The civilian man initially had no pulse, and bystanders told the Marine they assumed he was dead.

Then 1st Sgt. Jefferson Ortiz saved the man’s life.

“Everything that I saw led me to believe that someone needed help,” Ortiz was quoted as saying in a Tuesday Marine news story. “And that the people who were there did not understand, or were not comfortable with, providing that help. I figured that if I could make my way over there, see what was going on, and assess the situation to see if there was anything that I could do to help somebody … I wanted to do that.”

Ortiz, 38, had been driving with his wife through Vanceboro, North Carolina, toward his home in New Bern, North Carolina, on May 13 when traffic ahead of him stopped, and he noticed a crowd gathering around something in a field. The infantryman pulled over, told his wife to call 911 and began administering first aid to the injured man.

The man had been hit while he was walking up his driveway on the way to check his mailbox. A car had veered off the road and collided with his own parked car, spinning it toward the man, according to the police report of the collision.

By the time Ortiz arrived, the man had a mangled leg, showed signs of severe hemorrhaging and was cold to the touch, according to the Marine Corps. But Ortiz soon found a weak pulse while a bystander stabilized the head at the Marine’s direction.

Ortiz has been deployed to combat multiple times, including twice to Iraq. So he relied on his experience treating battlefield casualties to the man’s injuries.

“He began going through the fundamental procedures every Marine is trained to perform when treating a casualty: stop the bleeding, start the breathing, protect the wound, and treat for shock,” according to the Marine Corps release.

Ortiz fashioned a tourniquet for the man’s leg out of a bystander’s belt and a stick. He used his fingers to fish teeth out of the man’s throat, freeing up his breathing, according to the Marine Corps story.

Using a shirt from a bystander, he covered the leg wound to prevent contamination. And when first responders arrived, Ortiz helped them insert an IV into the man and load him onto a gurney and into an ambulance.

Despite his serious injuries, the man survived.

“For me, this is just business,” Ortiz said in the press release. “I was not concerned as to whether or not he was going to live. I just wanted to give him the opportunity. It was really cool to hear later on that the guy ended up making it through the first 24 hours and that eventually he lived. He was able to survive that. That was rewarding.”

“Despite his humility, and to his surprise,” according to the Marine Corps release, Ortiz received a Navy-Marine Corps Commendation Medal — which recognizes heroism, outstanding achievement or meritorious service — for saving the man’s life.

Ortiz joined the Marines as an infantryman in 2003 after speaking with a recruiter who came into the pet store where he worked, according the Marine Corps story.

He was deployed five times on combat missions, including in the seminal battle of Ramadi in Iraq in 2006. There, when one of his Marines was shot in the head, Ortiz carried him more than six blocks under fire, saving his life.

Ortiz is the first sergeant for Air Operations Company, Marine Wing Support Squadron 271, based in Cherry Point, North Carolina. The squadron provides ground-based support for the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, which conducts air operations for the II Marine Expeditionary Force.

The video, in explaining exactly how the rifle works, shows why the weapon is an efficient, and ultimately dangerous, weapon.

“I have always enjoyed animation and illustrating how things work,” designer and 3D animator Matt Rittman says in his bio. “I’m especially interested in firearms and anything mechanical. My aim for this channel is to provide easy to understand, how-it-works 3D animations.”

Rittman’s AR-15 rendering is one of several videos on the mechanics of firearms.

The AR-15 was first designed as a military rifle in the late 1950s. Its manufacturer, ArmaLite, began producing the firearm before selling manufacturing rights to Colt.

For more than five decades, the AR-15 has been a favorite among enthusiasts. A common iteration of the rifle, the M-16, has long been used by service members. And according to NPR, it once even appeared in a Sears catalog.

“The National Shooting Sports Foundation estimates there are roughly 5 million to 10 million AR-15 rifles owned in the United States, a small share of the roughly 300 million firearms owned by Americans,” CNBC reported.

But the AR-15 has a dark history, too. The rifle has been involved in 11 mass shootings between 2012 and April 2022.

Eighteen-year-old Salvador Ramos deployed an AR-15-style rifle in the killing of 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.

Most notably, the D.C. National Guard arrived at the Capitol more than three and a half hours after the violence began. And it emerged this summer that the Pentagon wiped the phones of top officials as they departed at the end of the Trump administration, deleting key records from that day.

But in testimony given behind closed doors to the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, Army Gen. Mark Milley, the Defense Department’s top uniformed officer, has helped shed some light on what took place at the Pentagon on Jan. 6 and in the days that followed.

During its blockbuster televised hearings, the Jan. 6 committee has played short audio clips of testimony by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. All of the audio that has been released so far was played at the July 21 hearing, although some of the snippets were also previewed on June 9, the first day of the hearings.

More testimony from Milley may come out when the hearings resume in September, once Congress returns from its summer recess.

In the scraps of testimony that the committee has presented, Milley has addressed then-President Donald Trump’s conspicuous inaction, then-Vice President Mike Pence’s plea to activate the National Guard, and his own phone calls with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the aftermath of the attack.

Here’s all of Milley’s testimony that has been released so far.

Milley’s response to Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6

In a snippet presented by Rep. Adam Kinziger, who was driving home Trump’s refusal to act during the attacks on the Capitol, Milley explained his reaction to Trump’s behavior.

“Yeah. You know, commander in chief, you got an assault going on on the Capitol of the United States of America. And there’s nothing? No call? Nothing? Zero?” Milley said.

Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran, added, “I can tell you that General Milley’s reaction to President Trump’s conduct is 100% correct.”

It was Pence who called to activate the Guard

Later in the July 21 hearing, Rep. Elaine Luria relied on testimony by Milley to demonstrate that it had been Vice President Mike Pence — and not Trump — who made efforts to secure the Capitol so it could resume its joint session, including by calling military leaders.

Milley told the committee:

“Vice President Pence? There were two or three calls with Vice President Pence. He was very animated, and he issued very explicit, very direct, unambiguous orders. There was no question about that.”

Pence’s orders were ‘direct’ and ‘firm’

“[Pence] was — and I can give you the exact quotes, I guess, from some of our record somewhere — but he was very animated, very direct, very firm,” Milley said.

“And to Secretary Miller, ‘get the military down here, get the Guard down here, put down this situation,’ etc.,” Milley added, paraphrasing Pence.

Christopher Miller, then the acting defense secretary, told the D.C. Guard at 3:04 p.m. to deploy to the Capitol.

The Guard arrived at the scene at 5:40 p.m., after the violence had largely ended.

Milley refused to join in on Trump’s narrative

Luria then introduced a snippet of Milley describing a phone call he had with Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff.

“[Meadows] said — this is from memory. He said, ‘We have — we have to kill the narrative that the vice president is making all the decisions. We need to establish the narrative that, you know, that the president is still in charge and that things are steady or stable or words to that effect.’ I immediately interpret that as politics, politics, politics,” Milley said.

“Red flag for me personally, no action, but I remember it distinctly,” he added. “And — and I don’t do political narratives.”

According to recent reporting in The New Yorker, Milley has been especially sensitive to any appearance of politicization since he received criticism for marching in battle fatigues in a June 2020 photo op with Trump after the president had the area forcibly cleared of Black Lives Matter protesters.

Trump was in a ‘dark place’

The committee also presented testimony by administration officials who said they were disgusted by Trump’s response to the attack but did not resign because they were, in Kinzinger’s words, “sincerely worried that leaving President Trump to his own devices would put the country at continued risk.”

Milley described calls he had with members of Trump’s inner circle, including the White House chief of staff and the secretary of state, to keep tabs on the president.

“There was a couple of the calls where, you know, Meadows and/or Pompeo, but more Meadows, you know, how — how is the president doing?” Milley recalled. “Like, Pompeo might say, ‘How’s the president doing?’ And Meadows would say, ‘Well, he’s in a really dark place.’ Like here’s one, for example, on the 7th of January.”

Milley then quoted what Meadows told him on that call: “POTUS is very emotional and in a bad place.”

In private, Milley referred to these conversations as “land the plane” calls, according to recent reporting in The New Yorker.

These drones can remain airborne until a target is identified ― at which point they set a course for that target and go out in a blaze of glory.

While substantial funding for acquisition and development of these systems is already built into 2023 budget plans, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps said the service is already making plans to ask for even more.

“So, would I seek more munitions?” Gen. Eric Smith told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in July. “Yes … the ‘23 budget just went across, and the ‘24 budget is working through the department right now.”

Building loitering munitions into newly reorganized Marine Corps infantry battalions has been part of service strategy since 2021, when Commandant Gen. David Berger published his annual Force Design 2030 update.

In that update he referred to the success of the weapons systems in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, a 2020 conflict waged heavily with drones and long-range artillery in which Azerbaijan prevailed over breakaway state Artsakh and Armenia.

The Russia-Ukraine war has intensified focus on loitering munitions.

The U.S. has sent Ukraine hundreds of Aexev Phoenix Ghost and Aerovironment Switchblade tactical unmanned aircraft systems to counter Russia’s own systems, like the Lancet.

Like much in that conflict, it’s not fully clear yet what the impact of these systems has been. But those familiar with the systems say they bring to the battlespace both an inexpensive missile capability and the psychological element of fear and uncertainty: You never know when you’re being tracked by an eye in the sky that’s just waiting for the signal to strike.

Smith said the presence of loitering munitions in that fight and future ones was changing how all parties had to act.

“The ability of those drones to be nearly ubiquitous across the battlefield, because they’re so inexpensive, you have to contend with that,” he said. “And you have to drop your signature. If you’re seen, either because you radiate, or because you’re physically seen, you’re targeted almost immediately.”

Smith mentioned two specific developmental loitering munitions capabilities the Marine Corps is testing out: organic precision fires-mounted, or OPF-M, and organic precision fires-infantry, or OPF-I.

In 2021, the service awarded Bethesda, Maryland, based Mistral Inc. a contract as part of a deal valued up to $44 million to design, build and test OPF-M in partnership with UVision LTD and integrate a launcher into three land and sea platforms: the joint light tactical vehicle, the light armored vehicle-mortar and the still-in-development long-range unmanned surface vessel.

In his speech, Smith revealed the outcome of an OPF-M live-fire test that he said took place in 2021.

“We struck five for five moving targets, that means armor killers, at ranges in excess of 80 kilometers,” Smith said. “So, test done. Now it’s about, how much can we procure using the budget we have, because we have to balance the Marine Air-Ground Task Force.”

