Attorneys for the government, on behalf of now-retired Air Force Gen. John Hyten, had sought to get the suit dismissed on the basis that the Feres doctrine prohibits troops from seeking damages for injuries sustained during service, except in cases of medical malpractice.

But Feres, a 1950 Supreme Court ruling intended to block troops from suing over combat and training casualties, doesn’t apply to sexual assault because the “alleged sexual assault [could] not conceivably serve any military purpose,” a three-judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco wrote in their decision.

The judges upheld a lower court’s ruling allowing retired Army Col. Kathryn Spletstoser’s lawsuit to proceed to trial. She originally filed the case in November 2019, after a previous Air Force investigation could not substantiate her claims.

Spletstoser came forward earlier that year as Hyten was being considered for the vice chairman job, alleging that he had sexually assaulted her during his time as head of U.S. Strategic Command.

Her lawsuit falls into a bit of a legal gray area, as she sued Hyten individually for the assault, rather than the military in general for any sort of negligence. Still, Justice Department lawyers have been representing Hyten, arguing that because the incident took place during their military service, it falls under their jurisdiction.

Thursday’s ruling may end up setting a precedent either way, allowing military sexual assault survivors to sue not only their assailants, but the Defense Department as well.

“The court, without specifically saying it, made it clear that they don’t think sexual assault is ever going to be incident to service,” retired Air Force Col. Don Christensen, a former chief prosecutor who is now president of service member advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, told Military Times on Thursday.

The effects could be seen locally at first, in the 9th Circuit, as a new precedent. That might also influence other circuits, but there’s a third option, wherein the Justice Department could appeal this latest ruling and send the case to the Supreme Court, which could decide once and for all whether service members can sue over sexual assault.

Feres has at least one enemy there in Justice Clarence Thomas.

“At a minimum, we should take up this case to clarify the scope of the immunity we have created,” Thomas wrote in a 2021 dissenting opinion, after the court ruled against a former West Point cadet seeking damages for an alleged rape. “Without any statutory text to serve as a guide, lower courts are understandably confused about what counts as an injury ‘incident’ to military service.”

Thomas invoked an example in which, if one civilian and one service member are injured due to government negligence in the same incident, only the civilian would have any recourse.

“Under our precedent, if two Pentagon employees — one civilian and one a servicemember — are hit by a bus in the Pentagon parking lot and sue, it may be that only the civilian would have a chance to litigate his claim on the merits,” he wrote.

To uphold the Feres doctrine in Spletstoser v. Hyten, the Supreme Court would have to explain why it believes sexual assault is an inherent, unavoidable risk to be expected in the course of military service.

“I just can’t see them going there,” Christensen said.

The overall endeavor was a success, according to a Defense Department Inspector General report released Tuesday, but there were a handful of issues that came up during the after-action reviews of Operations Allies Refuge and Allies Welcome.

Some were simply a consequence of the quickly thrown together effort, which didn’t get started until early August 2021, months after the Biden administration announced the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Others were administrative oversights that posed larger risks to the operation.

Operation Allies Refuge kicked off in late July 2021, with an announcement that 2,500 Special Immigrant Visa-holders would travel from Kabul to Fort Lee, Virginia, where they would stay temporarily.

Organizers there had about two weeks to get set up, anticipating more Afghans would continue to arrive, even past the U.S. military’s Sept. 1, 2021, withdrawal deadline.

But then the Taliban took Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021, completely upending plans and starting a race to evacuate as many Afghans as possible in the following two weeks.

DoD identified nine more bases, including some in Europe, that would be responsible for housing evacuees on their way to resettlement. They had between two and eight days to prepare, the IG report found.

The report calls out the State Department, which had been in charge of evacuation plans and timelines, for deeply underestimating the number of refugees they would be sending to American bases.

“For example, on August 18, 2021, Ramstein Air Base leadership was informed they had to prepare to receive 2,500 evacuees,” according to the report. “Less than 2 weeks later, 28,517 evacuees had arrived at Ramstein Air Base.”

All told, more than 100,000 Afghans passed through American military installations, the last of whom were resettled in early 2022.

The DoD IG judged the operation successful, but identified several lessons learned.

One of the main issues was a lack of memorandums of understanding to guide the multiple government agencies involved.

Traditionally, in these situations, these agreements would lay out who was in charge of which aspects of the refugees’ care. As the Defense Department provided room, board and medical care, State issued their visas and Homeland Security handled background checks.

Technically DHS was the lead agency, but the Pentagon’s policy chief felt he should defer to the State Department, and so tried to draw up an MOU to that effect. But State refused to sign it.

“For example, during our site visits, we identified several areas where roles and responsibilities between the DoD, the DOS, and the DHS were unclear, including accountability of Afghan evacuees, law enforcement jurisdiction, and provision of services beyond basic sustainment,” according to the report. “MOAs at the installation level that assign roles and responsibilities to the DoD, the DOS, and the DHS would have assisted task force personnel and interagency partners understand their responsibilities.”

Three weeks becomes six months

The DoD-led task forces responsible for the care of Afghans were initially told it would take about 21 days to process their guests. But Operation Allies Welcome didn’t wrap up until February, and in the mean time, the refugees weren’t getting everything they needed, the IG found.

Safety was a concern, for a couple of reasons. One, some of the installations didn’t call up civil affairs advisers, including those at Fort Bliss, Texas, Forts Pickett and Lee, Virginia, For McCoy, Wisconsin, and Camp Atterbury, Indiana.

“Military civil affairs advisors possess the tools to identify, gauge, and address grievances from Afghan evacuees early and in a culturally appropriate way,” the report reads. “Providing the capability for task force personnel to address emerging issues early while being culturally sensitive was critical to maintaining a safe and secure environment for Afghan evacuees, interagency partners, and DoD personnel.”

They did have advisers at Quantico Marine Corps Base, Virginia, according to the report, which helped the task force commander establish “lines of communication with Afghan evacuees and potential second and third order effects of some of the command’s decisions, and coordinated with non‑Governmental organizations to host Afghan‑led English language and American culture classes,” the IG found.

By contrast, Fort Pickett, Virginia, didn’t have civil affairs personnel.

“TF Pickett security personnel expressed concern with several Afghan evacuees possessing homemade weapons. TF Pickett security personnel stated that there had been several instances of reported crimes, including knives stolen from the dining facility, and weapons made from pipes found in an Afghan evacuee’s possession,” the report found. “TF Pickett security personnel believed that Afghan evacuees made weapons for protection against other Afghan evacuees.”

It was technically up to the Virginia State Police to investigate and prosecute any crimes at Pickett, but personnel told IG investigators that local law enforcement had limited resources, so they only referred suspected felonies, leaving lesser crimes unaddressed.

At Atterbury and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, “personnel did not always refer alleged criminal incidents, such as spousal and child abuse, assault, theft, and prostitution, to appropriate law enforcement,” the report found.

Instead, they “often diffused situations and counseled Afghan evacuees after alleged crimes were committed,” the report reads. “Dealing with these alleged criminal incidents internally resulted in no consequences for the alleged perpetrators and did little to deter future offenses or protect victims of these crimes.”

As weeks turned to months, it became clear that the resources amassed to care for the evacuees couldn’t cover all of the bases.

While the Afghans were able to get illnesses addressed and a battery of vaccines, many of them didn’t have access to dental care, or to mental health resources.

“Afghan evacuees living at each of the eight DoD installations had faced a long and uncertain journey out of Afghanistan, then met unfamiliar living conditions and uncertainty regarding eventual relocation,” according to the report. “Afghan evacuees explained that this concern, combined with the uncertainty regarding when or where they would resettle in the United States, ‘weighed heavily on their minds,’ contributing to mental stress.”

At the same time, seven of the eight U.S. installations didn’t have dentists on hand. And while the evacuees maybe could have gotten by without a teeth cleaning, oral infections can cause much bigger issues if they aren’t treated early.

Whether changes are made as a result of the report is up in the air. The IG concluded that the effort was overall a success, though there was room for improvement.

“We are not making any recommendations,” the report reads. “However, the lessons learned presented in this special report should assist the interagency partners, as well as the commands directly and indirectly responsible for the housing of non‑DoD civilians on installations throughout the world on behalf of another Federal department or agency.”

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.

The strikes, launched Tuesday, were in response to an attack on Somali forces near Beledweyne, according to a release.

“The Federal Government of Somalia and U.S. Africa Command take great measures to prevent civilian casualties,” the release said, indicating that there were no civilians killed or injured. “These efforts contrast with the indiscriminate attacks that al-Shabab regularly conducts against the civilian population.”

AFRICOM has in the past been accused by groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch of killing civilians in strikes, despite the command claiming otherwise.

The latest strikes were the second in the past few weeks, as U.S. troops settle back into regular rotations to Somalia.

The Biden administration announced in May that several hundred service members would return to the country, overturning a Trump administration decision to pull all troops out in December 2020.

While strikes continued from abroad, AFRICOM leaders openly urged the Biden administration to let troops operate in Somalia, where the U.S. military has a close relationship with local forces, and where al-Shabab ― al-Qaida’s largest and most well-funded affiliated ― continues to terrorize.

“And I think that our job is to provide indications of warning and disrupt those threats, so they don’t become a problem to Western interests or U.S. interests, globally, and in the homeland,” retired Army Gen. Stephen Townsend, who transferred authority over AFRICOM to Marine Gen. Michael Langley on Monday, told Military Times in July. “So I think we have the resources about right to do that. Would I like to have more resources to do that? Absolutely.”

Along with the reasons for the renaming and the process by which new names were selected, the report includes a cost estimate for renaming nine Army posts that comes to about $21 million.

The renaming process will require removing the old names from all base paraphernalia, from street signs to recycling bin decals to business cards. The Department of Defense is charged with completing the renaming by January 2024.

The most expensive base to rename is also the largest; turning Fort Bragg, N.C., into Fort Liberty will cost an estimated $6.3 million. Renaming the small Virginia Army National Guard training site Fort Pickett, to Fort Barfoot, will be the least expensive, at $300,000.

The commission announced in May its recommendations to rename the posts as such:

• Fort Benning, Ga. — recommended to be renamed Fort Moore, for Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and his wife, Julia. Hal Moore received the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism in the Vietnam War. Julia Moore was an advocate for military families.
• Fort Bragg, N.C. — recommended to be renamed Fort Liberty, after the value of liberty.
• Fort Gordon, Ga. — recommended to be renamed Fort Eisenhower, after President Dwight Eisenhower, who also served as general of the Army.
• Fort A.P. Hill, Va. — recommended to be renamed Fort Walker, after Dr. Mary Walker, the Army’s first female surgeon.
• Fort Hood, Tx. — recommended to be renamed Fort Cavazos, after Gen. Richard Cavazos, who received the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism in the Vietnam War
• Fort Lee, Va. — recommended to be renamed Fort Gregg-Adams, after Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams. Gregg was a key figure in the integration of black soldiers into the Army. Adams was one of the highest ranking female soldiers in World War II.
• Fort Pickett, Va. — recommended to be renamed Fort Barfoot, after Tech. Sgt. Van T. Barfoot, a Medal of Honor recipient.
• Fort Polk, La. — recommended to be renamed Fort Johnson, after Sgt. William Henry Johnson, a Medal of Honor recipient.
• Fort Rucker, Ala. — recommended to be renamed Fort Novosel after Chief Warrant Officer 4 Michael J. Novosel Sr., a Medal of Honor recipient.

