Category: Military

DoD Courts Service Members Wrongfully Discharged for Not Getting the COVID Jab.

The Pentagon has begun sending letters of apology to thousands of service members who were discharged from military service for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine. The Pentagon is also trying to assist these service members if they wish to return to active duty.

“They never should have had to leave military service, and the department is committed to assisting them in their return,” Tim Hill, the Defense Department’s acting deputy undersecretary of personnel and readiness, told reporters. He added that President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are “eager to welcome back those who are impacted” by the Pentagon’s 2021 vaccine mandate.

In August 2021, then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the vaccine mandate, claiming it was critical in keeping service members ready to fight. It was so critical that the Pentagon dropped the rule in January 2023.

Almost 9,000 service members refused vaccination and were dismissed from the armed forces. The effort to get them to reenlist includes telephone calls, emails, website information, and social media posts.

Donald Trump issued an executive order on January 27, reinstating service members discharged under the Pentagon’s COVID vaccine mandate.

“In spite of the scientific evidence, the Biden Administration discharged healthy service members—many of whom had natural immunity and dedicated their entire lives to serving our country—for refusing the COVID vaccine,” a fact sheet released with the executive order said. “Government redress of these wrongful dismissals is overdue.”

Military Times:

Service members who involuntarily separated would be granted the opportunity to receive back pay for the time they otherwise would’ve been in the military, Hill said. It would include base pay, allowance for housing and subsistence and potentially medical benefits. The back pay calculation would also factor in other forms of compensation a service member received while out of service, including salary and health care.

These benefits would only apply to service members who seek to return under the new Trump administration guidelines and would not retroactively apply to those who had returned after the 2023 rescission, a number Hill estimated at under 80 service members.

“It’s also something we can seek to address but there is not currently a mechanism,” he said.

The enlistment period would be either two or four years, and there are other administrative hurdles that an applicant would have to get over in order to rejoin.

There’s also a question of back pay and the fact that most of the service members lost considerable pay because they didn’t get promotions and pay raises.

“How can the department make them whole so that they would stand financially in the same position they would’ve stood in had they never been discharged?” asked Hill.

Returning service members would also be assessed for medical retention standards — a test to determine whether someone who’s already been serving in the military is fit to continue — rather than traditional accession standards, which encompass a much higher level of scrutiny used to determine whether an individual prior to military experience is fit to join the military.

The Army has reenlisted more than 23 soldiers who were discharged for refusing the vaccine as of Monday, the AP reported. None of the other services had completed reenlistments yet, but all are reaching out to former troops.

According to Army spokesman Christopher Surridge, about 400 soldiers have inquired so far about the reenlistment program, the AP reported. Of those, about 100 are in the application process. The Army did not have estimates on how much it has given the soldiers in total back pay.

There’s a lot to sort out, and given the Biden administration’s reluctance to reach out to discharged service members, it’s not surprising that less than 700 service members have expressed any interest in reenlisting.

Shawn Ryan (Former Navy Seal) “There are 480,000 VA employees and there are 450,000 active duty army veterans all over the country have been dying waiting to get treatment, commit suicide”

Space Force General: Chinese Satellites ‘Dogfighting’ in Orbit.

The vice chief of the U.S. Space Force said Chinese satellites have been observed rehearsing “dogfighting” maneuvers in low Earth orbit, a display of the communist nation’s ability to perform complex maneuvers in orbit.

The maneuvers, referred to as rendezvous and proximity operations, involve not only navigating around other objects but also inspecting them, the Air Force Times reported Tuesday.

“With our commercial assets, we have observed five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity and in control,” Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said Tuesday at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington, D.C.

A Space Force spokesperson told the Air Force Times the observation occurred in 2024 and involved three Shiyan-24C experimental satellites and two other Chinese experimental spacecraft, the Shijian-605 A and B. The Shijian-6 systems were believed to be on a signals intelligence mission, which could be used to determine the geolocation of a signal’s origin, which helps in identifying the location and movements of adversaries, according to the American Military Institute.

Guetlein’s comments came as the Space Force intensifies efforts to establish dominance in space, both by defending its satellites from enemy attacks and through offensive measures of its own, according to the Air Force Times.

“The purpose of the Space Force is to guarantee space superiority for the joint force — not space for space’s sake,” Guetlein said. “Space [operations] guarantee that, just like all the other domains, we can fight as a joint force, and we can depend on those capabilities.”

Guetlein used the satellite dogfighting demonstration among other concerning activities from “near-peer” U.S. adversaries. That included Russia’s 2019 demonstration of a “nesting doll,” during which a satellite released a smaller spacecraft that then performed several stalking maneuvers near a U.S. satellite.

Such operations indicate the space capability gap between the U.S. military and its closest adversaries is shrinking, a concern Space Force leaders have been raising for years, the Air Force Times reported.

“That capability gap used to be massive,” Guetlein said. “We’ve got to change the way we look at space or that capability gap may reverse and not be in our favor anymore.”

Actually I think the other nations that want to use the Suez canal and Red Sea for commerce should be upping their patrolling too

Head of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been killed, Iraqi prime minister says

BAGHDAD (AP) — The head of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been killed in Iraq in an operation by members of the Iraqi national intelligence service along with U.S.-led coalition forces, the Iraqi prime minister announced Friday.

“The Iraqis continue their impressive victories over the forces of darkness and terrorism,” Prime Minister Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Abdallah Maki Mosleh al-Rifai, or “Abu Khadija,” was “deputy caliph” of the militant group and as “one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world,” the statement said.

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On March 11, 1963, US Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara ordered the adoption of the M16 rifle by the US military. Designed by Eugene Stoner, it was a scaled down and improved version of his 7.62 NATO chambered AR-10

They’re spies.
Put them in front of a firing squad and broadcast it live on TikTok
That way they can’t be traded next time the demoncraps are in power.
If they got these, there must be others. Shoot them too.
There’s a war going on, and we’re not fighting it.