Requested in the 2023 defense budget is funding to continue building out loitering munition capabilities.

Inside the nearly $12 million allocated for the Futures Directorate are resources for experimentation with an advanced, “fully autonomous, remotely operated” loitering munition unmanned aircraft system that can seek and engage targets by day or night. Plans for 2023 include an “unmanned kill-chain” demo using small unmanned aircraft systems to further prove this concept.

For organic precision fires-mounted, 2023 will see the completion of integration and testing for a JLTV variant and groundwork laid for testing with 122 mm munitions, according to Marine Corps and Navy budget materials.

The year 2023 will also be the launch of the man-portable version of the system, to be known as OPF-Light.

The Marine Corps has yet to pick a maker for OPF-Light, described in a 2020 contract solicitation as a man-portable system with at least 90 minutes of endurance, a munition range of up to 20 kms and the ability to swarm with other systems.

The 2023 budget request includes $7.5 million to conduct market analysis, plan vendor demos and begin integration of a miniaturized command-and-control system, scaled, like the system itself, to fit into a backpack for easy transport.

Beginning in fiscal 2024, budget documents note, the Marine Corps will start developing additional munitions capabilities.

Notably absent from the funding list is a multiyear research effort that the Marine Corps appears to have quietly concluded: the low-cost UAV swarming technology, or LOCUST, designed to launch both intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drones and loitering munitions “from air, surface, ground, and sub-surface platforms to conduct both singular and swarm operations across battlespace.”

While the Navy and Marine Corps released some impressive demo footage of the concept in 2016 and 2017, development of the program appears to wrap up in 2022, with $8 million in research funding.

No research dollars are allocated for 2023, and no acquisition strategy is outlined.

Lincoln is expected to arrive in its San Diego home port today, while the squadrons of Carrier Air Wing 9 flew back to their California and Washington state home bases this week.

The carrier strike group also included the guided-missile cruiser Mobile Bay and the guided-missile destroyers Gridley, Sampson and Spruance, which were all scheduled to return home this week.

A fourth strike group destroyer, Fitzgerald, is expected home in the coming weeks, according to U.S. 3rd Fleet officials.

The strike group was the first to deploy with a Marine Corps F-35C Lightning II squadron, Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314, and the second to deploy with Fleet Logistics Multi-Mission Squadron 30 and its CMV-22 Ospreys.

“By and large, it was a completely seamless, flawless integration,” Lincoln’s commanding officer, Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt, told reporters Wednesday.

Air squadrons coming home include Strike Fighter Squadrons 41, 151 and 14, as well as Electronic Attack Squadron 133, Airborne Early Warning Squadron 117, Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 14 and Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 71.

All told, the wing flew 10,250 sorties during the deployment, according to U.S. 3rd Fleet.

During its 220 days underway, the Lincoln strike group steamed across more than 65,000 nautical miles, conducted presence patrols and conducted two exercises with Japanese forces, while also participating in the multinational Rim of the Pacific exercise in Hawaii that wrapped up last month.

“What they did mattered,” Bauernschmidt said Wednesday as her ship neared San Diego. “And their hard work made the difference.”

The scenario at this summer’s Rim of the Pacific multinational naval exercise allowed the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment to test its ability to contribute to a future fight at sea — a significant departure from the service’s land warfare focus of the past two decades.

During this test at RIMPAC, the Corps’ newest formation scattered a few task units ashore, who spread out sensors, set up the armed NMESIS truck, and established a fires and air direction element to confirm targets and authorize strikes.

As the carrier strike group approached the strait, it ordered the 3rd MLR to strike an adversary ship attempting to block the waterway. The order and the target came from the ship to the Marines ashore, who “achieved a simulated mission kill on the adversary surface vessel, enhancing the CSG’s [carrier strike group’s] ability to transit the strait unimpeded,” Maj. Oryan Lopes, 3rd MLR’s current operations officer, told Defense News.

“The CSG strait transit was an excellent opportunity to further refine how the 3d Marine Littoral Regiment could support the Combined Maritime Force Component Commander in a future fight. On many levels, the 3d MLR learned how to better communicate within and contribute to maritime operations across multiple task forces,” he added.

A lot of technical work remains before the regiment can declare itself operationally capable: It needs to continue refining the exact number of Marines and pieces of gear it requires, and it needs to reach digital interoperability with the rest of the joint and combined force.

But at RIMPAC 2022, the regiment proved its value thus far to a future maritime fight, in which it would work alongside American partners of the first island chain as a stand-in force in the Pacific. The U.S. Defense Department has previously described that area as “the islands running from the Kurils, through Taiwan, to Borneo, roughly encompassing the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea.” The regiment was designed specifically to operate inside contested areas like the South China Sea, scattering small units around islands and shorelines to conduct missions and then maneuver to a new location before being detected.

RIMPAC ran from June 29 to Aug. 4. An experimentation scheduled for this fall will work out the finer details of how to maneuver and communicate during these distributed operations.

“If you look at standing in, you’re standing in next to a constellation of allies and partners, so we’re vetting how doable this is,” Col. Stephen Fiscus, the assistant chief of staff for force development, said during an interview.

Though “other venues provide the ability to get more exquisite and detailed in how” the new stand-in forces concept will work, he said, RIMPAC proved to be a great first chance to demonstrate “the blocking and tackling level of stuff, to show that you could do this together” in real-world operations.

What is 3rd MLR?

The 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment was redesignated in March to serve as a first-of-its-kind stand-in force in the Pacific. Whereas other traditional formations — Marines operating from U.S. Navy ships, or units on rotational deployments in theater — could fight their way into contested areas, the idea is that 3rd MLR as the stand-in force would already be inside that space. Rather than the joint force having to kick the door down to get in, 3rd MLR could hold the door open, the thinking goes.

Col. Tim Brady, the unit’s commander, said 3rd MLR’s very presence is expected to change the calculus for potential adversaries.

“By standing in, we are deterring the malign behavior. We’re designed to fight and operate inside the enemy’s weapons engagement zone, to conduct and support sea-denial and sea-control operations, and, ultimately, to set the conditions for those joint force follow-on actions. And we’re training and experimenting with all that here at RIMPAC,” he said in the interview.

The key to its success is the range of capabilities brought together under a single Marine colonel, he added.

In February, the Corps activated its 3rd Littoral Anti-Air Battalion. In June, just ahead of RIMPAC, the Marines redesignated 3rd Littoral Combat Team and Combat Logistics Battalion 3. RIMPAC was the first time Brady could operate with these three subordinate commands, which provide the bulk of the capabilities the stand-in force needs: “the lethality of the littoral combat team and what it provides; the air direction, air control, early warning and air surveillance that the littoral anti-air battalion provides; the tactical logistics that the CLB provides,” Brady said.

He called his new unit light, maneuverable and, importantly, tailorable to the mission. “When we actually conduct [expeditionary advanced base operations], we take elements and pieces from each one of those subordinate battalions [and] re-task-organize into different task elements that [can] contribute to the joint and combined force,” he said, noting that he can pull the right amount of people and gear from each subordinate unit based on the mission and expected duration.

For Fiscus, who oversees force modernization for Marine Forces Pacific, the ability to create the right force package for the right mission — and do so quickly — is what makes 3rd MLR interesting.

“I can’t emphasize how novel it was to redesign [the subordinate units], so Tim can now, organic to his formation, task-organize in such a way that you can have that really deep sensing and understanding of the airspace, surface space,” all within a small unit that can either hide or defend itself as needed.

Brady said his regiment would include about 2,000 Marines, though the service’s Force Design 2030 initiative may adjust that slightly as the unit continues to experiment and identify the required capabilities. Force Design 2030 aims to prepare the Marine Corps for a potential future fight with an advanced adversary, such as Russia or China, in line with the National Defense Strategy.

The 3rd MLR is expected to reach initial operational capability by September 2023, and Fiscus called RIMPAC something of a midway point. The unit is mostly done reorganizing and has ideas for how to operate as a stand-in force, but it will still conducting experiments to refine its composition and tactics.

The eyes and ears

Fiscus and Brady agree that 3rd MLR’s greatest contribution to the joint force will be sensing inside an enemy’s weapons engagement zone, which rotational forces might be unable to access without escalating a tense situation or coming under fire.

To be an effective set of eyes and ears on the inside, Brady said Marines’ sensors, communications suites and weapons must be fully integrated with the naval, joint and combined force. Digital interoperability is a primary focus.

During the scenario in which a carrier strike group transited a strait, the 3rd MLR was asked to conduct sea control and sea denial operations from a strategic ground position, making communication between Marines ashore and ships at sea pivotal to mission success.

Maj. Adrian Solis, an action officer on Fiscus’ staff who focuses on fires modernization, said Marines observed how information moved between destroyers and the 3rd MLR, and whether that info went where it was needed or if Marines had to take data from one system and type them into another.

“That’ll be the crux of it: How do we improve our digital interoperability so we take slack out of the kill web, so we execute those kill chains and we’re not wasting time?” Solis said.

The stand-in force’s ability to be in multiple locations, understand the environment and pick out targets will make the force’s kill webs more robust, Brady said, but that kill web must also include sensors and shooters from “our allies and partners who are going to be alongside us inside the first island chain.”

“RIMPAC … really provides us an unprecedented opportunity in that multinational foundation to be able to train and experiment with that digital interoperability — those people, processes and systems — to be able to close kill webs,” he added. “Every time you add a new ally or partner or new aspect of the joint force to that [kill web], there are things that we need to overcome to improve upon the speed and the data transfer of that knowledge and battlespace awareness.”

What comes next?

The next year will be chock-full of milestones and tests for the regiment as it races toward its September 2023 declaration of initial operational capability. Though the regiment will primarily use gear already in the Marine Corps’ inventory, it will begin experimenting with two new items to help with maneuver and resupply: a stern landing vessel in lieu of the eventual Light Amphibious Warship, and a long-range unmanned surface vessel.

Brady said his regiment plans to eventually create a company to operate the unmanned vessel, but in the short term, later this summer, “we do receive 39 Marines as part of the research and development platoon. Most of that experimentation and training will happen back in Norfolk, [Virginia], but those Marines will come to us later on this summer.”

Fiscus pointed to the stern landing vessel as a highlight of the 3rd MLR’s upcoming work, saying the ship would head to Southern California and then make its way out to the regiment in Hawaii.

“That’s a lot of the experimentation of how do we continually maneuver — move, maneuver and sustain … the stand-in force,” he said.