Advocates have long pushed for the military to rename the installations that honored those who fought for the Confederacy. But their efforts found success only in 2020, when Congress ordered the DoD to strip Confederate names from bases and other assets, spurred by nationwide protests against racism after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

In a Military Times poll in summer 2020, 49% service members surveyed favored renaming bases that honor Confederates, while only 39% opposed it.

The recommendations that ultimately came out were the result of months of site visits and meetings with local leadership, both on and off the installations, looking for input on namesakes that would be both historically relevant and inclusive.

Benning, for instance, which would be named after Lt. Col. Hal and Julia Moore, honors the Vietnam-era commander of the Army’s first air cavalry unit and his wife, who spearheaded the modern casualty notification process.

Monday’s report also provides an explanation for why Bragg will be given the evergreen, non-controversial name of Fort Liberty. The commission considered several people — including Gen. Colin Powell, who received training at Fort Bragg — as new namesakes for the base before choosing the value of liberty.

The commission said in May that Fort Bragg community members supported renaming the base after the value, rather than an individual.

“Maybe this individual [is] 100% acceptable right now, [but they] might not be 20 years from now for whatever reason,” commission member Jerry Buchanan explained at the time of announcing the name.

Those scratching their heads at the idea of a Fort Liberty might be reassured that the commission opted against some of the other submissions for base names, which included “Awesome,” “Bay of Pigs,” “Classy,” “Hooah,” “House of the Rising Sun,” “Love,” “Red-Footed Booby,” and “Swag” (presumably a suggestion for Fort Bragg).

In addition to its recommendations and cost estimates, the first of the three-part commission report spends a good deal of time explaining not only why renaming is important, but how the original names were first selected.

“Although Americans owe much of their modern identity to the Civil War, they do not owe equal commemoration to both sides,” the report reads. “Though often conflated, commemoration and history come from all sections of our society and serve different purposes for different people.”

The main driver was World War I, and the need to stand up training bases to quickly expand the size of the Army. Most of these bases were built in the South, and the names were “hastily” chosen, according to the report, deferring “to local sensitivities and regional connections of a namesake.”

Braxton Bragg, for instance, was a famously bumbling general, and many of the Confederate namesakes weren’t chosen for their military accomplishments.

“Most importantly, during the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth century, the South and much of the nation came to live under a mistaken understanding of the Civil War known as the ‘Lost Cause,’“ the report reads. “As part of the ‘Lost Cause,’ across the nation, champions of that memory built monuments to Confederate leaders and to the Confederacy, including on many Department of Defense assets.”

The report also recommends that any historical artifacts or memorabilia commemorating the Confederate namesakes be donated to local museums or historical societies, and that any decommissioned or deactivated ships be renamed should they ever be put back into service.

The remaining two parts of the report have not yet been submitted, according to the Naming Commission’s release, but the second will deal with renaming streets, buildings and other items at West Point and the Naval Academy. A third will cover any remaining assets.

The commission has until Oct. 1 to complete them.

The new U.S. arms shipment would further strengthen Ukraine as it mounts the counteroffensive, which analysts say for the first time could allow Kyiv to shape the course of the rest of the war, now at the half-year mark.

Kyiv aims to push Russian troops back out of Kherson and other southern territory near the Dnipro River. Russia in recent days was moving troops and equipment in the direction of the southern port cities to stave off the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

“At every stage of this conflict, we have been focused on getting the Ukrainians what they need, depending on the evolving conditions on the battlefield,” Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, said Monday in announcing the new weapons shipment.

The new U.S. aid includes additional rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, as well as thousands of artillery rounds, mortar systems, Javelins and other ammunition and equipment. Military commanders and other U.S. officials say the HIMARS and artillery systems have been crucial in Ukraine’s fight to block Russia from taking more ground.

While the U.S. has already provided 16 HIMARS to Ukraine, Kahl said the new package does not include additional ones.

“These are not systems that we assess you need in the hundreds to have the type of effects” needed, Kahl said. “These are precision-guided systems for very particular types of targets and the Ukrainians are using them as such.”

He declined to say how many of the precision-guided missile systems for the HIMARS were included in Monday’s announcement, but said the U.S. has provided “multiple hundreds” of them in recent weeks.

The latest announcement brings the total U.S. security assistance committed to Ukraine by the Biden administration to more than $9 billion.

Until now, the largest single security assistance package announcement was for $1 billion on June 15. But that aid included $350 million in presidential drawdown authority, and another $650 million under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which provides funding for training, equipment and other security needs that can be bought from other countries or companies.

Monday’s package allows the U.S. to deliver weapons systems and other equipment more quickly since it takes them off the Defense Department shelves.

In addition to the rockets for the HIMARS, it includes 75,000 rounds of 155mm artillery, 20 mortar systems and 20,000 rounds for them, 1,000 shoulder-mounted Javelin rockets, and other arms, explosives and medical equipment.

For the last four months of the war, Russia has concentrated on capturing the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where pro-Moscow separatists have controlled some territory as self-proclaimed republics for eight years. Russian forces have made gradual headway in the region while launching missile and rocket attacks to curtail the movements of Ukrainian fighters elsewhere.

Kahl estimated that Russian forces have sustained up to 80,000 deaths and injuries in the fighting, though he did not break down the figure with an estimate of forces killed.

He said the Russian troops have managed to gain “incremental” ground in eastern Ukraine, although not in recent weeks. “But that has come at extraordinary cost to the Russian military because of how well the Ukrainian military has performed and all the assistance that the Ukrainian military has gotten. And I think now, conditions in the east have essentially stabilized and the focus is really shifting to the south.”

The new funding is being paid for through $40 billion in economic and security aid for Ukraine approved by Congress in May.

This is the 18th time the Pentagon has provided equipment from Defense Department stocks to Ukraine since August 2021.

The U.S. and allies still are evaluating whether to supply aircraft to Ukraine, Kahl said. It’s “not inconceivable that western aircraft down the road could be part of the mix,” he said.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy early in the war launched near-daily calls for warplanes, calling them essential to protecting Ukraine’s skies. The U.S. and some other NATO countries feared that could draw them into more direct involvement with Ukraine’s war against Russia, and have not provided Western aircraft.

Separately Monday, the Treasury Department said it was sending $3 billion more in direct economic assistance to Ukraine. That’s part of a previously approved $7.5 billion in economic assistance, with $1.5 billion yet to be disbursed.

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Fatima Hussein in Washington contributed to this report.

In second-quarter earnings calls, executives repeatedly highlighted the challenges staffing problems have presented, in some cases making it harder to finish crucial projects and requiring lowered earnings projections. Some of the largest defense firms predict the labor market will continue to be tight through the end of the year.

Contractors from Raytheon Technologies to BAE Systems to Northrop Grumman are forecasting an influx of business from the U.S. and around the globe in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But labor and supply chain delays are raising questions about how quickly firms will be able to meet the urgent demand.

Raytheon’s chief executive, Greg Hayes, told investors this week the company was caught flat footed when workers who had been temporarily laid off at the start of the year didn’t return at the expected rate. Typically, 75% of workers would have come back; this time, only 25% did, he said.

“The only thing that’s going to solve labor availability — I hate to say this — is a slowdown in the economy because right now there just simply aren’t enough people in the workforce for all of our suppliers,” said Hayes, who called labor woes “a hill to climb” for the company.

Though Raytheon says it is raking in contract awards, on-time fulfillment of those contracts could be a challenge as lead times among its suppliers are doubling or tripling. That’s due to shortages of materials and skilled workers; Raytheon itself had planned to hire 2,000 engineers this year, but due to attrition, it has to hire 5,000, Hayes said.

Defying anxiety about a possible recession and raging inflation, America’s employers added 528,000 jobs last month, restoring all the jobs lost in the coronavirus recession. Unemployment fell to 3.5%, the lowest rate since the pandemic struck in early 2020.

Labor shortages and COVID-19-related absenteeism slowed production at Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, Calif., plant, where the company builds the F-35 center fuselage. That prompted Northrop to expand its hiring pool to less skilled workers it has been training itself, according to chief executive Kathy Warden.

“We have the workforce we need, but if they aren’t as productive because they aren’t able to be there consistently, that was creating more disruption for us,” Warden said. “That has started to even out. Even with this latest set of COVID disruptions, we have not seen the same level of impact because we’ve taken some mitigating steps.”

Warden said the labor market eased this month and predicted that later this year it would look more like it did before the pandemic. In the meantime, the contractor’s “all hands on deck” approach to hiring and retention is starting to work, she said.

Northrop was not the only firm to project a turnaround.

“The aerospace supply chain has continued to face difficulties, but we’re confident in the eventual recovery as Tier 3 and Tier 4 suppliers work to combat labor shortages,” Honeywell Chief Financial Officer Greg Lewis said, referring to suppliers to firms doing direct business with the Pentagon.

Shipbuilding giant HII plans to hire 5,000 new workers, but after hiring 2,000 so far this year, it is behind schedule, according to its chief executive, Chris Kastner. It’s filling the gap with contracted or “leased” labor, and existing workers, who are showing more willingness to work overtime than they have for the last two years ― but Kastner said the potential for those moves to raise costs is the company’s “greatest risk.”

“Even in this current tight labor environment, we have continued to successfully bring shipbuilders on board and utilize our training programs and apprentice schools, which has positioned us to execute on our commitments,” Kastner said on HII’s earnings call Thursday.

Lockheed Martin’s chief financial officer, Jay Malave, described the labor shortage as “an ongoing challenge” but said the firm shifted 50 employees from an unnamed international program to its new F-16 factory in Greenville, South Carolina. That will speed up lagging operations to deliver aircraft next year and help hit a full-capacity run rate in 2024, he said.

“It just goes to the strength and the breadth that we have here at Lockheed Martin. But nonetheless, it’s been a challenge,” Malave said on the company’s recent earnings call. “Our ramp on that program is taking longer than we had originally anticipated largely because of the slower ramp in hiring employees.”

Likewise, Textron, which employs more than 30,000 around the world, used its size to reshuffle workers into needed roles, among other mitigating steps, executives said. Still, it reported problems making on-time deliveries due to supply chain and labor challenges, and executives anticipated the problems would continue through the end of the year.

“Next year, we’re looking to add net 100 people or so a month. So we’re running hiring fairs. We are seeing people coming back into the workforce,” said Textron chief executive Scott Donnelly. “We’re working that hard. It’s the entry level, bringing new people in. And obviously, you’ve got training and development, so there’s only so fast we can do it.”

The management consulting firm McKinsey found that across the aerospace and defense sector, about 50,000 positions remain unfilled. Its 2021 study on “The Great Resignation” showed that as many as 46% of employees in the sector were at least somewhat likely to quit within three to six months.

