Military aircraft and warships bombed Houthi strongholds at roughly five locations, according to the officials.

Houthi media said seven strikes hit the airport in Hodeida, a major port city, and the Katheib area, which has a Houthi-controlled military base. Four more strikes hit the Seiyana area in Sanaa, the capital, and two strikes hit the Dhamar province. The Houthi media office also reported three air raids in Bayda province, southeast of Sanaa.

The strikes come just days after the Houthis threatened “escalating military operations” targeting Israel after they apparently shot down a U.S. military drone flying over Yemen. And just last week, the group claimed responsibility for an attack targeting American warships.

The rebels fired more than a half dozen ballistic missiles and anti-ship cruise missiles and two drones at three U.S. ships that were traveling through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, but all were intercepted by the Navy destroyers, according to several U.S. officials.

What will the surge of US forces to the Middle East cost the military?

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet publicly released.

Houthis have targeted more than 80 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza started last October. They have seized one vessel and sunk two in the campaign that has also killed four sailors.

Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a U.S.-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have included Western military vessels.

The group has maintained that they target ships linked to Israel, the U.S. or the United Kingdom to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.

The website was one of nearly two dozen flagged in a recent report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a research group focusing on foreign policy and national security. The group warned that Iranian operatives were trying to pass off the sites as legitimate news outlets and use the content to cast doubt on America’s democratic process.

In addition to veterans, the sites target various minority groups, including Black, Spanish-speaking and Muslim voters, FDD reported.

“Not Our War” posts articles that disparage U.S. military operations overseas and criticize both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Many of its posts are written in a way to elicit strong reactions from veterans, and its homepage includes a tab labeled “Veterans,” said Max Lesser, a senior analyst on emerging threats at FDD.

“The broader aim of the website is to discredit US military actions across the board, but then there is another focus, which is targeting veterans,” Lesser said.

Disinformation creates ‘precarious year for democracy,’ experts warn

The cybersecurity company Mandiant warned of the same website during a briefing about election interference given to members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission earlier this year. The company, a subsidiary of Google, said the site praised the Iranian government and prominent pro-Iran political figures, denigrated the Israeli government, criticized U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and posted about divisive issues in the U.S., including the upcoming presidential election.

Experts have warned for months that U.S. adversaries — such as China, Russia and Iran — would target American voters with disinformation leading up to the election. Some of the messaging meant to sow division is reaching veterans by preying on their sense of duty to the U.S., some experts warned.

A 2017 study from Oxford University found Russian operatives disseminated “junk news” to veterans and service members during the 2016 presidential election. In 2020, Vietnam Veterans of America warned that foreign adversaries were aiming disinformation at veterans and service members at a massive scale, posing a national security threat.

“Conspiracy theories are a threat to vulnerable veterans, and they could drag your loved ones into really dark and dangerous places,” Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Military Times in May.

Microsoft reported in August that Iran had begun an election-interference campaign in the United States by setting up four websites that masqueraded propaganda as news. FDD used Microsoft’s findings to uncover other websites using the same web-hosting servers, it said.

Russian election interference scheme targeted US military competency

FDD released its report quickly after finding the other websites in an attempt to warn people they were fake before one of the posts gained significant traction online, Lesser said.

“We’re exposing it left of boom, before this network goes viral,” Lesser said. “That’s a note of optimism.”

Targeting veterans with disinformation isn’t a new tactic for Iran. Vlad Barash, a scientist at the social media research company Graphika, testified to Congress in 2019 that both Russia and Iran were trying to exploit veterans’ frustrations with the U.S. government by promoting the narrative that democracy was broken. At the time, Barash said such attacks “show no signs of stopping.”

In its report, FDD recommended the U.S. government sanction and indict the operatives running the websites. It also urged social media companies to monitor and block the domains. The FBI declined to comment Monday when asked whether it was investigating the websites.

Despite the room for improvement, Lesser said America’s response to election-interference campaigns has come a long way since 2016. He cited an increase in researchers uncovering disinformation attacks, as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s regular warnings about election interference and efforts by the Justice Department to seize websites spreading propaganda.