Brady previously said the regiment might use the stern landing vessel to move from Oahu to the big island of Hawaii, then go ashore for operations at the Pohakuloa Training Area. While Marines conduct missions at the range, the vessel might practice maneuvering at sea to stay hidden, or it could retrieve spare parts, ammunition, food and other goods to resupply Marines when they return to the beach.

Later this fall, Brady told Defense News, the Marine Corps will deactivate Bravo Battery, 1st Battalion, 12th Marines and redesignate the unit as Medium Missile Battery under the 3rd Littoral Combat Team, in what the colonel called a major milestone in implementing and shaping the 3rd MLR and its lethality.

After that redesignation — the last major organizational move, other than the eventual long-range unmanned surface vessel company — Brady said he’ll be able to get into the weeds of several outstanding questions.

“What is the size of those task elements, to be able to have a sensing task element and a fires task element? And how many Marines truly is that? What is needed to lift and move those Marines, and what systems are needed to be able to incorporate the kill web for those Marines? Those are the things we’re going to be looking at here this fall,” he explained.

In February, the 3rd MLR will conduct the first-ever service-level training exercise for a Marine littoral regiment, operating around Southern California while testing tactics, techniques and procedures. The unit will then go right into the Balikatan exercise in the Philippines.

Brady said training alongside Philippine counterparts will help the Corps “get after some of the things that they are developing much like our capabilities, in the archipelagic coastal defense concept and the coastal defense regimen.”

Brig. Gen. Joseph Clearfield, the deputy commander of Marine Forces Pacific, told Defense News in a separate interview that the Philippines is one of many key allies and partners in the region that are reshaping their forces in similar ways to the 3rd MLR.

“I spend an awful lot of time in this job interacting with countries on the first island chain to the second island chain; that’s probably one of my primary duties. They are so excited about Force Design [2030], and they all have initiatives underway … to replicate a Marine littoral regiment-like unit,” he said. “They really want to know everything they can about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.”

In the fall of 2023, Brady said, the larger Marine Forces Pacific’s capstone exercise will demonstrate a range of capabilities — including those of the 3rd MLR — paving the way for a declaration of initial operational capability.

“The MLR is a capability that exists right now today. We are ready and prepared to fight now,” Brady said. “Regardless of all those things we’re going to be continuing to train and experiment with in the future, and the future capabilities that are going to come to the MLR, we’re [a] capable unit today.”

Iranian national Shahram Poursafi, 45, who also goes by Mehdi Rezayi, allegedly plotted the murder-for-hire in response to the United States’ January 2020 assassination of Qassim Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force. Poursafi offered to pay $300,000 to anyone who would carry out the assassination of Bolton in or around Washington, according to a DoJ release.

Soleimani, an architect of Tehran’s proxy wars in the Middle East, was killed in a targeted airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport.

“This is not the first time we have uncovered Iranian plots to exact revenge against individuals on U.S. soil, and we will work tirelessly to expose and disrupt every one of these efforts,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said in a release. “The Justice Department has the solemn duty to defend our citizens from hostile governments who seek to hurt or kill them.”

Poursafi, who remains at large abroad, allegedly instigated the plot in October 2021 when he contacted a U.S. resident he’d previously connected with online, the report said. The following month, the IRGC member used an encrypted messaging platform to offer the individual $300,000 to hire someone to murder Bolton, providing the contact with screenshots of Bolton’s work address and asserting that he would require video documentation of the murder.

By January 2022, Poursafi was growing restless, reportedly bemoaning to his U.S. contact that the murder had not been completed by the two-year anniversary of Soleimani’s death.

Poursafi then provided his contact with details about Bolton’s schedule that “do not appear to have been publicly available,” according to court documents. He told the U.S.-based individual they would be able to “finish the job” since he believed Bolton’s home did not have a security presence.

“Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, through the defendant, tried to hatch a brazen plot: assassinate a former U.S. official on U.S. soil in retaliation for U.S. actions,” said U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves. “Iran and other hostile governments should understand that the U.S. Attorney’s Office and our law enforcement partners will do everything in our power to thwart their violent plots and bring those responsible to justice.”

In addition to the plot to murder Bolton, Poursafi reportedly told his informant about a second “job” — worth $1 million — that had already had surveillance completed by someone “working on behalf of the IRGC-QF,” the report said.

Charges levied against Poursafi include using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire and providing and attempting to provide material support to a transnational murder plot. The charges carry maximum sentences of 10 and 15 years, respectively, as well as fines.

“An attempted assassination of a former U.S. Government official on U.S. soil is completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” the FBI’s Assistant Director in Charge Steven M. D’Antuono said in a release.

“The FBI will continue to identify and disrupt any efforts by Iran or any hostile government seeking to bring harm or death to U.S. persons at home or abroad. This should serve as a warning to any others attempting to do the same.”

Russia and Ukraine are each casting blame for the prison’s destruction, meanwhile, with Moscow alleging that Ukrainian forces used U.S.-made ordnance—a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS—to bring the building down, according to the Washington Post.

In a video posted to Russian news site TVZVEZDA, Seagal, who is identified as a special representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation for Humanitarian Relations between Russia and the U.S., appears to serve as a spokesperson against Ukraine’s use of HIMARS.

“It definitely looks like a rocket,” Seagal is reported to have said. “If you look at the burning and other details, of course it’s not a bomb. Not to mention the fact that Russia really has a lot of artifacts from HIMARS. This is where HIMARS hit, 50 people were killed, another 70 were injured.”

According to the Russian site, Seagal added a conspiracy angle by suggesting that HIMARS was used by Ukrainian troops because the country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wanted to silence a “Nazi” being held at the prison.

“The interesting thing is that one of the killed Nazis is a Nazi who just started talking a lot about Zelensky,” Seagal added, “and that Zelensky is responsible for the orders about torture and other atrocities that violate not only the Geneva War Convention, but are also crimes against humanity.”

The Post, however, indicated that the images from the attack on Olenivka prison are not consistent with HIMARS.

“The experts could not definitively say what caused the damage, but they pointed to a lack of shrapnel marks and craters and only minimal damage to internal walls in the available visuals of the aftermath,” the Post reported. “Instead, there were visible signs of an intense fire, which is at odds with damage caused by the most common HIMARS warhead.”

TVZVEZDA reported that Seagal was among a number of representatives to visit the prison.

“Media representatives from France, Italy, Germany, Serbia, Nicaragua, North Korea got acquainted with the evidence that the strike was carried out by Ukrainian militants and from HIMARS, and also saw with their own eyes all the destruction at the site of this barbaric shelling,” the news site reported.

Open-source intelligence analyst Oliver Alexander weighed in on the veracity of the Seagal footage and indicated its authenticity.

Imagery of the prison from BBC appears to match elements of Seagal’s surroundings as he gave his statement. The same imagery was also matched with a scene in which the action star is positioned on a bench with blast artifacts, footage taken two weeks after the area was originally photographed, Alexander suggested on Twitter.

“[That’s] not how I would expect this ‘smoking gun’ evidence to be handled if Russia, 1. believed it was actual evidence and 2. had any intention of letting UN investigators to the site,” Alexander told Military Times.

Odessa Journal also verified the visit.

Seagal is known for his pro-Russian stature. In particular, he showed strong support for Putin’s plan regarding the annexation of Crimea. In 2016, the actor was given Russian citizenship.

Are you worried about having to wear a suit, fetch coffee and make copies in your first job post-graduation?

U.S. Army Recruiting Command would like you to consider an alternative: become a soldier.

Its newest ad, “This Instead,” says that unlike civilians who enter the job market fresh out of college, you won’t be the bottom rung on the totem pole. You’ll be a leader.

Because everyone knows that, just out of Officer Candidate School, Army 2nd lieutenants are in charge of everything. And they are most certainly not the butt of any jokes about rank entitlement and poor land navigation skills.

This video is part of the Army’s latest recruiting campaign: “Decide to Lead.” The ad’s closing line suggests soldiers can “skip entry level.”

It follows the branch’s latest line of recruitment pushes designed to make civilian life look terrible in comparison to military life. The last batch, “Know Your Army,” centered on the so-called benefits of being in the military, including pension, paid parental leave, early retirement, and homebuying.

While it is true that officers are technically in leadership roles placed higher in the hierarchy of rank structure than enlisted troops, all soldiers must earn their stripes with grunt work, trust, and team building — just like any corporate job in America.

Even though the Army might do work to inflate newly minted officers’ egos during OCS, soldiers must also contend with the inability to choose where in the world they live, what jobs they have, or if the housing where they reside is livable or has wall-to-wall black mold. Even coffee-fetching civilians never have to worry about that.

In a House Armed Services Committee panel held July 19, Army leadership revealed it will likely be at least 7,000 soldiers short of its staffing goal at the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30.

While retention is high at 57,000, about 3,000 more soldiers reenlisted than than the expected 54,000, the Army’s number issues lie with recruiting.

“We are examining a wide range of additional steps we could take in the short and longer term to recruit more soldiers into the Army without lowering standards or sacrificing quality,” said Army Secretary Christine Wormuth in a previous statement to Army Times.

Langley, who made history on Saturday when he became the first African American in the Marine Corps to be promoted to four-star general, took over U.S. Africa Command in a ceremony at Kelley Barracks in Stuttgart, Germany. He is the second African American to lead the command, which has about 6,000–7,000 troops across the continent.

Speaking at the ceremony, the outgoing commander, Army Gen. Stephen Townsend, noted the often limited troops and resources allocated to the continent.

“There is a new challenge every day and we don’t have resources to throw at those challenges,” said Townsend, who is retiring after 40 years in the military. “So we have to think.

“America cannot afford to ignore Africa. The continent is full of potential but it’s also full of challenges and it’s standing at a historic crossroads.”

For years, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, turmoil in the Middle East, a greater focus on an increasingly combative and competitive China and the recent war in Ukraine have dominated the Pentagon’s attention. But insurgent groups, including al-Qaida and Islamic State militants, flourish in ungoverned spaces in Africa, and al-Shabab continues to be a significant threat in Somalia.

Earlier in 2022, Townsend warned Congress that the U.S. was “marching in place at best” and “may be backsliding” in Somalia, because of former President Donald Trump’s decision to pull all of the roughly 700 U.S. troops out of the country in his final days in office. His decision forced commanders to rotate small teams of special operations forces and intelligence personnel into the country for short periods of time in order to provide some limited support to the Somali National Army and the mission there.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier in spring 2022 authorized the return of about 400 U.S. troops to the embattled country.