A separate McKinsey study found companies in aerospace and defense are relatively unattractive places to work. In terms of organizational health ― measured by innovation, accountability and more ― they lag 64% of global companies, the study reported.

According to the National Defense Industrial Association, the “hollowing out of the defense workforce” predates the pandemic as there was already demand for workers with vocational and science, technology engineering or math educations ― and a need for greater workforce diversity.

“Our member companies have reported a persistent gap between supply and demand for welders, technicians, electricians, maintainers, and other skilled workers to meet the defense industrial base’s (DIB) manufacturing needs,” NDIA said in a statement to Defense News.

The Pentagon, in a statement, noted the White House budget request for next year includes more than $200 million for workforce development. In late 2020, the Pentagon announced the National Imperative for Industrial Skills training program.

Defense contractors have set up training and apprenticeship programs with vocational schools and community colleges in pockets around the country, but they’re acting individually. NDIA has recommended government and industry work together on systemic fixes: improving domestic STEM education pipelines and clarifying security clearance requirements for defense jobs to ensure prospective hires aren’t overburdened.

Byron Callan, managing director at Capital Alpha Partners, said defense firms like Raytheon should have been better prepared, given the industry’s long-standing hiring problems. Steering through the tight labor market requires spending more on employee recruitment, retention and training, he said.

“It’s not like it’s a new problem. These guys have had trouble hiring people prior to the pandemic, so if they thought it was somehow going to magically resolve itself, it didn’t,” Callan said. “Maybe they’re just too attentive to [profit] margins, and squeezing every dollar you can out of an organization without taking some of these proactive steps.”

British defense contractor BAE Systems, which has a U.S. subsidiary, said the firm’s been able to weather U.S. labor shortfalls and has navigated supply chain constraints by resequencing its production lines. BAE’s chief executive, Charles Woodburn, touted established in-house apprenticeship programs it hopes to use to add workers in anticipation of the uptick in global demand.

“In the U.S., where the labor market is particularly tight, it has been really pleasing to see over 250 former employees come back to work for the business, very much driven by our culture and the noble mission of supporting those who protect us,” Woodburn said on BAE’s recent earnings call.

Aerojet Rocketdyne chief executive Ellen Drake said the company has stepped up recruiting efforts as it looks to hire 400 employees in support of defense sales growth she expects this year.

“We have a huge effort working with recruiting firms and also internal recruiting and partnering with the different organizations around Camden, Arkansas, [and] Huntsville, Alabama, primarily where we’re doing our hiring,” Drake said.

With Megan Eckstein and reporting by The Associated press.

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks sent the memo out to senior leaders Wednesday, according to a Thursday release from DoD.

“This memorandum further directs that, effective immediately, all mobile device service providers in DoD will capture and save the data resident on DoD-provisioned mobile devices when devices are turned-in by users,” Hicks wrote.

Officials whose text messages and other data were deleted include former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, former Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and former Pentagon chief of staff Kash Patel, CNN first reported. All three were major players in the military’s response to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

The revelation about the wiped phones came Wednesday, after watchdog group American Oversight filed a lawsuit in response to a denied Freedom of Information Act request seeking Jan. 6 phone records of top federal government officials.

“The disappearance of this critical information could jeopardize efforts to learn the full truth about Jan. 6,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in a statement calling for an investigation. “I don’t know whether the failure to preserve these critical government texts is the result of bad faith, stunning incompetence, or outdated records management policies, but we must get to the bottom of it.”

A court filing from the federal government asserted that government phones are routinely scrubbed in the course of jobs turning over.

“DoD and Army conveyed to Plaintiff that when an employee separates from DoD or Army he or she turns in the government-issued phone, and the phone is wiped,” the filing reads. “For those custodians no longer with the agency, the text messages were not preserved and therefore could not be searched, although it is possible that particular text messages could have been saved into other records systems such as email.”

In addition to reminding DoD personnel to preserve their communications, Hicks called on the department’s chief information officer and general counsel to report back in 30 days with an assessment of existing DoD policy on communications, as well as recommendations for improvement.

It’s the second delay for the Minuteman III test after Austin ordered one in March be called off to quell tension with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. The unarmed missile was due to be fired from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, and splash down at the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

The Pentagon’s decision to delay the test came as China conducted “precision missile strikes” Thursday in waters off Taiwan’s coasts as part of military exercises that have raised tension in the region following a visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“This is a long-planned test. It will be rescheduled in future at a time of our choosing,” a defense official told Defense News.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby formally announced the delay in a briefing Thursday afternoon, calling it “the responsible thing to do” to show how serious the United States is about easing tension with China.

Kirby condemned China’s overnight launch of an estimated 11 ballistic missiles near Taiwan as “irresponsible and at odds with the long-standing goal to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

Kirby stressed that the ICBM postponement would last a short time, later suggesting it would be “a couple of weeks.” He said a new date is already set for the test.

The shortness of the delay means the nation’s nuclear readiness will not be affected, Kirby said.

“The decision [to postpone] came in light and in context of the tensions that we’re seeing right now, and they’re pretty escalated,” Kirby said. “Temperature’s pretty high, and the president believed, and the national security team believed, that a strong, confident, capable nuclear power can afford to wait a couple of weeks for a test to make it clear — not just in word but in deed — how serious we are when we say we have no interest in escalating the tensions.”

The Wall Street Journal was first to report the delay.

China earlier announced that military exercises by its Navy, Air Force and other departments were underway in six zones surrounding Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory and has threatened to annex by force if necessary.

On Thursday, the U.S. Navy said its aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan was operating in the Philippine Sea, east of Taiwan, as part of “normal scheduled operations.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed the drills Thursday, saying: “I hope very much that Beijing will not manufacture a crisis or seek a pretext to increase its aggressive military activity. We countries around the world believe that escalation serves no one and could have unintended consequences that serve no one’s interests.”

Kirby said at the White House that the United States does not want a crisis, but that it will not be deterred from operating in the Indo-Pacific region. Air and maritime transit through the Taiwan Strait will continue over the next few weeks, he added, and the U.S. will take steps to show its commitment to the security of regional allies, including Japan.

The delay triggered Capitol Hill pushback from Republicans. House Armed Services Committee ranking member Mike Rogers, R-Ala., framed the delays as concessions to Russia and China.

“These weak-kneed pearl-clutching attempts at appeasement hurt our readiness and will only invite further aggression by our adversaries,” Rogers said in a statement.

Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told Defense News the test’s delay is the wrong move.

“I hope at some point we figure out neither the Russians nor the Chinese are really going to be all that impressed by this kind of thing,” Karako said. “They probably respect strength more than weakness, action more than inaction.”

U.S. Air Force crews with the 576th Flight Test Squadron test four Minuteman III rockets per year from Vandenberg, according to the Pentagon. The tests are planned years in advance and publicized to avoid miscalculations.

In March, U.S. Strategic Command chief Adm. Charles Richard told lawmakers the U.S. had not altered the posture of its nuclear forces in response to Russia’s decision to put its forces on higher alert.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

“The hard part hasn’t begun.”

Feal — who spent years as one of the lead advocates to award federal benefits to Sept. 11 victims, first responders and their families — said work to make sure those payouts and resources are properly funded and administered continues to this day. He cautioned that even well-written bills don’t always mean an easy transition to getting people the help they need.

“Getting a bill passed is easy, you just have to beat up the Senate and the House,” Feal said. “These people behind me, they have to take that and make sure Congress and the VA now do the right thing.”

The Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act — better known as the PACT Act — is set to be signed into law by President Joe Biden on Aug. 8.

When that happens, it will mark a key moment in the 13-year-old fight to expand benefits for burn pit victims sickened in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the decades-old quest to fully compensate Vietnam veterans for their exposure to chemical defoliants.

But, advocates say it won’t be the end of their work on the issue. The next step is delivering the benefits to veterans and their families, estimated to cost around $300 billion over the next 10 years.

White House and Veterans Affairs officials promise they have been preparing for that task for months.

“Veterans who were exposed to toxic fumes while fighting for our country are American heroes, and they deserve world-class care and benefits for their selfless service,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in a statement minutes after Feal’s speech.

“Once the president signs this bill into law, we at VA will implement it quickly and effectively, delivering the care these veterans need and the benefits they deserve.”

When will benefits arrive

Separate from the congressional work, VA last year began revamping how it approaches illnesses believed linked to burn pit smoke in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the past, the department stuck to strict scientific evidence before granting presumptive status for illnesses believed linked to military service. Now, the department uses a wider set of metrics to evaluate the claims, which has led to adding 12 respiratory illnesses and cancers to the list of conditions presumed caused by burn pits (a designation that greatly speeds up the process of veterans receiving disability payouts).

Once the PACT Act is signed into law, those new processes will be codified, a move that veterans advocates say will be key in coming years to preventing long waits for department recognition of military injuries.

Other parts of the sweeping toxic exposure legislation will also go into effect immediately. Veterans currently get five years of medical coverage through VA after leaving the service, but will see that expanded to 10 years under the new law.

All veterans who left the ranks in summer 2017 or later will have their eligibility automatically extended. Veterans who left between summer 2014 and summer 2017 will be able to apply for additional years of health care coverage, ending at 10 years after the date they separated.

The benefits for individual illnesses will take longer to process. The law calls for VA to add 23 new conditions to the list of burn pit presumptive illnesses — including asthma, chronic bronchitis and brain cancer — but those will be phased in over the next three years.

For Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange, presumptive status for monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) goes into effect immediately.

But new benefits for Vietnam veterans suffering from high-blood pressure (a group estimated to be around 500,000 individuals) aren’t set to go into effect until late 2026.

There are provisions in the bill to speed up benefits for individuals with deteriorating health conditions, or age 80 and older. However, as the bill is written, some veterans expecting to benefit from the PACT Act won’t see any checks in the mail for another four years.

Changing the timeline

White House officials said they are hoping to speed that up.

“The law does provide discretion to the VA secretary to move more quickly than some of the dates, so we’re going to be working collaboratively to see how much we can get done as quickly as possible so that veterans can get the services they need,” said Terri Tanielian, special assistant to the president for Veterans Affairs.

“The department is focused on making sure that they can hire the staff that they need, that they have the resources in the right places. We’re mindful of needing to make sure that the workforce and the infrastructure is ready.”

Lawmakers included funding in the measure for the new hires, aware that sending millions of new benefits claims to VA in coming years has the potential to overwhelm their current systems.

Biden called on Congress to pass comprehensive burn pit legislation in his State of the Union speech last spring. Tanielian said now that it has been done, the administration is focused on making sure it meets its responsibilities to implement the measure.

“This is a major victory for veterans, their families and survivors and those that have cared for them over the years,” she said. “We’re looking forward to the President signing it and then being able to implement it effectively so that we can deliver the health care benefits that we know veterans have earned and that they deserve.”

Veterans advocates said they’ll be lobbying for quicker responses, too. The provisions regarding deteriorating health conditions are written broadly, and some veterans groups said they see opportunities to force VA to respond immediately to certain claims even if the law seems to give them more time.

