. But control of the strait has given Tehran immense leverage, effectively allowing it to force a stalemate with the world’s most powerful military. Analysts say Tehran uses attacks on ships to underscore that leverage as it negotiates a long-term peace deal with the U.S.

Under the interim U.S.-Iran agreement, the U.S. Treasury issued a June 22 general license to allow the sale of crude oil and petrochemical and petroleum products of Iranian origin through August 21. In revoking that license on Tuesday, it gave Iran until July 17 to wind down any transactions.

Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the move as a breach of the framework agreement to end the war and said Washington would bear responsibility for the consequences.

The ministry said early on Wednesday that Iran would take any measure it deemed necessary to safeguard its interests and national security.

Qatar blamed Iran for attacking the vessels, including the huge Qatari liquefied natural gas tanker, the Al Rekayyat, which reported being struck overnight by a drone that caused a fire in its engine room. The crew were safe and being evacuated.

A Saudi-flagged crude oil tanker, believed to be the supertanker Wedyan, was also damaged off Oman, maritime security sources said. The cause was not immediately clear.

Qatar’s foreign ministry said it had summoned Iran’s deputy ambassador and handed him a protest note following the attack on the tanker.

Iran’s foreign ministry said Qatar’s accusations were perplexing and that Tehran was diligently fulfilling its commitments but asserted that commercial vessels faced risks for using routes not coordinated with Iran.

A second U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said initial indications were that Iran had fired at three commercial vessels.

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS TAKE TO STREETS IN QOM

Iran’s clerical rulers aim to install a permanent system to collect fees in what would amount to a huge shift of the balance of power in a region where Washington has long acted as guarantor of security.

At home, the leadership has used the mourning for Khamenei that began last week to show its control after Khamenei was killed with his daughter, granddaughter, son-in-law and daughter-in-law on the war’s first day.

The caskets of the slain leader and family were driven through the streets of the seminary city of Qom on Tuesday, where many hundreds of thousands of people carried flags and banners comparing Khamenei to revered Shi’ite martyrs.

In chants they vowed to avenge Khamenei. Some bore placards and banners reading “KILL TRUMP”.

Later on Tuesday Iranian state media showed what it said was footage of an airplane carrying Khamenei’s coffin at the airport of the Shi’ite holy shrine city of Najaf in neighboring Iraq.

TRUMP: ‘MAKE A DEAL OR WE’RE GOING TO FINISH THE JOB’

The ceasefire was intended to provide a 60-day window for negotiations on a permanent agreement, but indirect talks in Qatar ended last week with no sign of headway.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to resume bombing, most recently on Monday when he told reporters in the Oval Office: “We’re either going to make a deal or we’re going to finish the job..... We can knock down their bridges in one hour, we can knock out their energy supply.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said that under the terms of the interim ceasefire memorandum, negotiations on the final deal would “not commence if threats continue”.

In launching the war four months ago, Trump said his aims were to destroy Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, end its ability to threaten its neighbors and create conditions for Iranians to topple their leaders.

None of those goals has been met, although Washington says a permanent deal will halt what it says is an Iranian program that could make a nuclear bomb, which Iran says it never sought.

During May demonstrations at Camp Grayling, Michigan soldiers remotely fired the Autonomous Volcano for the first time before later having it lay two separate minefields without human assistance, Picatinny Arsenal announced Tuesday.

The test represents the Army’s latest move to modernize legacy equipment, systems tactics and munitions with emerging technology. In the combat engineering world, the service is experimenting with using unmanned aerial systems to drop grappling hooks, and it is trying to send drones — instead of humans — into the breach.

The Army has also tested autonomous vehicles for mortar resupply and autonomous boats for information gathering.

The autonomous Volcano variant paired the service’s decades-old M139 Volcano dispenser with a driverless Palletized Load System truck — an upgrade designed to keep combat engineers out of danger. The system also automatically logs locations and uploads it to the Army’s shared battlefield map, or common operating picture.

Soldiers from 4th Engineering Battalion remotely fired inert mine canisters from the dispenser in the demonstration’s first live-fire scenario. Then, the system autonomously and simultaneously emplaced two minefields.

“Autonomous Volcano leverages low-cost modernization to turn a legacy platform into a high-yield autonomous asset — securing asymmetric overmatch and closing a critical area-denial gap,” Col. Vinson Morris, who oversees the Army’s project manager for close combat systems, said in a statement.