The Fall of the USS Gettysburg.

“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

At around 0300, on Sunday, 22 December, the Aegis cruiser USS Gettysburg (CG 64) shot down an F/A-18F preparing to land on USS Harry S Truman (CVN 75) while operating in the Red Sea.  The Carrier Strike Group to which each of these units was assigned was an element of the U.S.-led Operation Prosperity Guardian, assigned to protect Red Sea merchant traffic from Yemen-based Houthi attacks.

First, we all need to understand that there is only one man who knows what happened on that day, and that is the commanding officer of Gettysburg.  Apart from the F/A-18F crew, which possesses a very small but critical piece of the puzzle, everyone else is just an observer, a post-exercise armchair quarterback.  Having said that, while Gettysburg’s captain knows what happened in terms of the detailed, incredibly complex sequence of events, unless the failure was the result of discrete, identifiable human error, he may not, in the immediate aftermath, understand why certain things did happen. For example, if systems or off-ship persons failed to operate as advertised, he wouldn’t know exactly why those systems or persons failed. That level of detail may only be revealed in the post-mortem.

Slowly, those pieces are being put together, and each day more is understood as to what happened. That is a good thing, because this was a combat-level laboratory, in which strengths and weaknesses were on real-world display.  This was a night which should be closely studied, and learned from, against future nights in which the missiles are flying.

Here’s the problem: By the time that the Navy, writ large, understands all the errors and failures that contributed to this particular chain of events, a standard strategy may well have been enacted, i.e., “Nothing to see here, folks.  Move along.”  You see, the Navy doesn’t like to discuss “family business” with taxpayers, who may ask awkward, and potentially embarrassing, questions. It is much easier to pin the tail on one specific, commanding officer donkey.

During the first decade of this century, the commanding officer a ship was referred to, by the staff of Commander Naval Surface Forces, as “the sacrificial captain,” and for good reason.  Holding one person up to the public, as the single point of failure in any specific disaster, forestalls further, probing questions that often don’t have easy answers.

In the end, this may mean that larger systemic issues remain unresolved. Rather, blame is often placed at the door of the ship in question, and everyone else who might have been, in one way or another, complicit, simply moves out of the blast pattern until it’s safe to go back to exactly what they were doing before.

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On this day in 1991, U.S. and Allied warplanes attack Saddam Hussein’s defeated, but not surrendering army as it retreats from Kuwait.
The road becomes known as the “Highway of Death.”

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CENTCOM Forces Kill an Al Qaeda Affiliate, Hurras al-Din, Leader in Northwest Syria

On Feb. 21, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces conducted a precision airstrike in Northwest Syria, killing Wasim Tahsin Bayraqdar, a senior leadership facilitator of the terrorist organization Hurras al-Din (HaD), an Al-Qaeda affiliate.

The airstrike is part of CENTCOM’s ongoing commitment, along with partners in the region, to disrupt and degrade efforts by terrorists to plan, organize, and conduct attacks against civilians and military personnel from the U.S., our allies, and our partners throughout the region and beyond.

“We will relentlessly pursue and destroy terrorist threats, no matter their location, in order to protect our homeland and our allies and partners,” said Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, commander, U.S. Central Command.⁩

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So, how many times has there actually been NO ONE WHO HAS THE CONSTITUTIONAL POWER to pass orders to the military as part of the NATIONAL COMMAND AUTHORITY, on the job?

I just read an extremely disturbing IG report. Last December, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was hospitalized and failed to follow the law by notifying the White House or Congress. Similarly, his deputy, Secretary Kathleen Hicks, also refused to follow protocol and report the transfer of authority.

Now, the Inspector General’s report just released reveals that this doesn’t just happen once. Secretary Austin did the same thing again five months later, last June, and he hid it from everyone. Now look, I get it.

People get sick. It happens to all of us, and I sincerely hope Secretary Austin is healthy. But it is dangerous and deeply concerning that our Secretary of Defense left the United States vulnerable when he was completely out of commission.

Not once, but twice, and he didn’t feel the need to tell his boss either time. So, thanks to Joe Biden, we have wars all over the world. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I am deeply, deeply disturbed to learn that we have had two significant lapses in the chain of command that have left our country wide open for attack.

Just as you’d expect, there will be zero accountability from the Biden administration. So, thankfully, change is on the way. In five days, President Donald J. Trump will be sworn in as our 47th president, and the Senate will swiftly confirm Pete Hegseth as our next Secretary of Defense.

We will have accountability, accountability and strength in the Pentagon once again, and it can’t come soon enough. God bless.

HONORING A HERO

Supporting the Family of
Sergeant Major Anders T. Johansson

Sergeant Major Anders Johansson proudly served his country for over two decades, enlisting as an infantryman in 2003. His unwavering dedication to duty saw him rise through the ranks within 2nd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group as a Special Forces Engineer Sergeant and then within the United States Army Special Operations Command, where he held numerous leadership positions.

His bravery and commitment were recognized with numerous awards and badges, including a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, eight Bronze Stars, and was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit. Sergeant Major Johansson bravely deployed on multiple occasions in support of combat operations during Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, Operation NEW DAWN, Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, and Operation INHERENT RESOLVE.

Beyond his military service, Sergeant Major Johansson was married to his loving wife, Sarah.  Together, they built a beautiful life filled with laughter and love. They were blessed with four children: Anders, Gunnar, Arete and Eowyn who will forever cherish their father’s memory.

Sergeant Major Johansson will be remembered for his strength, courage, and unwavering devotion to his family and country. His legacy of service and sacrifice will continue to inspire generations to come.