But much of that will depend on VA’s ability to hire new staff to process claims and respond to veterans’ questions.

The department has hired several hundred claims processors in recent months to deal with the glut of overdue disability claims (cases pending for more than four months). The figure was as high as 264,000 last fall, but now sits at about 165,000, roughly half what it was before the coronavirus pandemic.

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The Department of Defense has estimated nearly 3.5 million troops from recent wars may have suffered enough exposure to the smoke to cause health problems. Only a small portion of that group has signed up for VA’s official burn pit registry, designed to help track health issues in that population.

In his statement on the PACT Act passage, McDonough encouraged eligible veterans to apply for benefits as soon as possible, rather than waiting on the legislation’s official start date. Depending on the case, veterans may eventually be eligible for retroactive pay if they file earlier.

Veterans can visit the department’s online page regarding PACT information or call 1-800-MyVA411 (800-698-2411).

“The PACT Act is perhaps the largest health care and benefit expansion in VA history,” the VA’s benefits site states. “If you’re a veteran or survivor, you can file claims now to apply for PACT Act-related benefits.”

In his statement, McDonough said that department officials “will be communicating with you every step of the way to make sure that you and your loved ones get the benefits you’ve earned.”

As Feal delivered his speech to the celebrating advocates, Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester, D-Mont., received a text from McDonough offering his congratulations on the legislative victory and promising that “we will execute this.”

Tester said he’ll hold the secretary to that promise.

“We’ll be watching,” he said. “I know they’re committed, and I know the president said we’re going to get this done. But we’ve got to watch them to make sure.”

Ryder, the Air Force public affairs director, replaces John Kirby, who left the Pentagon in May to became a White House spokesman on national security matters.

Then-Rear Adm. Kirby was the last uniformed officer to hold the job, under then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter replaced Kirby with Peter Cook, a former journalist, in 2015.

Ryder served as spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2017 to 2019. He worked for Austin from 2013 to 2016 as his top spokesman at U.S. Central Command when Austin was the commander.

In a statement, Austin said Ryder would lead the Pentagon’s “efforts to provide timely, accurate information to the media, and through the media to the American people.” Austin praised Ryder’s “wealth of experience, including joint and deployed assignments that will serve him well as he informs the media of our activities around the world.”

Wednesday’s 95-1 vote — for the candidacy of two Western European nations that, until Russia’s war against Ukraine, had long avoided military alliances — took a crucial step toward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its 73-year-old pact of mutual defense among the United States and democratic allies in Europe.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer invited ambassadors of the two nations to the chamber gallery to witness the vote.

President Joe Biden, who has been the principal player rallying global economic and material support for Ukraine, has sought quick entry for the two previously non-militarily aligned northern European nations.

Approval from all member nations — currently, 30 — is required. The candidacies of the two prosperous Northern European nations have won ratification from more than half of the NATO member nations in the roughly three months since the two applied. It’s a purposely rapid pace meant to send a message to Russia over its six-month-old war against Ukraine’s West-looking government.

“It sends a warning shot to tyrants around the world who believe free democracies are just up for grabs,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said in the Senate debate ahead of the vote.

“Russia’s unprovoked invasion has changed the way we think about world security,” she added.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who visited Kyiv earlier this year, urged unanimous approval. Speaking to the Senate, McConnell cited Finland’s and Sweden’s well-funded, modernizing militaries and their experience working with U.S. forces and weapons systems, calling it a “slam-dunk for national security” of the United States.

“Their accession will make NATO stronger and America more secure. If any senator is looking for a defensible excuse to vote no, I wish them good luck,” McConnell said.

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who often aligns his positions with those of the most ardent supporters of former President Donald Trump, cast the only no vote. Hawley took the Senate floor to call European security alliances a distraction from what he called the United States’ chief rival — China, not Russia.

“We can do more in Europe ... devote more resources, more firepower ... or do what we need to do to deter Asia and China. We cannot do both,” Hawley said, calling his a “classic nationalist approach” to foreign policy.

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, like Hawley a potential 2024 presidential contender, rebutted his points without naming his potential Republican rival.

That included arguing against Hawley’s contention a bigger NATO would mean more obligations for the U.S. military, the world’s largest. Cotton was one of many citing the two nations’ military strengths — including Finland’s experience securing its hundreds of miles of border with Russia and its well-trained ground forces, and Sweden’s well-equipped navy and air force.

They’re “two of the strongest members of the alliance the minute they join,” Cotton said.

U.S. State and Defense officials consider the two countries net “security providers,” strengthening NATO’s defense posture in the Baltics in particular. Finland is expected to exceed NATO’s 2% GDP defense spending target in 2022, and Sweden has committed to meet the 2% goal.

That’s in contrast to many of NATO’s newcomers formerly from the orbit of the Soviet Union, many with smaller militaries and economies. North Macedonia, NATO’s most recent newcomer nation, brought an active military of just 8,000 personnel when it joined in 2020.

Senators’ votes approving NATO candidacies often are lopsided — the one for North Macedonia was 91-2. But Wednesday’s approval from nearly all senators present carried added foreign policy weight in light of Russia’s war.

Schumer, D-N.Y., said he and McConnell had committed to the country’s leaders that the Senate would approve the ratification resolution “as fast as we could” to bolster the alliance “in light of recent Russian aggression.”

Sweden and Finland applied in May, setting aside their longstanding stance of military nonalignment. It was a major shift of security arrangements for the two countries after neighboring Russia launched its war on Ukraine in late February. Biden encouraged their joining and welcomed the two countries’ government heads to the White House in May, standing side by side with them in a display of U.S. backing.

The U.S. and its European allies have rallied with newfound partnership in the face of Putin’s military invasion, as well as the Russian leader’s sweeping statements this year condemning NATO, issuing veiled reminders of Russia’s nuclear arsenal and asserting Russia’s historical claims to territory of many of its neighbors.

“Enlarging NATO is exactly the opposite of what Putin envisioned when he ordered his tanks to invade Ukraine,” Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Wednesday, adding that the West could not allow Russia to “launch invasions of countries.”

Wednesday’s vote by Republicans and Democrats stood out for the normally slow-moving and divided chamber. Senators voted down a proposed amendment by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., intended to ensure that NATO’s guarantee to defend its members does not replace a formal role for Congress in authorizing the use of military force. Paul, a longtime advocate of keeping the U.S. out of most military action abroad, voted “present” on the ratification of Sweden and Finland’s membership bid.

Senators approved another amendment from Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, declaring that all NATO members should spend a minimum of 2% of their gross domestic product on defense and 20% of their defense budgets on major equipment, including research and development.

Each member government in NATO must give its approval for any new member to join. The process ran into unexpected trouble when Turkey raised concerns over adding Sweden and Finland, accusing the two of being soft on banned Turkish Kurdish exile groups. Turkey’s objections still threaten the two countries’ membership.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the military’s inspector general needs to investigate the incident to help restore faith in the department.

“The disappearance of this critical information could jeopardize efforts to learn the full truth about Jan. 6,” he said in a statement. “I don’t know whether the failure to preserve these critical government texts is the result of bad faith, stunning incompetence, or outdated records management policies, but we must get to the bottom of it.”

CNN reported on Tuesday that DoD officials wiped the phones of top departing DoD and Army officials at the end of the Trump administration, potentially deleting any texts concerning their response to the Jan. 6 violence.

Hundreds of supporters of President Donald Trump breached the Capitol building that day in an attempt to disrupt Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results.

In recent months, a special House panel has held a series of public hearings to investigate Trump’s role in instigating, continuing and later covering up the attack.

Those hearings have included reviewing the phone and text records of key Trump administration officials. However, CNN reported that military officials deleted that data for former Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, former chief of staff Kash Patel, and former Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy after they left the posts.

Durbin, who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said all three men were involved in decisions to deploy the National Guard to the Capitol complex to help restore order, a move that House panel investigators have alleged was delayed by hours because of Trump’s inaction.

The DoD officials have referred all questions on the matter to the Department of Justice, since the cell phone records are part of ongoing litigation. Justice Department officials declined to comment on CNN’s report.

Durbin’s call for a DoD investigation comes days after he sent a similar letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to take over the investigation into missing Secret Service text and phone records from the same time period.

The House Jan. 6 commission is scheduled to resume public hearings in September. Past hearings have mentioned the National Guard delay issues, but not specifically focused on that aspect of the chaos that day.

Reporter Meghann Myers contributed to this story.

What are burn pits?

Until the mid-2010s, burn pits were commonly used in Iraq, Afghanistan and other overseas locations to dispose of waste collected on military bases. That included items that produced dangerous toxic smoke when burned, such as plastics, rubber, chemical mixtures and medical waste.

In some locations, the fires were massive operations. At Joint Base Balad — one of the largest military bases in Iraq — the burn pit covered nearly 10 acres, with the resulting smoke passing over the entire base as winds shifted.

In 2008, Military Times began reporting about service members returning from war zones with unusual respiratory illnesses they believed were linked to the toxic fumes. Since then, numerous studies and reports have suggested links between the poor air quality and rare cancers found in increasing numbers among post-9/11 veterans.

The Department of Defense has estimated nearly 3.5 million troops from recent wars may have suffered enough exposure to the smoke to cause health problems.

Why is there a fight over disability pay related to burn pits?

Because the Defense Department did not keep clear records of what was burned in the waste pits, the exact toxins in the smoke are unknown. And while the pits were widely used, individual service members were not monitored for their exposure to the smoke, making it unclear if later illnesses were connected to that or to other life events.

As a result, the Department of Veterans Affairs has for years resisted calls to link many rare illnesses to suspected burn pit exposure, saying that the scientific backing for the argument is too weak. Advocates say that has deprived tens of thousands of veterans of disability pay and medical reimbursements.

VA officials have relented in that stance in the last year, awarding presumptive benefits status (where veterans don’t have to prove their medical conditions are linked to their time in the military) to any post-9/11 veteran who contracts asthma, rhinitis and sinusitis within 10 years of of their overseas service.

But advocates say that should go much further, to include many more illnesses and extending for longer after their overseas tours ended.

Does the US still use burn pits?

The Department of Defense has not formally banned burn pits. However, troops have scaled back the use of burn pits.

While burn pits are considered something of a last resort, according to Defense Department policy, at least nine of them were still in operation in early 2019, per an a report to Congress in April of that year to Congress from the under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. In the report, the Pentagon acknowledged that burning hazardous waste, tires and plastic in open pits creates dangerous fumes, but it was still done during deployments if the local combatant commander can’t find a suitable alternative.

What has changed recently?

Veterans groups have been working to highlight the issue of burn pit injuries for more than a decade, but the subject has gained widespread public awareness after President Joe Biden included the topic in his State of the Union address on March 1.

Biden has discussed the issue in the past, but including new benefits and research into the topic as a priority in the annual address puts focus on the issue on a higher level than ever before.

The president’s personal connection to the problem has also played a part. Biden’s son Beau served in Iraq with the Delaware Army National Guard and died in 2015 from a rare brain cancer. Biden has said he doesn’t know if burn pits caused his son’s cancer, but he suspects there was a link.