The project was developed jointly by the U.S. and United Kingdom, according to the release, with defense contractor Forterra integrating the existing Volcano mine dispenser onto the automatic vehicle.

The Army plans to test the system in a series of realistic battlefield scenarios later this month.

Bartrum, who announced his resignation to staff June 30, did not provide a specific reason for leaving the VA’s top health job, other than saying he looked forward to “focusing on my family and my health” and supporting the administration’s efforts “in the private sector.”

A retired Air Force Reserve major general, Bartrum was nominated to the post June 2 by President Donald Trump and confirmed Dec. 18 by the Senate in a 53-43 vote.

Bartrum became the first under secretary of health without a physician background and was responsible for the nation’s largest medical system, overseeing the budget and management of 171 medical centers and more than 1,000 outpatient clinics that serve roughly 9 million veterans each year.

He succeeded Dr. Shereef Elnahal, who resigned Jan. 20, 2025, with the change of administration between President Joe Biden and Trump. Bartrum was the first under secretary of health to serve under Trump; the position went unfilled by a confirmed appointee during Trump’s entire first administration.

In his message to employees, Bartrum said he was leaving the VA with “deep gratitude and a sense of accomplishment.” He noted the relaunch of the department’s electronic health record modernization program, the reorganization of the Veterans Health Administration and work to create a center in Los Angeles to address veteran homelessness among recent accomplishments.

“These were not small undertakings, and I am confident in the foundation we have built. Each of these initiatives is now on a strong and sustainable trajectory, carried forward by the talented team I have had the honor of leading,” Bartrum wrote.

Citing President George Washington’s retirement, Bartrum added “I am persuaded that, with these initiatives now firmly on track, you will not disapprove my determination to retire from public service.”

According to the department, Dr. Lee Payne, currently serving as deputy under secretary for health, will fill the role as acting under secretary. Payne, a retired Air Force major general, has worked for the VA since last November, responsible for supporting the electronic health record program and other duties.

A specialist in internal, emergency medicine and medical management, Payne commanded three military hospitals, worked as a chief flight surgeon in support of combat operations and directed combat support and the Defense Department’s electronic health record modernization program.

He also managed the DoD’s department’s diagnostics and testing efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

VA Secretary Doug Collins did not make any public statements regarding Bartrum’s departure. VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven said the VA wished him well.

“We thank John for his leadership of VHA and the many VA accomplishments he presided over during his 17 months of service at the department,” Slaven said, referring to the months prior to Bartrum’s confirmation that he worked as a member of the transition team and a senior advisor to Collins.

Bartrum has spent more than 40 years in public service, spending much of his Air Force career in medical administration. He served as a mobilization assistant to the Air and Space Force surgeon general and was assigned as deputy incident manager in emergency support functions for the COVID-19 epidemic.

In his civilian capacity, he was a professional staff member of the House Appropriations Committee for more than eight years, working on labor, education and health issues, including infectious diseases like Ebola.

Bartrum’s departure leaves two of the department’s three under secretary positions open.

The administration has not announced a candidate for the under secretary for benefits position following the withdrawal last October of nominee Karen Brazell over opposition to her role as senior advisor to Collins during the administration’s efforts to reduce the size of the federal government.

Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs Sam Brown was confirmed last July.

The new assessment will measure a servicemember’s waistline at the navel and divide that circumference by the person’s height in inches to formulate a ratio. Soldiers must have a ratio below 0.55, the Army said.

The move follows a January Pentagon directive introducing the standard.

Soldiers with a ratio exceeding 0.55 will be subject to a confirmation test, formally flagged and enrolled in the Army Body Composition Program, in an attempt to get the service member back to meeting the standard.

The Army has initiated a 180-day assessment period and no soldiers will be separated for failing the new test during that time.

Commanders may test a soldier’s waist-to-height ratio if they think the soldier does not meet the standard at any time.

“This is about lethality and health,” said Sgt. Maj. Monsanto, a senior enlisted leader for the Army’s Directorate of Prevention, Resilience, Readiness. “We are adopting new metrics to ensure our soldiers are healthy and physically fit to fight and will,” he said in the statement.

The Pentagon’s memorandum said that service members who excel at fitness tests might be given exceptions to the new requirements, but the Army’s statement does not include any mention of allowances.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly criticized the armed forces’ fitness standards. “It’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops,” he said in a speech last year, adding that it was “completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world.”

Alongside changes to physical fitness, Hegseth has also reinstated stricter grooming standards and pushed for soldiers in front-line roles to meet “the highest male standard only.”

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