On Tuesday, Austin noted that decision, saying that the persistent U.S. military presence to train and assist Somali forces is crucial as al-Shabab’s attacks on civilians grow more lethal and brazen.

He added that the African continent is “on the front lines of many of this century’s most pressing threats — from mass migration to food insecurity, from COVID-19 to the climate crisis, from the drumbeat of autocracy to the dangers of terrorism.”

And he said China is expanding its military footprint there, looking to build bases in Africa and seeking to “undermine U.S. relations with African peoples, governments and militaries.”

Both Austin and Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted the historic nature of Langley’s appointment.

The Marine, said Milley, “is the right leader at the right time with the right skills to lead this command.”

And Austin, who is the first African American to serve as Pentagon chief, said that young Marines around the world are watching Langley.

“Your extraordinary achievement reminds them that they belong,” said Austin. “And it reminds them that the United States military is deeply committed to making progress, and to breaking down barriers, and to opening its arms wide to all qualified Americans who hear the call to serve their country.”

Langley, who was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Marines in 1985. His father was in the Air Force.

He told the gathering that his father always told him to aim high.

And now, he said, “I know I have a lot to do. We have a lot to do, as we look at the African continent and their quest for proper security and stability.”

The Marine Corps, which traces its roots to 1775, did not accept Black men in its ranks until 1942, a turnabout that followed the attack on the American air base at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the U.S. entry into World War II.

Most recently, Langley was commander of Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic and Marine Forces Command. He also commanded troops in Afghanistan.

Army Gen. William “Kip” Ward, also African American, was the first commander of Africa Command when it was launched in 2007.

The Pentagon hasn’t found any defective ejection seat parts on its F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, or on other potentially affected combat and training aircraft, during widespread checks that began in July, a spokesperson for seat manufacturer Martin-Baker told Air Force Times on Sunday.

F-35s across the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps have started returning to flight after three weeks of an effort to ensure the safety of America’s premier fighter jet, but U.S. military officials aren’t divulging many details as inspections progress. Several other fleets may be carrying the faulty seat component as well.

At issue is the seat’s part called the cartridge, which contains magnesium powder that ignites to shoot an aviator out of the cockpit when they trigger an escape.

Martin-Baker spokesperson Steve Roberts confirmed that as of Aug. 5, only one faulty seat cartridge has turned up during inspections of the F-35 fleet — the one that first prompted concerns when it was discovered at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, in April. Martin-Baker discovered another pair of bad cartridges in its own inventory that same month, bringing the total found to three.

The company has data that suggests the cartridge problem may be limited to the F-35, Roberts said in July.

“Outside the F-35, not a single anomaly has been discovered worldwide as a result of the forensic investigation, which continues at pace,” he said.

A routine inspection at Hill turned up an F-35 cartridge that was loose and missing its explosive charge, Air Force Times previously reported. Maintainers checked a limited number of other aircraft to see whether the discovery was an isolated incident and decided the jets could return to flight.

Sometime in the months that followed, Martin-Baker conducted a quality-assurance check and found that its production line was turning out defective cartridges. It’s unclear when the company realized the problem, or when it alerted its military customers.

On July 19, the Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Program Office ordered workers to inspect all ejection seats within 90 days. That came three months after Hill found the first faulty cartridge, during which pilots could have run into the issue during an in-flight emergency.

Military and company officials note that the defect only affects aircraft with cartridges from certain production batches, but have declined to answer how many cartridges were built as part of those lots or the number of aircraft on which they were installed.

The situation picked up steam as it entered the public eye in the weeks that followed.

The Navy said it began shipping replacement parts to its own maintenance centers with planes that could be affected by the problem on July 24, two days before it went public with the situation in a July 26 press release.

The release disclosed that a cartridge problem affected some Navy fixed-wing aircraft — the F/A-18B/C/D Hornet and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter jets, E/A-18G Growler electronic attack plane, and T-45 Goshawk and F-5 Tiger II trainers.

But the sea service didn’t mention the Marine Corps F-35B or the Navy F-35C variants, despite finishing F-35C inspections on July 26, the same day as it issued its press release.

The next day, Breaking Defense first reported that the Navy had grounded an undisclosed number of affected planes for inspections, not including F-35s.

Then, after news reports that the entire Joint Strike Fighter enterprise was under scrutiny, the Navy confirmed it was done checking C-models.

Rather than stretch inspections over a 90-day span, the Navy and Marine Corps checked each plane before their next flight. Possibly defective cartridges on the F-35Cs were replaced, Breaking Defense reported.

“All potentially affected F-35Cs have been returned to operational status,” Navy spokesperson Cmdr. Zachary Harrell told Air Force Times Friday.

Marine Corps spokesperson Maj. Jay Hernandez said in an emailed statement on Friday that the service had inspected all ejection seat cartridges “even earlier in the maintenance cycle than recommended” by Martin-Baker.

“Over 90 percent of the inspections on Marine Corps ejection seat cartridge actuating devices are now complete,” Hernandez said. That figure has stayed the same since at least July 29.

The Navy said no one has died or been injured as a result; the Air Force has stressed its groundings are a precaution to get ahead of any fatalities.

On Monday, Air Combat Command spokesperson Alexi Worley said maintainers were making “good progress” on F-35A inspections but declined to answer how many jets had been checked or returned to flight.

ACC oversees most of the Air Force’s more than 300 F-35s and grounded its fleet July 29 to speed up its seat checks. Each fighter can resume normal flying as it passes inspection.

“The stand-down of aircraft will continue through the weekend, and a determination to safely resume normal operations is expected to be made early next week, pending analysis of the inspection data,” Worley told Air Force Times on July 29.

She did not provide an update by press time Friday.

Air Education and Training Command, the Air Force organization that oversees F-35s used at pilot training squadrons in Arizona and Florida, also ordered the more than 100 Lightning IIs it owns to stand down on July 29 to expedite inspections.

“A portion of the AETC F-35 fleet has been inspected and cleared for flight, with inspections continuing on the remaining aircraft,” the command said Tuesday. “Our ability to execute the highest priority missions supporting national defense are not impacted.”

Other Air Force organizations that fly the F-35A overseas indicated their fleets are conducting missions but would not say whether the cartridge problem was discovered and resolved on any airframes.

All F-35As in Europe have resumed normal operations, U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Force Africa said in a Monday email to Defense News. Pacific Air Forces confirmed to Air Force Times Thursday that it has continued to fly its aircraft after wrapping up inspections.

At least one international F-35 partner, Israel, has paused the jet’s operations to search for problems as well. Other nations that are currently part of or plan to join the F-35 program include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, South Korea, Singapore, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Lockheed Martin plans to build more than 3,000 F-35s for militaries around the globe. More than 800 planes have been delivered so far over the past 15 years, over half of which belong to the U.S. More than 1,700 pilots fly the F-35 from 26 bases and 10 ships globally.

In April, the Government Accountability Office reported it will cost more than $1.7 trillion for the Pentagon to buy, operate and maintain the American jets.

Neither Martin-Baker nor the F-35 Joint Program Office provided an update on how inspections are progressing by press time Friday.

Concerns about defective cartridges have also affected the Air Force’s training enterprise.

Air Force Times first reported that Air Education and Training Command halted flights of two potentially impacted trainer fleets, the T-6A Texan IIs and T-38C Talons, on July 27.

T-6 turboprop planes are used to teach basic flight skills, while the T-38 prepares pilots to fly fighter and bomber aircraft.

The next day, the service said it would keep nearly 300 airframes across the T-6 and T-38 fleets on the ground while it double-checked their cartridges. That comprised about 40% of the T-38 fleet and 15% of the T-6 fleet, including planes at each undergraduate pilot training base and Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida.

The remaining airframes continued business as usual, and AETC said more trainers have since returned to the sky.

“Members of the flying training wings continue to produce sorties every day with operational tempo increasing as the affected aircraft progress through the ejection seat inspection process and are cleared for flying,” AETC told Defense News on Tuesday.

However, AETC would not say how many of its grounded trainers had cleared inspections and returned to the sky, nor how many remained to be inspected. Like their counterparts used in combat operations, it’s unclear if any faulty cartridges have been found on the trainers so far.

The issue may also affect European airframes like the Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale and aircraft flown by Turkey and South Korea, which use the same seat.

The U.K. Royal Air Force stopped “non-essential” flights for its Red Arrows jets and Typhoon warplanes over safety concerns with its ejection seats, the Daily Mail reported. NATO has not responded to questions on how the ejection seat issue is affecting its aircraft.

In the case of some magnet fishers who cleared 86 rockets, a tank tracer round, and .50 caliber ammo belts from a river on Fort Stewart, the toll was a number of fines by Fort Stewart Conservation Law Enforcement.

The group, led by treasure hunter Bryce Nachtwey, called the bomb squad after their magnet fishing dredged up the ammunition and 86 rockets in a Delta Airlines duffel bag, saying they were just trying to do the right thing.

The exchange played out on Nachtwey’s YouTube channel: Outdoors Weekly.

A Fort Stewart Military Police officer called to the scene noted that he had never seen something like this, and needed to check in with his command to see what next steps to take. However, upon arrival, the federal game warden with Fort Stewart Conservation Law Enforcement ticketed them for magnet fishing off the Fort Stewart bridge.

“I didn’t see any signs,” said one of Nachwey’s teammates.

“You’re all gettin’ tickets, you can come to court and talk to a judge, okay?” the warden said. “The reason magnet fishing is not allowed is because of exactly what y’all got right there. You don’t know what’s going to blow up and not blow up.”

The alternative to tickets would be to go to jail, he added.

Nachtwey said that he and his team had called the DNR ahead of time, which purportedly said magnet fishing is legal as long as it’s in a “green zone.”

However, the warden stated that red (off-limit) and green (acceptable) zones don’t apply in this scenario because the group was on Fort Stewart property. Because the base is owned by the Federal Government, the Department of Natural Resources has no authority to issue such permission.

The warden issued three tickets each to Nachwey and his two compatriots — two $130 tickets and one $80 ticket — for magnet fishing at Fort Stewart, entering a closed area and not having Fort Stewart permits.

The trio’s federal court date is Sept. 9, 2022.

(Correction: An earlier version of this story listed the game warden’s employer as the Georgia Department of Natural Resources)

“They couldn’t tell me anything,” she told Marine Corps Times in a phone interview.