The story also gained attention from national news outlets and programs such as “The Problem With Jon Stewart.

On Aug. 2, Congress finalized the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, which would extend new health care access and disability benefits to about 3.5 million veterans, including burn pit victims. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the measure into law on Aug. 8.

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.

Comprehensive toxic exposure legislation that could provide new health care and disability benefits to millions of veterans is headed to the White House to become law after Senate lawmakers ended a week of turmoil surrounding the bill with a strong bipartisan vote.

The Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act — better known as the PACT Act — was adopted Tuesday by a 86-11 vote after a lengthy series of procedural moves by senators.

Advocates called the move a historic change in how the Department of Veterans Affairs approaches toxic exposure injuries, in particular ones caused by burn pits used in combat zones. It was also the culmination of years of lobbying for sick veterans and nearly a week of constant protest on Capitol Hill.

One week ago, 42 Senate Republicans blocked consideration of the measure in a surprise move that left veterans advocates panicked and upset.

But after five days of an around-the-clock “fire watch” on the Capitol steps by veterans — some of whom suffer from burn pit injuries from their service — the GOP lawmakers relented and allowed the legislation to move forward.

“This was all of us coming together for our veterans,” said Rosie Lopez-Torres, co-founder of the advocacy group Burn Pits 360, which helped author the legislation. “Knowing that we now have what we’ve been waiting on for 13 years, I think it’s time for a celebration.”

What the bill does

The bill would potentially provide new support for about 3.5 million veterans, about one in every five living in America today.

“What it does is make sure that veterans who have been exposed to toxins … are made whole again,” said Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester, D-Mont.

“We send these men and women off to war, we tell them to go off and protect our freedoms. They do it, and oftentimes things happen that change their lives. Sometimes we can see the injuries. Sometimes we can’t, especially in cases with toxic burn pits.”

The burn pit provisions of the PACT Act have received the most attention in recent months, in part because of the visibility of those injuries. Tens of thousands of veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have developed rare respiratory conditions and cancers in the years following their deployments, believed caused by poisonous smoke from massive burn pits used to dispose of a host of military waste.

Now, under the bill, veterans who served in those war zones would be granted presumptive benefits status for 23 respiratory illnesses and cancers believed linked to the toxic smoke. That would speed up disability payouts to those individuals, awarding them up to several thousand dollars a month.

Veterans who served in the recent wars would also be given five more years of medical care coverage under VA (they currently get five years) regardless of their health status.

Veterans from older generations would also see new support under the measure. It dramatically expands benefits for illnesses believed to be linked to burn pit smoke in Iraq and Afghanistan, Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam and proximity to other harmful military contaminants in varied service eras.

And the bill would codify recent changes in how VA approaches a host of military toxic exposure claims, lowering standards for proof and offering presumptive status for some rare illnesses believed linked to them.

Advocates for years have lamented burdensome procedures to get VA to recognize their service-connected illnesses.

Why the bill was stalled

On Tuesday, Tester praised the final passage of the measure but also acknowledged that getting the legislation finished “took far too long.” That critique included both years of fighting over bill specifics and the unexpected delays of the last week.

Despite the final bipartisan vote, Republican lawmakers for months have voiced concerns about the cost of the measure — nearly $300 billion over the next 10 years — and the potential impact on VA benefits workloads.

Senate leaders thought they had calmed those concerns with changes to the measure negotiated between Tester and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee ranking member Jerry Moran, R-Kan., earlier this spring. Those moves included adding money for more staff and more VA facility leases, and deferring some benefits for a few years.

The House last month voted 342–88 to advance the measure, with key Republican leaders giving their blessing. But when the measure returned for procedural votes last week, all but eight Senate Republicans blocked it, saying they had newfound concerns with budgetary accounting issues.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., led that charge, saying that changes in discretionary spending rules included in the bill could lead to budget malfeasance in the future. But his recommended fixes were rejected in a 47-48 amendment vote shortly before final passage (60 votes were needed for adoption).

“There is no doubt that the cost of caring for our veterans is high,” Moran said shortly before the Senate votes. “The truth is, freedom is not free. There is always a cost to war. And we need to remind ourselves that cost is not fully paid when the war ends.”

White House support

The measure now heads to the White House, where President Joe Biden has already pledged to sign it into law. Advocates are expecting a significant public signing ceremony in coming days.

That event will be in sharp contrast to the last few days of protest outside the Capitol, where dozens of veterans camped to show their disapproval for the lawmakers blocking the bill.

The protest was held in shifts around the clock, with veterans seeking cover under nearby trees and bus stops during frequent overnight Washington, D.C. downpours. Supporters — including the White House — sent water bottles and pizzas to help with the effort, and made frequent stops to chat with veterans as lawmakers inside negotiated a final compromise.

Comedian Jon Stewart (who has spoken at numerous press conferences on the issue in recent years) and activist John Feal (a key voice in the fight for benefits for Sept. 11, 2001 first responders in New York) held frequent news events in recent days to amplify the message.

The protest ended Tuesday with nearly 100 veterans being invited into the Senate chamber to witness the final vote first-hand.

“This victory is the culmination of years of relentless work by all the national veterans and military organizations,” said IAVA Executive Director for Government Relations Tom Porter.

“In the end, it was our commitment to the mission of following through for our brothers and sisters in arms, many who are no longer with us. We did this for them.”

Veterans Affairs officials have said in recent days that they are preparing for the changes outlined in the bill, but have not yet offered any guidance on how veterans can apply for the new benefits or health care access.

Pelosi flew in aboard a U.S. Air Force passenger jet and was greeted on the tarmac at Taipei’s international airport by Taiwan’s foreign minister and other Taiwanese and American officials. She posed for photos before her motorcade whisked her unseen into the parking garage of a hotel.

Her visit ratcheted up tension between China and the United States because China claims Taiwan as part of its territory, and it views visits by foreign government officials as recognition of the island’s sovereignty.

The Biden administration, and Pelosi, say the United States remains committed to the so-called one-China policy, which recognizes Beijing but allows informal relations and defense ties with Taipei.

The speaker framed the trip as part of a broader mission at a time when “the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy.” Her visit comes after she led a congressional delegation to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv in the spring, and it serves as a capstone to her many years of promoting democracy abroad.

“We must stand by Taiwan,” she said in an opinion piece published by The Washington Post on her arrival in Taiwan. She cited the commitment that the U.S. made to a democratic Taiwan under a 1979 law.

“It is essential that America and our allies make clear that we never give in to autocrats,” she wrote.

Taiwan and China split during a civil war in 1949, but China claims the island as its own territory and has not ruled out using military force to take it.

The Biden administration did not explicitly urge Pelosi to call off her plans. It repeatedly and publicly assured Beijing that the visit did not signal any change in U.S. policy toward Taiwan.

Soon after Pelosi’s arrival, China announced a series of military operations and drills, which followed promises of “resolute and strong measures” if Pelosi went through with her visit.

The People’s Liberation Army said the maneuvers would take place in the waters and skies near Taiwan and include the firing of long-range ammunition in the Taiwan Strait.

“This action is a solemn deterrent against the recent major escalation of the negative actions of the United States on the Taiwan issue, and a serious warning to the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces seeking ‘independence.’”

China’s official Xinhua News said the army planned to conduct live-fire drills from Aug. 4 to Aug. 7 across multiple locations. An image released by the news agency indicated that the drills were to take place in six different areas in the waters surrounding Taiwan.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Washington’s betrayal “on the Taiwan issue is bankrupting its national credibility.”

“Some American politicians are playing with fire on the issue of Taiwan,” Wang said in a statement that referred to the U.S. as “the world’s biggest saboteur of peace.”

Back in the United States, 26 Republican lawmakers issued a statement of rare bipartisan support for the Democratic speaker. The statement called trips by members of Congress to Taiwan routine.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell backed Pelosi’s visit as a display of support for Taiwan’s democracy and said any allegations that her itinerary was provocative were “utterly absurd.”

“I believe she has every right to go,” McConnell said in a Senate speech.

Senators are considering legislation to bolster Taiwan’s defense as direct response to China’s rhetoric. The Taiwan Policy Act, which has support from both parties, will be discussed Wednesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The package would bolster Taiwan’s defense capabilities with nearly $4.5 billion in security assistance over the next four years and provide other support for Taiwan’s democratic government and civil society. The measure would also designate Taiwan as a “major non-NATO ally,” which opens the door to more security and trade benefits.

Backers call it the most comprehensive restructuring of U.S. policy toward Taiwan since the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979.

Pelosi’s trip was not officially announced ahead of time.

Barricades were erected outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Taipei. Journalists and onlookers thronged the streets just outside and pressed against the hotel’s lobby windows as they awaited Pelosi’s motorcade. Two buildings in the capital lit up LED displays with words of welcome, including the iconic Taipei 101 building, which said “Welcome to Taiwan, Speaker Pelosi.”

China has stepped up overflights and other provocative moves toward Taiwan and neighboring territory in recent years, asserting broad claims of its rights around the region.

China’s military threats have driven concerns about a new crisis in the 100-mile-wide (140-kilometer) Taiwan Strait that could roil global markets and supply chains.

The White House insisted that China had no valid cause for anger.

“The United States will not seek, and does not want, a crisis,” John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, told a White House briefing Tuesday. “At the same time, we will not engage in saber-rattling.”

U.S. officials have said the American military will increase its movements in the Indo-Pacific region during Pelosi’s visit. The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group were in the Philippine Sea on Monday, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.

The Reagan, the cruiser USS Antietam and the destroyer USS Higgins left Singapore after a port visit and moved north to their home port in Japan.

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said early Wednesday that China had sent 21 planes flying toward Taiwan, 18 of them fighter jets. The rest included an early warning plane and an electronic warfare plane.

Beijing sees official American contact with Taiwan as encouragement to make the island’s decades-old de facto independence permanent, a step U.S. leaders say they don’t support. Pelosi, head of one of three branches of the U.S. government, is the highest-ranking elected American official to visit Taiwan since then-Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1997.

Pelosi’s aircraft, an Air Force version of the Boeing 737, took a roundabout route, flying east over Indonesia rather than directly over the South China Sea.

The speaker has long challenged China on human rights, including traveling to Tiananmen Square in 1991, two years after China crushed a wave of democracy protests.

In 2009, she hand-delivered a letter to then-President Hu Jintao calling for the release of political prisoners. She had sought to visit Taiwan’s island democracy earlier this year before testing positive for COVID-19.

China has been steadily ratcheting up diplomatic and military pressure on Taiwan. China cut off all contact with Taiwan’s government in 2016 after President Tsai Ing-wen refused to endorse its claim that the island and mainland together make up a single Chinese nation, with the communist regime in Beijing being the sole legitimate government.

Pelosi kicked off her Asian tour Monday in Singapore. She is to travel to Japan and South Korea later this week.

Ng reported from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Associated Press journalists Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

President Joe Biden announced Monday that al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, an operation he hailed as delivering “justice” while expressing hope that it brings “one more measure of closure” to families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The president said in an evening address from the White House that U.S. intelligence officials tracked al-Zawahri to a home in downtown Kabul where he was hiding out with his family. The president approved the operation last week and it was carried out Sunday.

Al-Zawahri and the better known Osama bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks that brought many ordinary Americans their first knowledge of al-Qaida. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, in operation carried out by U.S. Navy Seals after a nearly decade-long hunt.

“He will never again, never again, allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist safe haven because he is gone and we’re going to make sure that nothing else happens,” Biden said.

“This terrorist leader is no more,” he added.

The operation is a significant counterterrorism win for the Biden administration just 11 months after American troops left the country after a two-decade war.

The strike was carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to five people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Neither Biden nor the White House detailed the CIA’s involvement in the strike.

Biden, however, paid tribute to the U.S. intelligence community in his remarks, noting that “thanks to their extraordinary persistence and skill” the operation was a “success.”

Al-Zawahri’s loss eliminates the figure who more than anyone shaped al-Qaida, first as bin Laden’s deputy since 1998, then as his successor. Together, he and bin Laden turned the jihadi movement’s guns to target the United States, carrying out the deadliest attack ever on American soil — the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings.

The house Al-Zawahri was in when he was killed was owned by a top aide to senior Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, according to a senior intelligence official. The official also added that a CIA ground team and aerial reconnaissance conducted after the drone strike confirmed al-Zawahri’s death.

A senior administration official who briefed reporters on the operation on condition of anonymity said “zero” U.S. personnel were in Kabul.

Over the 20-year war in Afghanistan, the U.S. targeted and splintered al-Qaida, sending leaders into hiding. But America’s exit from Afghanistan last September gave the extremist group the opportunity to rebuild. U.S. military officials, including Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have said al-Qaida was trying to reconstitute in Afghanistan, where it faced limited threats from the now-ruling Taliban. Military leaders have warned that the group still aspired to attack the U.S.

The 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon made bin Laden America’s Enemy No. 1. But he likely could never have carried it out without his deputy. Bin Laden provided al-Qaida with charisma and money, but al-Zawahri brought tactics and organizational skills needed to forge militants into a network of cells in countries around the world.

U.S. intelligence officials have been aware for years of a network helping al-Zawahri dodge U.S. intelligence officials hunting for him, but didn’t have a bead on his possible location until recent months.

Earlier this year, U.S. officials learned that the terror leader’s wife, daughter and her children had relocated to a safe house in Kabul, according to the senior administration official who briefed reporters.

Officials eventually learned al-Zawahri was also at the Kabul safe house.

In early April, White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer and Biden’s homeland security adviser Elizabeth D. Sherwood-Randall were briefed on this developing intelligence. Soon the intelligence was carried up to national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Sullivan brought the information to Biden as U.S. intelligence officials built “a pattern of life through multiple independent sources of information to inform the operation,” the official said.

Senior Taliban figures were aware of al-Zawahri’s presence in Kabul, according to the official, who added the Taliban government was given no forewarning of the operation.

Inside the Biden administration, only a small group of officials at key agencies, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, were brought into the process.

On July 1, Biden was briefed in the Situation Room about the planned operation, a briefing in which the president closely examined a model of the home Zawahri was hiding out in. He gave his final approval for the operation on Thursday. Al-Zawahri was standing on the balcony of his hideout when the strike was carried out.

“We make it clear again tonight: That no matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out,” Biden said.

Al-Zawahri was hardly a household name like bin Laden, but he played an enormous role in the terror group’s operations.

The two terror leaders’ bond was forged in the late 1980s, when al-Zawahri reportedly treated the Saudi millionaire bin Laden in the caves of Afghanistan as Soviet bombardment shook the mountains around them.

Zawahri, on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list, had a $25 million bounty on his head for any information that could be used to kill or capture him.

Al-Zawhiri and bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks that brought many ordinary Americans their first knowledge of al-Qaida.

Photos from the time often showed the glasses-wearing, mild-looking Egyptian doctor sitting by the side of bin Laden. Al-Zawahiri had merged his group of Egyptian militants with bin Laden’s al-Qaida in the 1990s.

“The strong contingent of Egyptians applied organizational know-how, financial expertise, and military experience to wage a violent jihad against leaders whom the fighters considered to be un-Islamic and their patrons, especially the United States,” Steven A. Cook wrote for the Council on Foreign Relations last year.

When the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan demolished al-Qaida’s safe haven and scattered, killed and captured its members, al-Zawahri ensured al-Qaida’s survival. He rebuilt its leadership in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and installed allies as lieutenants in key positions.

He also reshaped the organization from a centralized planner of terror attacks into the head of a franchise chain. He led the assembling of a network of autonomous branches around the region, including in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Somalia, Yemen and Asia. Over the next decade, al-Qaida inspired or had a direct hand in attacks in all those areas as well as Europe, Pakistan and Turkey, including the 2004 train bombings in Madrid and the 2005 transit bombings in London.

More recently, the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen proved itself capable of plotting attacks against U.S. soil with an attempted 2009 bombing of an American passenger jet and an attempted package bomb the following year.

But even before bin Laden’s death, al-Zawahri was struggling to maintain al-Qaida’s relevance in a changing Middle East.

He tried with little success to coopt the wave of uprisings that spread across the Arab world starting in 2011, urging Islamic hard-liners to take over in the nations where leaders had fallen. But while Islamists gained prominence in many places, they have stark ideological differences with al-Qaida and reject its agenda and leadership.

Nevertheless, al-Zawahri tried to pose as the Arab Spring’s leader. America “is facing an Islamic nation that is in revolt, having risen from its lethargy to a renaissance of jihad,” he said in a video eulogy to bin Laden, wearing a white robe and turban with an assault rifle leaning on a wall behind him.

Al-Zawahri was also a more divisive figure than his predecessor. Many militants described the soft-spoken bin Laden in adoring and almost spiritual terms.

In contrast, al-Zawahri was notoriously prickly and pedantic. He picked ideological fights with critics within the jihadi camp, wagging his finger scoldingly in his videos. Even some key figures in al-Qaida’s central leadership were put off, calling him overly controlling, secretive and divisive.

Some militants whose association with bin Laden predated al-Zawahri’s always saw him as an arrogant intruder.

“I have never taken orders from al-Zawahri,” Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the network’s top figures in East Africa until his 2011 death, sneered in a memoir posted on line in 2009. “We don’t take orders from anyone but our historical leadership.”

There have been rumors of al-Zawahri’s death on and off for several years. But a video surfaced in April of the al-Qaida leader praising a Indian Muslim woman who had defied a ban on wearing a hijab, or headscarf. That footage was the first proof in months that he was still alive.

A statement from Afghanistan’s Taliban government confirmed the airstrike, but did not mention al-Zawahri or any other casualties.

It said it “strongly condemns this attack and calls it a clear violation of international principles and the Doha Agreement,” the 2020 U.S. pact with the Taliban that led to the withdrawal of American forces.

“Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the United States of America, Afghanistan, and the region,” the statement said.

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Ellen Knickmeyer, Zeke Miller, Aamer Madhani and Darlene Superville in Washington; Rahim Faiez in Islamabad; and Lee Keath in Cairo contributed reporting.

Ukraine has 16 HIMARs, which have proved effective in repelling Russian forces in the east. The Ukrainians want additional air defense support, including more HIMARs and fighter jets. The country needs 50 HIMARs and 100 launchers to start retaking Russian-held territory, according to Ukrainian officials.

Ukraine’s Olena Zelenska reiterated this request when she gave a speech to Congress last month, marking the first time that a first lady from another state addressed lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

“I’m asking for air defense systems in order for rockets not to kill children in their strollers,” Zelenska said.

The advanced rocket systems have a range of 80 kilometers (50 miles), enabling the Ukrainians to hit the Russian positions from beyond the reach of most of the enemy’s artillery, and to strike logistics and command and control nodes.

Monday’s announcement came after Ukraine Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said four more HIMARS had arrived in the country.

“We have proven to be smart operators of this weapon,” Reznikov’s said in a tweet. “The sound of the #HIMARS volley has become a top hit of this summer at the front lines!”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley spoke together with their Ukrainian counterparts to inform them of the new package, the White House said in a statement. Austin held a call with Reznikov on Friday.

Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman is among lawmakers who have been pressing the Biden administration to step up lethal aid, saying Ukrainian HIMARS strikes have degraded Russia’s war effort significantly.

“I urge the admin to continue sending more HIMARS and ammo to #Ukraine,” Portman said on Twitter.

Bipartisan frustration at pace of roll out

Republicans and some Democrats have started to voice frustration with what they view as the slow pace of rolling out HIMARs to Ukraine.

“It is becoming increasingly difficult for me to understand why this administration’s pace of military aid is not increasing to meet Ukraine’s needs so they can improve their leverage and bring [Russian President Vladimir Putin] to the negotiating table,” Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, told Defense News in a statement. “Ukraine is relying on us and our allies at this critical moment, and they need us to move with both speed and regularity so they don’t run out of these weapons and other much-needed munitions.”

A bipartisan group of six senators urged the Biden administration to expedite HIMARS delivery to Ukraine and provide fourth-generation fighter jets in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Blinken last month. Democrats Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut joined Republicans Portman, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina in signing the letter.

“These systems must be delivered at a pace and in quantity sufficient to impact the outcome of the fighting in the Donbas, Kherson and other regions,” the senators wrote. “Our assistance must be decisive, not incremental.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., attributed the incremental approach to the logistics of training Ukrainian forces to use the artillery.

“They’ve been sending them, and in the process of delivering they have to train troops,” Reed told Defense News. “And that takes really seasoned artillery men out of the country of Ukraine and then put them back in.”

Graham emphasized that advanced air capabilities would help get Ukrainian children “back to school” and allow Ukrainians to “get their economy up and running again.” He told Defense News that the Biden administration should send Ukraine the Lockheed Martin-made F-16 fighter aircraft.

Training Ukrainian pilots to use U.S. aircraft

The House’s annual defense authorization bill, which passed 329-101 last month, contained a provision from Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., that would provide $100 million in funding to train Ukrainian pilots to use U.S. aircraft.

Even as Moscow’s war machine crawls across Ukraine’s east, trying to achieve the Kremlin’s goal of securing full control over the country’s industrial heartland, Ukrainian forces are scaling up attacks to reclaim territory in the Russian-occupied south, The Associated Press reported Aug. 1.

The Ukrainians have used American-supplied rocket launchers to strike bridges and military infrastructure in the south, forcing Russia to divert its forces from the Donbas in the east to counter the new threat, AP said.

The U.S. has committed some $8.8 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration. Since 2014, the U.S. has committed more than $10 billion in security assistance to Ukraine.

The insignia, a blue and gray take on the yin-yang, has been around since World War I, when the division activated with troops from as far north as Maryland and down to South Carolina. The blue and gray are meant to symbolize the joining of formerly Union and Confederate states.