Her son, Marine Pfc. Dalton Beals, 19, had been at boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina, and had died earlier that day during “the Crucible” ― the final, grueling, 54-hour pinnacle of Marine Corps boot camp.

“They didn’t know anything” she said. “They couldn’t tell me anything. I just couldn’t imagine what could have happened.”

During the Crucible, recruits complete a series of physical challenges, including miles of marching with rifles and 70-pound packs. It’s where they are “made Marines.”

Not long after his death, the Marine Corps said it had found that Pfc. Dalton Beals had “earned the title of Marine.”

Although Stacie Beals did not know it at the time, her son’s cause of death was hyperthermia ― extreme body temperature.

He had been found dead in the woods, apparently looking for sprinklers to cool down with, Stars and Stripes first reported.

It wasn’t until December 2021 that Stacie Beals received an investigative report from the Marine Corps.

The report, shared with Marine Corps Times and which includes extensive redactions, found that Pfc. Dalton Beals participated in the Crucible during both red and black flag conditions ― the highest end of a standard for how long individuals can safely train in the heat.

Red flag conditions, according to the Corps’ standards, are from 88 degrees Fahrenheit to 89.9 degrees Fahrenheit under the Wet Bulb, Globe Temperature index, and limit exercise for “all personnel with less than 12 weeks training in hot weather.”

“Troops who are thoroughly acclimated may perform limited activity not to exceed six hours a day,” according to Marine emergency preparedness standards listed online.

“Physical training and strenuous exercise” should be suspended for all personnel in black flag conditions, 90 degrees Fahrenheit and above, according to the Corps’ online standards.

The investigation goes on to state that Pfc. Dalton Beals had separated from his group and was unaccounted for roughly for one hour.

The young Marine’s death was “likely avoidable,” according to the report.

Although instances of heat illness are rare, and reportedly on the decline among some of the services, addressing safety during training remains a relevant issue, especially for military families who have lost someone.

“From Dalton’s report, his senior drill instructor was not being monitored the way he should be monitored,” Stacie Beals said, noting she has been told that the individual and two others above that individual have been since reassigned to other roles.

The investigation outlines how Pfc. Dalton Beals’ unnamed drill instructor largely was at fault for intensifying training, and that even prior to the Crucible recruits were not comfortable bringing problems forward.

In the report, legal or administrative action was recommended against the drill instructor, two commanders and three other Marines.

Maj. Philip Kulczewski, a Marine spokesperson in Parris Island, South Carolina, shared in a statement, “MCRD Parris Island Leadership is in contact with the family and provides information as it becomes available.”

A request for legal services in the case of Pfc. Dalton Beals has been submitted by the Recruit Training Regiment and is under legal review by military prosecutors, Kulczewski told Marine Corps Times.

However, it would be inappropriate at this time to speculate about the details of the case with the ongoing review, he said.

Pfc. Dalton Beals is not the only Marine, or service member, to have died from extreme heat.

In 2019, Army National Guard Sgt. Sylvester Cline, 32, died from training during black flag conditions after being rushed to a hospital from a training range at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, NBC News previously reported.

The Pentagon’s most recent Health of the Force report, released earlier in 2022, found that heat illness was more common among younger service members and those in the Marines Corps.

Another report, released in April, revealed that heat illnesses in the Army in 2020 had in fact decreased by 23% from 2019, with only 2.6 cases per 1,000 people reported.

But, nine of the 43 Army installations tracked experienced 100 or more heat risk days in 2020, mostly in the southeast of the country, and a third of active-duty soldiers were stationed at one of these locations.

Additionally, the first half of 2022 ranked the sixth hottest year on record, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The most recent Parris Island, South Carolina, Crucible was scheduled to take place July 28, the Marine spokesperson said, noting the training event is conducted approximately 40 times per year.

Since summer 2021, the Beals family has raised more than $40,000 in a memorial fund and built a support network through a group called Save Our ServiceMembers, which advocates for accountability in military leadership.

Marine poolee Justin Grihorash also died in summer 2021 ― at a recruiting substation in Lansing, Michigan ― from unknown causes during training, his mother and member of the group, Nancy Grihorash, shared with Marine Corps Times.

He had collapsed during a 400-meter training run, a Navy Safety Center report said, only two days after formally enlisting in the Corps’ delayed entry program.

Nancy Grihorash says that since her son was a poolee, she hasn’t gotten many answers, including an investigation report, from the Marine Corps — and had to push to get Marine presence at this funeral.

“The last time I had any contact with the Marines at all was when I had to sign a paper to get them to pay for his funeral,” Nancy Grihorash said.

Both mothers are still looking for more answers, but emphasized the need for the Corps to have qualified leaders in place to conduct training.

“Heartbreakingly there’s a lot of stories out there,” Stacie Beals said. “Things that shouldn’t be happening. And not just the Marines, it’s the other branches.”

Movies often have warnings and mandatory disclosures during their previews — a film’s official rating from the Motion Picture Association, anti-piracy warnings and more.

A group of academics and film industry professionals want to add a new disclosure: whether a movie or show received production support from the Defense Department, as more than 2,500 productions have since the military established a Hollywood liaison office in the late 1940s.

The list is extensive, including both Top Gun films and a host of other blockbuster films.

It’s the subject of a new documentary, Theaters of War, directed and narrated by University of Georgia communication studies professor Roger Stahl.

The idea behind the DoD’s production support program is simple: Hollywood producers who want to make a movie or show portraying the military can get access to DoD gear, vehicles, personnel and more if they are willing to turn over a copy of their script for approval.

Sometimes filmmakers make edits to their scripts or films to receive Pentagon support, which can exponentially lower filming costs. And some films that can’t get approval never get made.

The documentary leans heavily on interviews with two avowedly anti-war journalists — Tom Secker and Matt Alford — who have obtained countless documents about the program over the years via the Freedom of Information Act, as well as other Hollywood figures like Oliver Stone.

Secker and Alford’s crowning discovery is a database tracking production assistance requests, allowing for unprecedented systemic understanding of the program.

Stahl describes a list of “showstoppers” that can keep a project from receiving military support, unless they’re handled with extreme care. These include friendly fire incidents, fragging of officers, American war crimes, military sexual assault, suicide and more.

All the interviewees agree that this system amounts to a silent propaganda push that lets the military influence the way it’s depicted on screen.

But is it really censorship or propaganda, and do Americans even care? Whether the Pentagon production support program amounts to censorship or propaganda depends on the beholder.

I described the program’s early years as soft censorship in my thesis. That was mostly because, in the immediate aftermath of World War II and the Korean War, there weren’t private-sector options for filmmakers to obtain the equipment and vehicles they needed. While many think the military shouldn’t be forced to help unfavorable productions, the impact on that era’s war movies was real.

Thus, the military’s support decision was often life-or-death for a project, and not even John Wayne was immune to the Marine Corps denying cooperation on a proposed film in 1954.

“Giveaway Hill” never made it onto the silver screen because of the Corps’ offense with “the bloody carnage depicted in many areas of the script” and “the calling of fires on own troops by a Marine battalion commander,” among other issues.

Many cut out “objectionable” scenes to keep the Pentagon’s support flowing, effectively cleansing early Cold War-era war movies of darker topics, such as American war crimes, racism in the ranks and more.

But in the decades since, projects with big enough budgets have been able to spend their way out of that bind.

Theaters of War describes how one film, “Thirteen Days” from 2000, had to find fighters and air bases in the Philippines and borrow a destroyer from a museum to overcome the Pentagon’s limited willingness to support a movie about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Even if it’s not censorship — or propaganda — Stahl and Theaters of War just want you to decide for yourself. And that’s a start.

Theaters of War is available for streaming on Vimeo for $4.99.

“I guess 299BSB is broke as hell, and we still went to NTC,” wrote user u/willsugmar, who shared a picture of a meager biscuit, sad scrambled eggs, and a pathetic puddle of gravy.

Many commenters likened the meal to prison food.

“In prison or the DFAC?” asked user diopsideINcalcite. “Because DFAC can get rough when you’re fighting over French toast. Dudes get shanked routinely.”

Some went so far with the joke as to discuss all the soldiers they’ve had to shank in order to get a decent meal.

Complaints about the food at installation dining halls across the Defense Department are not new. And military officials don’t track the effectiveness of their ability to feed service members, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.

The Defense Department withholds money from troops’ pay to provide on-post meals, three times a day. The quality of those meals, however, have left a bad taste in service members’ mouths.

“After many broken promises the system is still largely the same, with evidence showing that service members on meal cards are eating less than half the meals they are entitled to and for which they are charged,” Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, said in a statement to Military Times.

Reviews of base dining facilities on Yelp also paint a dire picture.

As for the dismal breakfast, “Convicts in Federal prison eat better then that,” wrote user Florida_man727.

Then missiles begin to fly, and amphibious ships push ground forces ashore to take the beach and quell the violence, winning the day and ending the drill.

But this year’s RIMPAC flipped that storyline on its head. Brig. Gen. Joseph Clearfield, the deputy commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific and the commander of Fleet Marine Forces in the exercise, told Defense News that ground troops were already ashore, looking toward the seas and contributing to the maritime fight.

RIMPAC “always kind of built to this great, big allied and partnered amphibious assault. Well, this year … there are forces that are already ashore in a permissive environment when the scenario goes into hostilities kickoff, and they stay ashore, and they’re with partner nations ashore,” he said.

The exercise then lets those ground forces explore how to contribute to maritime dominance, he added, including sea denial and aerial denial.

This mirrors what the Corps is trying to accomplish in the Pacific region to counter China’s growing influence and military activities.

The service, through its new stand-in forces and its expeditionary advanced base operations concepts, envisions small groups of Marines scattered throughout regional islands and shorelines, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan and anywhere else partner nations allow. Those small units will carry everything they need to move from one place to another while conducting surveillance missions, establishing refueling spots for joint forces and launching missiles.

Key to the concept is mobility, interoperability and focusing on maritime missions — all demonstrated during RIMPAC 2022, which runs June 29-Aug. 4.

The Marine Corps and U.S. Army units specializing in the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System were ashore and ready to shoot at maritime targets, Clearfield said in the interview. The new 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment based in Hawaii and the California-based 7th Marine Regiment set up expeditionary advanced bases ashore to provide sensing services for the coalition force and prosecute targets if the opportunity arose.

For 7th Marines, it did.