“The description language should be modified to reflect the rich history of the 29th, with focus on the unification of American citizens through service in the 29th,” Retired Adm. Michelle Howard, the commission’s chair, wrote in a July letter to members of the House and Senate armed services committees.

Howard added, “the Community of the 29th ID indicates that they view the symbol as a unifying symbol for America and is imbued with the sacrifices and service of past 29th ID members.”

Today, the unit is a National Guard command based at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, with soldiers from Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina and South Carolina.

The commission also recommended that the service secretaries look across their heraldic insignias for other nods to the Confederacy and either update or replace them.

“For heraldry or symbols that unmistakably honor the Confederacy, or honor individuals who voluntarily served with the Confederacy through image or motto, the Commission recommends that Confederate symbols, images, and mottos be removed, or the items be redesigned in their entirety,” the letter reads. “For heraldry or symbols, where the determination concerning commemoration rests primarily in the descriptive text, the Commission recommends the text be modified to remove references to the Confederacy or individuals who served voluntarily with the Confederacy.”

On top of that, the commission is recommending the Army do away with an exception, dating back to 1949, that has allowed units to commemorate Confederate battle wins on their unit flags.

“Forty-eight Army units have at least one Confederate campaign streamer; a total of 457 Confederate streamers are presently authorized,” Howard wrote. Based on the commission’s recommendation, “those 457 Confederate battle streamers would no longer be authorized.”

The recommendations are the latest in a long list of proposed changes from the commission, which started its work in early 2021.

To date, they have recommended renaming nine Army posts, and identified 757 “items” total, which include the names of ships, streets, buildings, awards and more.

The commission’s final report is due to Congress on Oct. 1.

The proposed increase comes as part of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s $792 billion spending package for fiscal 2023, released July 28. The bill calls for a 9% increase to the Department of Defense’s budget over fiscal 2022 spending levels and is $31 billion higher than what House lawmakers approved in June.

In a report released with its bill last week, the committee labeled space as one of its top priorities, noting that part of the $2.2 billion increase is focused on hypersonic missile tracking capabilities and would support the Space Force’s shift to a more resilient, distributed architecture.

The bill’s major space-focused funding increases includes $700 million to speed up procurement of Space Development Agency missile warning and tracking satellites and support a new constellation of space vehicles in medium Earth orbit, or between 1,243 and 22,236 miles (2,000-35,785 kilometers) above Earth’s surface. It also proposes another $216 million to accelerate SDA missile warning and tracking satellite launches.

The committee’s show of support for space-based missile warning and tracking systems comes as the Space Force reports growing threats from adversaries including China and Russia that are developing and demonstrating hypersonic weapons that can travel at speeds above Mach 5.

The service projects it will need $24.5 billion to develop and procure missile warning and tracking systems over the next five years to develop the follow-on to the Space-Based Infrared System through a program called Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared and to build out additional constellations that will augment that mission in new orbits.

The committee said it agrees with the Space Force’s plan to rethink its missile warning and tracking architecture but wants details on the progress of the programs and a comparison of the cost, schedule and risk associated with each.

Lawmakers also want to see the Space Force invest more in satellite resiliency, adding $250 million in their bill for an initiative to improve on-board protection for important space assets. The bill doesn’t dictate how the service should spend the money, but recommends that it develop an acquisition strategy to provide “a suite of on-board capabilities” that could be made available for program managers to integrate on their satellites or ground systems. The committee also suggests the service make on-board resiliency a requirement when developing new satellites.

The bill also calls for a $250 million increase “to fill a critical gap” in the Space Force’s testing and training infrastructure. The increase comes as the service is in the early stages of developing a National Space Test and Training Complex that would help space operators and testers connect virtually to practice tactics and assess new space systems.

In the area of space launch, lawmakers proposed $100 million for the Tactically Responsive Launch program. The effort was initiated by Congress, and while the service is pursuing responsive space capabilities that would allow it to quickly replace or augment satellites on rapid timelines, it hasn’t committed to funding the program.

Congress has appropriated $115 million for the program since fiscal 2020 and has repeatedly asked the Space Force to develop an acquisition plan. Senate appropriators continue that push, directing the service to deliver a plan “in a timely manner.”

Lawmakers also proposed a $96 million increase across a range of Space Force technology development initiatives, including a project to boost cyber resiliency and an effort to improve space domain awareness near the moon.

President Joe Biden and his administration had been making a full-court press in Congress to pass signature legislation aimed at competing with China economically and technologically, but his National Defense Strategy remains secret, fueling frustrations from Capitol Hill that open discussions about strategy-driven budgeting are being hamstrung.

The White House roll-out of its overarching National Security Strategy can’t come soon enough for national security-focused lawmakers on both sides of the aisle because the unclassified version of the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy, now four months old, is behind it in the Biden administration’s queue.

The White House contends the broader document needed extra time after the invasion and a personnel shakeup on the National Security Council, but, even from within Biden’s own party, the heat is on. Mandated by Congress, the strategy helps lawmakers weigh the president’s national security priorities for budgeting, shows allies and adversaries those priorities and helps government officials speak with a single voice on national security matters.

“We keep making clear that this is a necessary requirement for the Senate and insisting [the strategy come] as soon as possible,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., told Defense News last week. The benefits “are a coherent operational view of the world, starting with threats, and then capabilities against those threats. It gives us insight into how much to fund and where to fund.”

‘Impeding our ability to do our jobs’

Then-President Donald Trump’s 2018 strategy is best known for its profound shift away from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars toward prioritizing China and Russia ― a focus that’s since driven innumerable national security budget and policy decisions in the U.S. and among allies. In Washington, the recommendation from the National Defense Strategy Commission for 3%-5% annual defense spending increases became an oft-repeated Republican talking point in Capitol Hill budget debates.

By law, Congress must establish its Commission on the National Defense Strategy no later than 30 days after the defense secretary submits the strategy, but congressional leaders have so far named only a handful of the eight members. According to Reed, Congress must first wait for the unclassified strategy.

Where Trump in 2018 issued a 14-page unclassified summary of his National Defense Strategy, Biden has so far released only a two-page summary in March, with the promise of a fuller version later. In the meantime, lawmakers have had access to the classified defense strategy, but because it’s considered secret, they are barred from discussing it publicly.

The National Defense Strategy is traditionally followed by other topic-specific reviews focused on nuclear weapons and missile defense.

In recent days, lawmakers on the armed services committees have included near-identical language in the House and Senate versions of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2023 that would order the Pentagon to submit both a classified and unclassified National Defense Strategy ― an expansion from the “summary” required under existing law.

“The unclassified version of the Trump administration strategy was pretty beefy, and it was a document serious enough that we could have a conversation about it in public. Now what we’ve gotten from this Department of Defense is just a fact sheet, and that fact sheet actually says nothing,” said one Republican aide who was not authorized to speak with the press. “I just think it’s a massive middle finger to the Congress.”

Members of Congress are not only seeking answers about how to fix defense industrial base weaknesses laid bare by U.S. efforts to arm Ukraine from its own military supplies, but they’re getting deeper into their debate of the federal budget and mammoth NDAA for 2023.

So far, lawmakers have yet to reach a spending deal, but increases backed by the armed services committees would rebuke Biden’s $802 billion request and instead approve more than $850 billion.

“It has made it very difficult and we’ve expressed our aggravation with the administration — both me and Adam Smith — about it,” House Armed Services Committee ranking member Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said, referencing the panel’s chairman. “We’re gonna go on and do our work. If they don’t want us to factor in what they think, we’re going to do it our own way.”

Smith, in a statement, downplayed those concerns, saying the committee had been aided in its work by its access to and briefings on the classified version, but didn’t deny pushing the administration to release its strategy.

“I do agree that we should get an unclassified version as soon as possible, but we do already have some very deep visibility on the NDS, and that visibility is informing the work of the committee,” said Smith, D-Wash.

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s top Republican, Sen. Jim Inhofe, wants to discuss how, in his view, the strategy’s view of China’s designs on Taiwan are clearer-eyed than Trump’s in 2018.

Inhofe in April called for the administration to let Congress know when lawmakers can expect the National Security Strategy, but has yet to receive a timeline, he said in a statement last week. There are “zero excuses” for delaying public debate and “a lot of reasons to move faster,” he said.

“It’s way past overdue, and it’s impeding our ability to do our jobs — and help the military get what it needs, according to the strategy itself,” Inhofe said.

“We know China is our pacing threat — this strategy does a good job of laying that out — and we know the world has gotten even more dangerous since the last National Defense Strategy was released four years ago, but it’s hard to impress on the American people the scale, scope and urgency of the challenges we face if the strategy isn’t public.”

“There’s also some things in the strategy I’m concerned with, and we need to debate those things in public,” Inhofe added.

The Defense Department said in a statement it would release the unclassified National Defense Strategy “after the President’s National Security Strategy is published.” Its classified strategy “was released on March 28, 2022 to inform the budgetary process, and the Department is currently focused on NDS implementation,” said Pentagon spokesman Oscar Seára.

Not ‘China down, Russia up’

While the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy documents aren’t public, the strategies themselves have not been a complete mystery.

Just 45 days into Biden’s administration, he took the unique step of publicly issuing an Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, months before the administration was required to do so. Its emphasis on alliances was seen as a rebuke and reversal of Trump’s “America First” strategy ― as was the Biden strategy’s broad focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and economic shocks associated with it, racial injustice and climate change.

Like Trump’s strategy, Biden’s guidance identified China, Russia, North Korea and Iran as potential adversaries, but Biden has drawn fire from GOP hawks for playing up diplomacy and playing down the role of nuclear weapons. The guidance also codified a call for the military to “shift our emphasis from unneeded legacy platforms and weapon systems to free up resources for investments in cutting-edge technologies.”

The White House had a National Security Strategy drafted in January, when it hit pause to see how the Russia-Ukraine conflict would unfold. Then in February, the official drafting the strategy, Sasha Baker, left NSC to become deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. In late April, she was replaced as NSC’s senior director of strategy by Thomas Wright, an expert on trans-Atlantic relations and foreign policy.

China and the Indo-Pacific will remain a top theme, but for Europe, the strategy will recognize the land war in Europe’s major geopolitical implications, a senior administration official told Defense News. The first six months of the war have seen NATO begin to expand and enhance its force posture, while Ukraine has fought Russia to a near standstill using western aid.

“I think it would be a mistake to look at it and say ‘China down, Russia up,’” said the senior administration official, who spoke with Defense News on condition of anonymity. “That’s definitely not the case, but it will reflect some of the big geopolitical events that we’ve seen.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a speech on May 26, called Russia “a clear and present threat” and China “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order,” but said the U.S. is determined to avoid conflict or a new Cold War.

That’s a subtly different construction from the National Defense Strategy, whose fact sheet released March 28 says it judges China as the “most consequential strategic competitor and the pacing challenge for the Department,” and identifies Russia as an “acute threat.”

Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Pentagon leaders are caught in “an intellectual straitjacket” in their strategy’s emphasis on China, the complex future threat that they want to confront, while Russia causes the worst security crisis in Europe since 1945. The solution, in O’Hanlon’s view, is to prioritize Russia and China equally.