F/A-18 Hornet jets from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232, operating with 7th Marines as part of the temporary Marine Air-Ground Task Force 7, shot modified Joint Direct Attack Munition bombs against the decommissioned amphibious ship Denver during a sinking exercise.

Marine Corps Forces Pacific spokesman Maj. Nick Mannweiler told Defense News this was the first employment of this JDAM weapon by Marine aircraft, and its first use against a ship. The Air Force previously tested the modified JDAM against a full-scale vessel target, but not an actual warship.

Additionally, the squadron, which also fired high-speed anti-radiation missiles and a Harpoon anti-ship missile, practiced the sensing and targeting portion of the kill chain alongside Navy P-8 maritime patrol aircraft and Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drones. According to a news release on the sinking exercise, dubbed SINKEX, this demonstrated “the U.S. Marine Corps’ ability to integrate into a joint and combined command and control network anywhere.”

Clearfield said this followed recent demonstrations of ways the Corps can sink ships from the air and the ground, as the service pivots to being an ashore node in the maritime fight.

At last summer’s Large Scale Exercise, the Corps demonstrated NMESIS — the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System — an unmanned Joint Light Tactical Vehicle affixed with a Naval Strike Missile launcher. NMESIS was one of several naval systems to fire at the decommissioned frigate Ingraham off Hawaii during SINKEX.

RIMPAC 2022 featured the JDAM and the Harpoon to sink the ex-Denver.

RIMPAC planners had intended for Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 169 to fire a Joint Air-to-Ground Missile, which would have been the first time Marines fired this weapon during a training event. (Mannweiler noted the service first tested the JAGM against maritime targets with AH-1Z helos in December 2021.)

But the event was ultimately scrapped “due to range-timing challenges in the course of conducting the multi-service operation. This decision was made in the interests of range safety due to these timing challenges.” But, he added, “sinking exercises are highly valuable training opportunities — a hallmark of RIMPAC — and the Marine Corps will seek out future opportunities to train and exercise with JAGM at sea.”

Though the military didn’t demonstrate JAGM at RIMPAC, Marines now have at least four proven tools in their inventory to sink a ship from ashore.

“You can see here where, from the Large Scale Exercise [in] August ′21 to the SINKEX in RIMPAC ′22, we’re going to demonstrate the ability to gain and maintain custody [of maritime targets] both from ashore and in the air, and putting together lethality from ashore and lethality from our aviation combat element,” Clearfield said.

The general praised his chain of command — Marine Forces Pacific, U.S. Pacific Fleet and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command — because “every exercise we do, they want a list enumerated of what are we doing: what experiments, what first-ofs are we doing, or what second-ofs or third-ofs. It’s just become a huge part of our DNA right now that we take advantage of all these things to try something — either something that we’ve got in theory, or something doctrinally that should work, but actually exercising it.”

Which stop did you hate?

Did you contribute to drinking all the beer in Iceland?

We are in the market for reviews, epic stories and even photos from your favorite Marine Corps MEU stops for a future story.

Submissions can be emailed by Aug. 19 to Marine Corps Editor Andrea Scott at ascott@militarytimes.com, with the consent that they may be used in print and online.

Please include your name, rank, years you served and current hometown.

Langley, who will now lead U.S. troops in Africa as the commander of U.S. Africa Command, was widely expected to land the confirmation following a hearing by the Senate Armed Services Committee in late July.

In the Marine Corps’ 246-year history, more than 70 white men have risen to the four-star ranking, according to The Washington Post.

The Senate unanimously confirmed Langley and a series of other military leaders to new roles Monday evening, according to a Tweet from the Senate cloakroom.

His confirmation was celebrated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, on social media.

NEWS: The Senate has just confirmed Michael Langley to be a four-star general in the United States Marine Corps. He’s been a Marine for more than 35 years. He's led an impressive career.

And he’s now the first Black four-star general in the history of the Marines. pic.twitter.com/LKyszXVxnE

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) August 2, 2022

Before receiving his nomination to the new role by President Joe Biden in June, Langley, a native of Shreveport, Louisiana, held several leadership roles during his 37 years in both the Pentagon and Marine Corps, according to his Marine Corps bio.

Langley will replace the outgoing commander of U.S. AFRICOM, Army Gen. Stephen J. Townsend. In late July, Townsend shared that the threat of violent extremism and strategic competition from China and Russia remain the greatest challenges to the combatant command, according to a Department of Defense news release.

“Some of the most lethal terrorists on the planet are now in Africa,” said Townsend, according to the release.

Langley’s promotion comes as U.S. troops are once again operating in Somalia.

U.S. AFRICOM reported no new civilian casualties in its most recent quarter as of June 30 this year, according to a casualty assessment report released in July.

Those are small, though important, changes in how they can better combat a growing list of nasty threats that do not always involve bullets and missiles.

But what will really change their work is a combined threat review, new strategy and increased funding to push CBRN to the forefront of defense thinking.

The larger “pivot” and “transformation” that one senior defense official signaled at a conference devoted to the trade of defeating such threats, is a comprehensive posture review, increased funding across multiple years and a new way to integrate CBRN defense into everything troops do.

With that new prioritization and funding, officials hope CBRN gear and strategy seep into the total force.

Adding another layer of data mining and machine learning will help frontline CBRN better face currently unknown dangers that threaten to overwhelm defense, civilian and emergency response in ways that could exceed the COVID-19 pandemic.

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense programs Deborah Rosenblum laid out the big picture in her remarks on July 28, the second day of the annual National Defense Industrial Association’s CBRN conference here in Baltimore, Maryland.

“We are not going to figure it out as we go,” Rosenblum said. “We need a radical transformation.”

Rosenblum characterized the growing chemical and biological threat as “vastly more difficult” and “rapidly changing.”

Multiple speakers throughout the two-day event hammered away that the old days of “one bug, one drug” are gone. That is the methodology that existed for decades with threats such as smallpox or anthrax, both deadly viruses that do have existing vaccinations.

While COVID-19 came from human-animal contact, current and future threats may be designed by adversaries such as Russia, China, North Korea, Iran or non-state actors specifically to confound existing identification tools. That masks who made it, what it is and how to treat it.

And those are not casual references. The 2022 State Department Report on Adherence and Compliance for arms control, including chemical and bioweapons programs, made specific notes as to these adversaries.

“The People’s Republic of China (PRC) continued to engage in activities with dual-use applications, which raise concerns regarding its compliance with Article I of the BWC,” the report read.

The bulk of the State Department report regarding alleged weapons programs, specifically dual-use ones, includes estimated activity and fears of malign uses of biological and chemical technology due to incomplete, inaccurate, or sometimes misleading information.

The United States also has its own biodefense and biological technology programs, which could themselves be switched to “dual-use.” The United States also pursued and created vast stores of chemical weapons and biological agents before committing to end offensive bioweapons programs and joining the Chemical Weapons Convention, along with most other states in the world.

Russia maintained a robust biological and chemical weapons infrastructure while part of the Soviet Union. Despite public denial of such programs, Russian officials admitted in the early 1990s that its bioweapons program continued into the late days of the Cold War.

Media reports have also pointed to multiple political assassinations that the Kremlin, at the behest of Russian President Vladmir Putin, conducted using radiological elements and the fourth-generation nerve agent Novichok.

Then there’s North Korea, which has had a bioweapons capability since the 1960s, according to the State Department report.

“North Korea probably has the capability to produce sufficient quantities of biological agents for military purposes upon leadership demand,” the report stated.

However, outside experts, such as those with the Bulletin for Atomic Scientists, note that depictions of North Korean military capabilities want for tangible evidence. The closed-border country’s leadership could be touting strong bioweapons programs simply as a strategic bluff.

“One must be prudent when discussing North Korea, and not jump to conclusions or ascribe a threatening meaning to any sliver of information that manages to emerge, particularly when it emerges in a time of crisis,” wrote Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley, then an associate professor studying biodefense at George Mason University, in a 2017 article on the Bulletin.

A 2020 report by the thinktank Stimson drew a similar conclusion. The Stimson report noted that the U.S. government has made these claims for years without a clear definition of a bioweapons program.

“However, based on a definition by United Nations (UN) inspectors investigating Iraq’s BW activities, probably the most that can be said in the case of North Korea is that it may have or have had a BW program,” the Stimson report stated.

Regardless, biological and chemical threats still present a challenge for the Pentagon. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin sent a memo in late 2021 calling for a Biodefense Posture Review both for naturally occurring and manufactured biological threats.

That review kicked off in January and is expected to take about a year, according to Rosenblum, the assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs.

Ian Watson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for chemical, biological defense, said in a separate panel in Baltimore that the posture review will “outline critical aspects of the threat.” The move will raise the profile of CBRN in the national defense strategy, concepts of operations and operation plans across the force, he added.

“Early warning is critical,” Watson said. That is because the use of biological or chemical attacks could preclude the start of armed conflict to prepare the battlespace.

But already, the Pentagon bumped up spending on chemical and biological defense with $300 million more in the currently proposed budget and a total of $1.2 billion additional funding over the next five years of budgeting.

Major moves that Rosenblum is pushing include adding CBRN sensors on most existing tactical platforms, as well as future platforms, from manned to unmanned, troop carriers to individual drones.

The Pentagon also needs to use advanced algorithms and technical solutions to do better satellite and thermal imaging that could spot and track the spread of chemical weapons releases.

A variety of entities across the Defense Department are developing modern vaccines that can be used before exposure as a protective measure and afterward as a treatment.

That same vaccine research is also solving the “one bug, one drug” problem by building vaccines that address a family of viruses or even attack the symptom, such as upper respiratory problems, which exist across several viruses.

A major initiative comes down to the lowest level — the individual soldier, sailor, airman or Marine. And that is through a program that seeks to have detection capabilities on wearable devices.

The Pentagon tried this before, with old chemical detection strips that often got contaminated by other debris. They also built a white-faced watch-like device to detect exposure called the DT236. The problem with that device was that it had to be sent to a lab for analysis.

That meant a soldier in the field unsure if they had been exposed was waiting days or longer to find out.

But the new wearables, such as commercially available smartwatches with certain sensors, could provide real time updates to chemical and bioweapons exposure.

“With these efforts, every warfighter can be a chemical or biological sensor themselves,” Rosenblum said.

And while all those efforts are necessary for new threats, a new strategy will drive better protection, she said.

“We can have the best material in the world, but if culture and mindset are not integrated…it’s going to sit on the side,” Rosenblum added.

Past practices did not always allow CBRN experts to know what they were dealing with, at what concentration and at what scale. That often meant pulling entire units out or cordoning off swaths of the battlespace.

Those measures are great for adversaries because it reduces troops in the fight and restricts the battlefield.

But, if leaders can take a more tailored approach to how they prepare for such attacks and react to them when they occur, they can be more effective on the battlefield, experts said.

The phrase “media literacy” appears six times in Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 8 – Information, released in June. Robust training to this end is required, the document’s authors state, both to preserve force resiliency and to deny enemy influence attacks based on disinformation.

The document illustrates the power of media literacy in a page-long vignette describing the Myanmar military’s weaponization of propaganda on social and digital media against the domestic Muslim Rohingya population. These disinformation efforts included the creation of fake user accounts and celebrity pages to spread posts that promoted violence and falsely warned of impending attacks.

More recently, the Ukraine-Russia conflict has underscored the need to assess and interpret information effectively; both sides have used public statements and released photos and other media in attempts to influence public opinion and thus gain an advantage.

“No individual can fully know or understand the breadth of available information that amplifies cognitive shortcuts, biases, and assumptions,” the document states. “However, media literacy instills a necessary level of critical thinking in everyday interactions with digital and traditional news and information environments. Effective training in this area reduces Marines’ vulnerabilities to malign influence and supports force resiliency through unity of effort.”

How the Corps plans to provide this training, who will get it and what it will cover are open questions, however.

In a media roundtable ahead of MCDP-8′s release, deputy commandant for Information Lt. Gen. Matthew Glavy described the training as something that would take place in a “school circle” with a squad or platoon of Marines following an exercise or other major training.

“There are the most powerful opportunities for leaders to instill in those Marines, not only lessons from the actions they’ve just taken, but really lessons in life,” Glavy said. “Marines, in the wake of those types of hard events are really kind of in this absorb mode … the mind is open to learning.”

Eric Schaner, a Marine Corps senior information and policy strategist who co-authored the document, made clear that this effort was in its nascent stages.

“More to follow on that, but it’s super important that our Marines are skilled in the use of social media and discerning and discerning what is fact from fiction,” he said.

In a follow-up conversation in July, officials told Marine Corps Times on background that Marine Corps Communication Strategy and Operations, which handles public affairs and media engagement, had been tasked with developing the training and that a planning team was being assembled to take the effort forward from there. Still to be determined, the officials said, was who would receive the training, how it would be administered and what it would cover.

The timeframe for fielding a training program or module also has yet to be determined.

While no other service has a formalized media literacy training program, officials noted that this initiative was not completely out of the blue. Multiple previous iterations of the defense budget bill have called on the Defense Department to furnish annual training to troops and civilians to make them resilient to disinformation and foreign influence.

The House-passed version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2023 would expand annual cyber awareness training to include a digital literacy module regarding “digital citizenship, media literacy, and protection against cyber threats.”

The bill defines media literacy as the ability to do the following:

• Access relevant and accurate information through media in a variety of forms.
• Critically analyze media content and the influences of different forms of media/
• Evaluate the comprehensiveness, relevance, credibility, authority and accuracy of information.
• Make educated decisions based on information obtained from media and digital sources.
• Operate various forms of technology and digital tools.
• And reflect on how the use of media and technology may affect private and public.

That’s a pretty good starting point, according to Renee Hobbs, a leading scholar in the field of media literacy and professor at the University of Rhode Island. Hobbs spoke with Marine Corps Times via phone from the National World War II Museum in New Orleans while participating in a workshop for educators on propaganda.

A crucial aspect of media literacy, Hobbs said, was developing an understanding that public and media messages always are selective and incomplete.

Interpretation, she said, is likewise subjective. Thus, the task is more complex than sorting news reports and information sources into “good” and “bad.”

“In more democratic organizations, where people sit around a table, and can share opinions freely, we can learn to respect our differences,” she said. “And we can, in fact, benefit from hearing people who have very different interpretations from each other. Media literacy really cultivates respect for differences in multiperspectival thinking and respect for complexity.”

A “train-the-trainer” model works well for helping members of an organization become more media literate, she said, as it’s important for understanding and buy-in to develop at the top.

The principles of media literacy, she added, must be infused into all of training, rather than siloed into a single course or event. After all, Hobbs said, media literacy doesn’t just pertain to news articles or Facebook posts; even maps should be understood and interpreted based on what they include or leave out.

Where the Marine Corps might struggle to embrace media literacy as a perspective, Hobbs said, is where the police departments she has trained have also struggled: developing a culture of transparency where members have some freedom to share their own points of view.

“Talking about how media messages are selective and incomplete also means recognizing that the media messages that our leaders provide to us are selective and incomplete,” she said. “And so the implications of that big media literacy concept is complicated in hierarchical organizations sometimes.”

Despite the difficulty, she said, media literacy can contribute to greater combat effectiveness. Media-literate Marines will be more attuned to which media messages are designed to trigger emotions and bypass critical thinking.

And. she added, they can also better understand how others might interpret and respond to situations differently than they do.

“If I’m in Afghanistan, and I’m dealing with a local on the ground, I can be sensitive to the fact that his interpretation of a particular situation might be very different than mine, his interpretation of the symbolic environment might be very different than mine,” she said. “And I can be actually curious about that, and interested in that, and being able to use that tactically, to accomplish my strategic objectives.”

And while there are plenty of films that chronicle the scaly heroes of the Mesozoic Era, it also is fun to see movies and shows about dinosaurs living among humans.

As a series, “Jurassic Park” has long had an affinity for the Cretaceous period’s favorite predator: the Velociraptor. But what if you substituted in Velociraptors for the leading men and women in your favorite military or war movies?

One Twitter user, @ButWithRaptors, has done just that. These are our favorites.

1. “1917″

1917 (2019) but with a Velociraptor pic.twitter.com/SIyHR8onkP

— But With Raptors (@ButWithRaptors) July 29, 2022

2. “Inglorious Basterds”

Inglourious Basterds (2009) but with Velociraptors pic.twitter.com/bfedCDmE4d

— But With Raptors (@ButWithRaptors) April 23, 2022

3. “A Few Good Men”

he wants the truth pic.twitter.com/YLrv2SPl84

— But With Raptors (@ButWithRaptors) June 18, 2022

4. “Top Gun: Maverick”

Top Gun: Maverick (2022) but with a Velociraptor pic.twitter.com/hsS7CviLIm

— But With Raptors (@ButWithRaptors) May 23, 2022

5. “Air Force One”

Air Force One (1997) but with a Velociraptor pic.twitter.com/7yokAqlFqW

— But With Raptors (@ButWithRaptors) April 25, 2022

Personally, I’d like to see full cuts of all these movies, but if I have to, I’ll continue to settle for the GIFs and shorts.

The software used to create these hilarious clips is made by Maxon, which helps designers with visual effects. There is one piece of it called “Universe Raptorize,” which specifically turns “Tom Cruise in any footage into Velociraptor Cruise in seconds.”

Last week, members of the U.S. Ski Team, those that compete at the Olympics and the Alpine Ski World Cup, participated in a program in San Diego with an organization called Deep End Fitness, a group started by military special operations veterans that teaches water survival and fitness skills.

The 14 athletes spent a week of their off-season working on a variety of drills including beach workouts, breath-holding exercises and weight training at a pool, according to Per Lundstam, U.S. Ski & Snowboard Alpine Sport Science Director, who helped organize the program. He added that it ran for a few years previously but was paused during the pandemic.

While this boot camp was not exactly what new recruits may find themselves doing in basic training, for the winter athletes it served as a chance for them to push themselves physically and mentally outside of their comfort zone and grow together as a team.

For an alpine skier like Jett Seymour, 23, working with former service members as instructors was invaluable.

“One thing that really struck me was the perseverance and the drive that those guys have to get through anything in their life,” said Seymour, who grew up skiing at a young age in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

That type of determination did not come easy for MARSOC veteran Staff Sgt. Prime Hall, the co-founder of Deep End Fitness. Hall served in the Corps from 2005 until 2017, when he was medically discharged after being blown up during an attack in Afghanistan. Upon separating, Hall went to business school and started Deep End Fitness and Underwater Torpedo League with fellow MARSOC Staff Sgt. Don Tran.

Deep Water Fitness now runs programs across the country with 200 instructors, roughly 30 to 40% of whom are veterans, according to Hall.

“We’re both kind of fascinated around training and human performance...we started going down the path of performance training and what would make the greatest impact and how we can set up a program that could be what was missing for us,” said Hall, who shared he also deployed to Iraq and parts of the Pacific.

One of the big takeaways for the U.S. Ski team members was an appreciation for the teamwork the former troops build together during their service and learning how to incorporate that into their work as athletes.

“I really appreciate that hard, gritty work that those guys do,” said Luke Winters, 25, an alpine skier on the team from Gresham, Oregon. “I honestly wish that we can bring that into our sport because there’s really nothing like it,”

The U.S. Ski team athletes will compete at the FIS Ski World Cup in Soelden, Austria this October. The next winter Olympics will be in Italy in 2026.

“I think the really cool part, and one of the biggest takeaways that I have from the group, was watching them go through some of the team workouts and team challenges that we put them through.” said Hall, adding, “Marine Raiders we have a saying called ‘gung ho’ — work together — that comes from World War II Marine Raiders. We got to see a little bit of that with this group where they got into that ‘gung ho’ spirit.”

It’s a love story as old as time.

Marine meets girl, girl needs healthcare, Marine needs BAH to pay off an old drug dealer. So what do they do? Get married after three brief conversations the day before he ships off to Iraq and split the money.

That is the premise of Netflix’s “Purple Hearts,” which stars Sofia Carson as Cassie Salazar and Nicholas Galitzine as Luke Morrow.

Cassie is a struggling singer working in a bar that sometimes lets her band perform one song every Friday. She has Type I Diabetes, but her art doesn’t afford her health insurance. Luke, on the other hand, is an addict in recovery. He joined the Marines to get a fresh start and earn his dad’s respect, but he owes his former dealer a hefty sum of money.

She first propositions a lifelong friend-turned-Marine to engage in the fraudulent marriage, but he turns her down because he already has a girlfriend of his own. Enter his bunkmate, Luke. And while the marriage is fake, the consummation that takes place at the base hotel after their courthouse wedding certainly isn’t...