“There’s this sort of cognitive dissonance, where they are trying to prioritize China, even as Russia is the one that’s obviously threatening global order much more acutely. Their stance doesn’t quite accommodate that reality,” O’Hanlon said.

Beyond a geopolitical view, the strategy lays out three priorities: “integrated deterrence,” or coordinating military, diplomatic and economic levers from across the U.S. government to deter an adversary from taking an aggressive action; “campaigning forward” to build up the capability of international coalitions and complicate adversaries’ actions; and “building enduring advantages” through investing in the right technologies and people.

Military leaders privy to the classified strategy have meanwhile been linking their plans to those public principles. The chief of naval operations, Adm. Mike Gilday, recently issued an updated Navigation Plan 2022 that reframes the role of the service in terms of the strategy, saying, for instance, the U.S. needs a larger and more capable Navy to, “build enduring warfighting advantages.”

Former Pentagon Comptroller Dov Zakheim, now a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Washington needs to publicly discuss how to budget for a National Security Strategy that prioritizes China, Russia and ― potentially, given Biden’s recent visit there ― the Mideast.

“The interim strategy’s been overcome by events,” Zakheim said of the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. “That version talked about China being the No. 1 threat, but we’ve done so much for Ukraine and will continue to do so. And the president’s visit to the Middle East shows that one hasn’t diminished entirely. So it begs the question, how can we fund all of that?”

Bryant Harris contributed to this report.

The comments came just two days after 25 Senate lawmakers (all Democrats and independents) urged the department to begin offering abortions at VA medical centers to all veterans and eligible family members, in response to a growing number of states outlawing the procedure.

“Last month’s disastrous Supreme Court decision … makes it even more critical that veterans receive access to the reproductive care to which they are entitled,” the group wrote in a letter to the VA secretary. “VA must urgently begin rulemaking to allow veterans and eligible dependents to receive abortions and all abortion-related services.”

Since the Supreme Court in June overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion nationwide, at least 23 states have started to place limits or already imposed restrictions on health care workers from providing abortions.

Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas have near total bans on the procedure.

That has prompted abortion rights supporters in Congress to push administration officials to find ways to make the procedure more easily available to women in those states, including possibly using federal facilities.

But whether VA has the authority to make such a move is in dispute.

During a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on July 27, ranking member Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, reiterated his opposition to the idea and cited the Veterans Health Care Act of 1992, which prohibits abortions at VA medical locations.

But in their letter to McDonough, the senators supporting the idea said that under the Veterans Health Care Eligibility Reform Act of 1996, the department can furnish “needed” medical care to veterans.

“Importantly, the VA has used its authority to provide reproductive care such as pregnancy care and infertility services, even though such care was initially excluded from the health care packages allowed under the [1992 law],” they wrote. “We contend that the VA has the statutory authority and discretion to provide abortions and abortion-related services and resources.”

McDonough has said publicly that VA general counsel has asserted the department is not statutorily prohibited from providing abortion counseling or abortion services, but has chosen not to engage in those practices in the past. Republican lawmakers strongly dispute that claim.

But during an interview Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, McDonough would not commit to any specific changes to address abortion access for veterans.

“We’re looking very closely at that to ensure that there’s no reduction of services to [women veterans] and no risk to their lives as a result of these decisions,” he said.

“Women veterans are the fastest growing group of veterans that we have in our care,” he added. “My preference is that they not face risks to their lives as a result of this decision from the court. We’re going to make sure that we’re in a position to take care of them.”

In fiscal 2020, about 550,000 women veterans accessed VA health care services, and another 400,000 women dependents and survivors accessed care through related programs.

Senate Democrats are expected to bring up the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, also known as the PACT Act, for another procedural vote on Monday afternoon. If they can get 60 votes for the action, the bill is likely to pass by the end of the week, and be signed into law by President Joe Biden a few days later.

Veterans advocates have been lobbying for the measure for years, saying it would dramatically expand benefits for veterans suffering illnesses from burn pit smoke, Agent Orange exposure, radiation poisoning and a host of other military toxic exposure events.

The bill advanced on a 342–88 vote in the House two weeks ago with significant Republican support and was supported by 34 Republicans in the Senate during an 84–14 vote in June.

But last week, during a procedural cloture vote that was widely assumed only to be a formality, 25 Republicans flipped their vote to block the measure, saying they have newfound concerns with accounting issues that Democrats inserted into the measure.

New concerns?

The problem centers on how some benefits spending in the bill will be classified in federal budgeting procedures. Sen. Pat Toomey has led the charge, saying it could amount to billions in extra discretionary government spending over the next decade.

“If we change [the law] to the way that the Democrats want, it creates room in future budgets for $400 billion of totally unrelated, extraneous spending on other matters,” he said during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “That’s what I want to prevent.”

Toomey’s concerns are the same he raised in June, when he was one of the 14 senators who objected to the PACT Act’s final passage.

The bill has undergone minor technical changes since then. Several Republican senators who objected last week have justified their flip in recent days by insisting that Democrats only recently inserted the problematic issues into the bill, but the discretionary spending language provisions are the same as June, when the measure easily passed the Senate.

Veterans advocates have called the new messaging over the objections insincere.

“Twenty-five senators who voted for the PACT Act last month changed their vote on the exact same bill,” said Veterans of Foreign Wars National Commander Tim Borland in a statement. “[They] are risking more veterans getting sick and dying with every day this is delayed.”

On Thursday, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., accused Republican senators of playing politics instead of really caring about the bill’s specifics. The failed PACT Act vote last week occurred just as Senate Democratic leaders announced the framework for new comprehensive health care and climate change legislation.

“The less charitable explanation is this: Republicans are mad that Democrats are on the verge of passing climate change legislation and have decided to take out their anger on vulnerable veterans,” he said.

Discretionary vs. mandatory spending

Both advocates and administration officials have also disputed Toomey’s concerns about the accounting issues.

In federal budgeting, spending classified as mandatory (which includes things like veterans benefits checks and Social Security payouts) is set in law and renewed annually. Discretionary spending, which includes program operations, can change each year depending on the whims of lawmakers.

Toomey has said he does not have concerns with categorizing the new benefits included in the PACT Act (about $279 billion over 10 years) as mandatory spending.

But he insists that provisions to move other existing toxic exposure benefits spending in the annual VA budget from the discretionary budget to the mandatory one opens up the door for budgetary gimmicks down the road.

“We are spending way too much money [in the federal budget],” he said. “To hide behind a veterans bill the opportunity to go on an unrelated spending spree is wrong.”

That theoretical spending would not be included in the PACT Act. But by reducing the total amount of discretionary spending in the non-defense side of the federal budget, future appropriators could have more flexibility to shift money into other non-veteran programs.

After last week’s failed cloture vote, Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester, D-Mont., blasted Toomey’s arguments baseless, saying that the normal appropriations process allows those kinds of debates each year.

And Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough on Sunday said requiring this block of veterans spending to remain in the discretionary budget would only endanger veterans’ benefits.

“The impact of [Toomey’s plan] is we may have to ration care for veterans,” he said on CNN. “The estimates he uses set caps on what we can invest in people.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he will allow a vote on Toomey’s plan to change the accounting methods, but will require a 60-vote minimum for passage. Toomey has said he wants a simple majority vote, and floor time for other Republican amendments.

If the Senate amends the bill, it will need to go back to the House again for another vote before final passage. That likely wouldn’t happen until September, since the House began its summer recess on Friday.

If Monday’s planned vote simply fails again, the fate of the measure at any point this year is unclear. Toomey insisted that a compromise can be found, but offered no timeline for when that might happen.

The Senate is due back in for legislative business at 3 p.m. on Monday.

But the veterans weren’t.

A contingent of about 15 veterans — most of whom had spent the prior 48 hours meeting with lawmakers to discuss new toxic exposure legislation — were camped out on the Senate steps even as rain began to come down steadily. More were expected to arrive after midnight.

Plans called for an around-the-clock fire watch of advocates at the Capitol to last until Monday afternoon, when the Senate is again scheduled to vote on the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, better known as the PACT Act. The goal was to emphasize — throughout the weekend — the importance of action on the issue, even if no lawmakers were present to see it.

“We’re here to let the Senate know that we’re not going home and neither should they until they get the PACT Act done,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Legislative Service.

Veterans groups have been searching for ways to bring pressure and urgency on senators since Wednesday, when a procedural vote on the measure failed in surprising fashion.

The measure — which could expand medical options and benefits for as many as one in five veterans living in America today — passed out of the Senate in June by a comfortable bipartisan 84-14 margin.

But after it was approved with technical corrections by the House, Senate Republicans chose to block the bill, with 27 GOP members unexpectedly changing their vote from the previous month.

Reasons for the surprise opposition include lingering concerns about how some benefits spending will be classified in future budgets and anger over unrelated health care and climate change legislation announced by Senate Democrats this week.

But the veterans standing watch outside the Capitol said none of those factors justify stalling the sweeping veterans policy measure when passage appeared all but certain after years of advocacy and lobbying work.

Kristen Rouse, a board member of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and an Army veteran with three tours in Afghanistan, traveled from New York to Washington, D.C., on Friday to be part of the event.

“Veterans are sick and dying,” she said. “I may be next. I was exposed to thick constant smoke for a full year in Afghanistan. The very least I can do is show up to pull a shift on the Capitol steps with these fighters.

“We need the Senate to come back and get to work. Suffering veterans don’t get any breaks. They shouldn’t be on recess or whatever they’re doing. Veterans need help now.”

Advocates brought coolers, camp chairs and pizza to their late-night protest shift. They sent texts to fellow veterans about the effort throughout the night and passed time by watching clips of Jon Stewart, the comedian-turned-activist who spoke at a veterans rally on Capitol Hill Thursday, skewering Republicans on social media for their opposition to the bill.

Veterans said several House lawmakers — but no senators — stopped to chat on Friday afternoon to offer support for the effort. Other passersby approached to ask about the bill and what it could mean for the veterans community.

The plan, which calls for about $300 billion in spending over the next 10 years, would establish a presumption of service connection for 23 respiratory illnesses and cancers related to the smoke from burn pits used in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would also extend Veterans Affairs medical care for those vets, from five years after service to 10 years.

It would also provide new benefits for veterans who faced radiation exposure during deployments throughout the Cold War; veterans dealing with hypertension and monoclonal gammopathy from the Vietnam War, and new Agent Orange presumptive status for veterans who served in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Guam during the 1960s and 1970s.

Senate Democrats said they are hopeful that a deal can be reached to move ahead with the bill by Monday afternoon, when the chamber is expected to return from a weekend break for a final week of work before its month-long summer recess.

As the weekend began, the advocates on the Senate steps were hopeful that their vigil there will only last until that Monday procedural vote.

“This is a bill that should have been passed a month ago,” said Aleks Morosky, deputy director of government affairs for Wounded Warrior Project. “When it came back over to the Senate, the people that voted for it last time, they chose to vote no on it. And that is unacceptable.

“So, we’re here to get the Senate to pass this bill without any more delays.”