Despite essentially being strangers, the two Skype often so Uncle Sam doesn’t catch onto the sham marriage. But after a few conversations, Luke becomes Cassie’s muse, and she pens a song for the deployed men called “Come Back Home.” Unfortunately, Luke does indeed make his way home with a serious IED injury, turning their fake marriage into one where the pair must now care for each other ... in sickness and in health.

As you can imagine, eventually the Marine Corps finds out about the sham, Luke loses everything, and he has to serve out a prison sentence. On the other hand, Cassie’s dreams all come true — her band takes off and gets to open for Florence + the Machine. Everything falls into place for her, except for the minor inconvenience of having fallen in love with her fake husband.

The movie is based on a novel by Tess Wakefield, and is something of a soap opera-esque take on a military marriage entered into for the benefits. The best way to describe the movie itself is wounded in action — it tries, but it’s just not quite at 100%. It is exactly as corny as you’d expect, but I couldn’t look away. The storyline is thin, and the military premise is cliché, but, frankly, the chemistry between Galitzine and Carson is off the charts.

Plus, once Luke finishes his stint in jail, he and Cassie live happily ever after — complete with a closing montage beach scene that looks like a Tommy Bahama ad for white linen apparel.

Watch Purple Hearts on Netflix.

The U.S. military discovered a problem with the ejection seats used across its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fleet in April, but waited three months to ground those aircraft flown by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps to fully investigate the issue, multiple sources told Air Force Times Friday.

Officials initially saw the problem as a potentially isolated incident. But an ongoing investigation sourced the issue to the production line, prompting waves of temporary stand-downs this week.

“During a routine maintenance inspection at Hill [Air Force Base, Utah,] in April ‘22, an anomaly was discovered with one of the seat cartridge actuated devices in the F-35 seat,” Steve Roberts, a spokesperson for seat manufacturer Martin-Baker, said Friday. “This was quickly traced back to a gap in the manufacturing process, which was addressed and changed.”

Cartridges are the ejection seat component that explode to propel an aviator out of the cockpit and prompts their parachute to open. The defective part was loose and missing the magnesium powder used to ignite the propellant that shoots someone to safety, Roberts said.

A maintainer inspecting an F-35 found that an ejection cartridge felt suspiciously light, according to an unconfirmed summary of a briefing within the Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command obtained by Air Force Times. After a closer look, the cartridge turned out to be missing its explosive charge that would lift someone to safety.

The military tested 2,700 F-35 ejection seat cartridges and discovered three failures as of Wednesday, the briefing summary said. Service officials declined to confirm or deny the summary’s narrative of events.

Roberts said the problem was unique to a particular cartridge number and to the F-35, but did not answer how many defective parts have turned up so far. The U.S.-led Joint Strike Fighter program conducted a “short inspection” and determined that the jets could return to flight, he said.

“Martin-Baker has been providing the [prime aircraft contractors like Lockheed Martin] and multiple [government] agencies with supporting data to prove that all other aircraft may be excluded,” Roberts said. “Outside the F-35, not a single anomaly has been discovered worldwide as a result of the forensic investigation which continues at pace.”

A majority of the Air Force’s F-35A Lightning II fleet on Friday became the latest to stand down amid concerns about Martin-Baker ejections seats on a wide range of military aircraft at home and abroad.

Air Combat Command spokesperson Alexi Worley confirmed that the first faulty cartridge was found during a routine inspection in April. The military immediately inspected additional aircraft, she said, and halted its investigation when Martin-Baker discovered a quality-assurance failure on its production line.

The F-35 Joint Program Office then issued a “routine” directive, known as a time compliance technical order, that mandated inspection of all ejection seat cartridges within 90 days starting July 19. Ten days later, Air Combat Command grounded its F-35s to speed up those checks, Worley said.

ACC aims to finish looking at the seats within 90 days, or by mid-October, Worley said in a statement first reported by Breaking Defense on Friday. Each plane can return to regular flights once it passes inspection.

“The stand-down of aircraft will continue through the weekend, and a determination to safely resume normal operations is expected to be made early next week, pending analysis of the inspection data,” Worley told Air Force Times.

Though ACC owns most of the Air Force’s more than 300 F-35As, some are managed by other major commands like U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Pacific Air Forces. Command spokespeople did not respond to emailed queries Friday.

Air Education and Training Command also paused its F-35 operations on Friday “to allow our logistics team to further analyze the issue and expedite the inspection process,” spokesperson Capt. Lauren Woods told Breaking Defense. AETC oversees F-35 training units at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, and Eglin AFB, Florida.

“Based on the results of these inspections and in conjunction with ACC, the lead command for F-35, AETC will make a decision regarding continued operations,” Woods said.

The Navy and Marine Corps have also stopped flying F-35B and F-35C jets while investigations are ongoing. Each aircraft will be inspected before its next flight rather than in batches over three months.

“All inspections are being conducted in an expedited manner with a high priority,” F-35 Joint Program Office spokesperson Chief Petty Officer Matthew Olay said Friday.

Naval Air Systems Command has declined to say how many aircraft are affected, citing operational security concerns. It began shipping replacement parts to its own maintenance centers with planes affected by the problem on July 24.

The issue “only affects aircraft equipped with [cartridge actuated devices] within a limited range of lot numbers,” the service said in a statement.

Military and company officials declined to say how many cartridges were produced as part of the defective lots. The Navy said no one has died or been injured because of the defect; the Air Force has stressed its groundings are a precaution to get ahead of any fatalities.

On Wednesday, the Air Force temporarily stood down its T-38 Talon and T-6 Texan II training aircraft due to the same ejection seat worries. Most were slated to returned to service on Friday, but nearly 300 aircraft that may be affected by faulty cartridges will remain on the ground. That comprises about 40% of the T-38 fleet and 15% of the T-6 fleet, including planes at each undergraduate pilot training base and Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida.

The T-38 is a supersonic jet used to prepare pilots to fly fighter and bomber aircraft, and the T-6 is the service’s turboprop plane used to teach basic flight skills. Each aircraft contains multiple explosive cartridges so pilots have backup options if one charge fails.

It’s unclear how taking a significant portion of Air Force trainers out of commission will affect the service’s ability to graduate new pilots amid an enduring shortage of about 1,600 airmen, particularly in the fighter community. The Air Force produces about 1,300 new pilots a year.

“Our primary concern is the safety of our airmen and it is imperative that they have confidence in our equipment,” Nineteenth Air Force boss Maj. Gen. Craig Wills, who runs an organization responsible for the service’s training enterprise, told Air Force Times in an emailed statement. “Our actions … were taken out of an abundance of caution in order to ensure the safety of our pilots and aircrew.”

Several aircraft fleets across the Defense Department that use Martin-Baker ejection seats — from the T-38s and T-6s to the Navy’s F/A-18B/C/D Hornet and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter jets, E/A-18G Growler electronic attack plane, and T-45 Goshawk and F-5 Tiger II trainers — are on hold while the military digs into the problem. The issue may also affect European airframes like the Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale and aircraft flown by Turkey and South Korea.

The U.K. Royal Air Force also stopped “non-essential” flights for its Red Arrows jets and Typhoon warplanes over safety concerns with its ejection seats, the Daily Mail reported. NATO’s Allied Air Command did not respond to queries emailed Friday about the potential impact on the international fighter enterprise.

F-35 Joint Strike Fighters are the Pentagon’s premier fighter jet flown by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, plus more than a dozen foreign countries that have ordered or received them. In April, the Government Accountability Office reported it will cost more than $1.7 trillion for the Pentagon to buy, operate and maintain the jets in the U.S.

Lockheed Martin plans to build more than 3,000 F-35s for militaries around the globe. More than 800 planes have been delivered so far over the past 15 years, over half of which belong to the U.S.

Joint Strike Fighters were last publicly grounded in South Korea in January after one of the country’s jets malfunctioned and landed on its belly. Before that, the U.S. grounded all of its F-35s worldwide over fuel tube problems, among a slew of other software and hardware hurdles to the fleet’s rollout.

The same day as the military began probing its ejection seats in earnest, Bloomberg reported some F-35s could be grounded for a separate problem: an enduring shortage of working engines.

Nine percent of F-35s weren’t operational in mid-2020, GAO said in a July 19 report.

“DOD’s strategy allows 6% of F-35s to be unavailable for missions at any given time due to engine issues,” the federal watchdog wrote. “But the number of F-35s that this leaves available for operations isn’t what the military services consider to be sufficient … in part because its strategy doesn’t ensure enough spare engine parts are available.”

The June 24 memo, signed by the DoD’s undersecretary for personnel and readiness, Gilbert Cisneros, also limits award of the Inherent Resolve Campaign Medal to just troops who serve on the ground in Syria or operate within 12 nautical miles of its coast or airspace. The policy went into effect July 1.

The GWOT-SM has been a virtually automatic award for troops since its introduction in 2003.

The Army, for example, determined in March 2004 that all active duty troops who served after Sept. 11, 2001, merited the award because they’d all “served in some way in support of GWOT,” according to the Human Resources Command website.

And while blanket eligibility was later amended to require that members serve 30 consecutive or 60 non-consecutive days “in support of” a GWOT operation, units have loosely interpreted the “support” criteria and awarded the medal regardless of actual connection to the ongoing conflict. Units have argued that even 30 days in garrison counted as part of the broader GWOT-focused deployment readiness cycle.

But after Sept. 11, “the service member must have directly served in a designated military [counter-terrorism] operation” for at least 30 days, the memo says.

It clarifies that direct service doesn’t include the previous “support” loophole as well. The memo describes direct service as someone who “deployed on orders for a designated CT operation [or] directly supported a [designated] CT operation on a full-time basis while assigned to an organization conducting a CT operation.”

According to a DoD list last updated in March, ongoing CT operations eligible for the award include:

• Operation Noble Eagle, a North American airspace patrol mission.
• Operation Enduring Freedom, which continues in East Africa.
• Operation Enduring Sentinel, the over-the-horizon CT mission focused on potential threats in post-withdrawal Afghanistan.
• Operation Inherent Resolve, the long-running fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
• Operation Pacific Eagle — Philippines, a dormant CT operation that has not had a new inspector general oversight report since November 2020.

Despite the changes to the GWOT and Inherent Resolve campaign medals, the memo doesn’t address whether there will be any changes to National Defense Service Medal eligibility.

Should DoD cease awarding the GWOT-era NDSM, which is automatically awarded to people who join the military during a designated conflict period, it would represent a symbolic close to the wars that began after Sept. 11.