“Yes, foreign adversaries are still launching operations targeting our elections,” Lesser said. “But I think as a society, we have become markedly more resilient in terms of exposing these operations and taking action against some of the operators.”

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

Pentagon spokesman Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder declined to say what kind of ordnance was used by the warships Cole and Bulkeley, or whether their intercept were successful, but he said the operations took place while both ships were in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Iran’s direct and widespread missile attack on Israel Tuesday was the second of the year, and once again threatened to spark all-out war in the Middle East, a grim future that the United States has worked to stave off since the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

The sky lit up over central and southern Israel Tuesday evening as ballistic missiles collided with air defense interceptors. Both the Pentagon and the Israel Defense Forces said they were still assessing the attack, but that Iran had launched around 200 missiles and there had been no recorded casualties.

“Initial reports indicate that Israel was able to intercept the majority of incoming missiles and that there was minimal damage on the ground,” Ryder said.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called Iran’s response “failed and ineffective,” but warned that it was also a “significant escalation.”

What will the surge of US forces to the Middle East cost the military?

“This [result] was first and foremost the result of the professionalism of the IDF, but in no small part, because of the skilled work of the U.S. military and meticulous joint planning in anticipation of the attack,” Sullivan said.

Iran’s attack comes a week after Israel assassinated the leader of Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia group that Tehran has armed for years. The strike in Beirut, followed by operations Israel launched across the border, have escalated a burgeoning conflict in Lebanon.

The U.S. has already surged forces to the Middle East to help defend Israel and its own forces. It continued to do so this week, sending three fighter squadrons, including F-15s, F-16s and A-10s. This almost doubles the number of fighters in U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East.

Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also ordered the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to remain in the region as a bulwark against a wider war. Another carrier, the Harry S. Truman, is heading to U.S. European Command.

These posture changes will add “a few thousand” U.S. forces to CENTCOM, according to the Pentagon, adding to the 40,000 already there — 6,000 more than normal.

The U.S. insists the surge in forces has helped avert an a wider war in the region, an assessment Ryder repeated from the podium Tuesday, despite the recent attacks.

“We’ve been working very hard from the beginning to prevent a wider regional conflict.,” he said. “Certainly, the type of aggressive action that we saw by Iran today makes that more challenging.”

American forces, meanwhile, are under an elevated threat from Iran-backed proxies in the region.

Last week, the Houthis, a militia group in Yemen, launched what the Pentagon called a “complex attack” with aerial drones and cruise missiles on U.S. ships in the Red Sea, though officials said no ships were struck and no sailors were injured.

Iran’s attack Tuesday included around two times as many ballistic missiles than a similar barrage this April, which largely featured aerial drones that are much easier to intercept, Ryder said. No U.S. forces were targeted in the attack Tuesday, he continued.

Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart to discuss the attack and the “severe consequences” that would follow for Iran. Ryder wouldn’t elaborate on what those consequences will be, nor whether the U.S. would assist Israel in a direct strike on Iranian territory.

The U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence, said the U.S. is actively supporting Israeli defensive preparations.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a warning Monday to Iran, which backs Hezbollah and Hamas.

“There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach,” Netanyahu said, just days after an airstrike south of Beirut killed the leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah group, which is backed by Tehran.

The Israeli military earlier warned several southern Lebanese communities near the border to leave their homes, shortly after starting what it called a limited ground operation against Hezbollah targets.

Hezbollah’s acting leader, Naim Kassem, promised the group will fight on following the death of its long-time chief Hassan Nasrallah and several of the group’s top commanders who have been assassinated in recent days. Kassem said the group’s fighters are ready and the slain commanders have already been replaced.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since Oct. 8, the day after Hamas sent fighters into Israel and sparked the war in Gaza. It’s been almost a year since some 250 people were abducted from Israel, and friends and family are worried about their loved ones as attention turns away from hostages and north toward Lebanon.

JERUSALEM — Iran is preparing to “imminently” launch a ballistic missile attack on Israel, according to a senior U.S. administration official, who warned Tuesday of “severe consequences” should it take place.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence, said the U.S. is actively supporting Israeli defensive preparations. This comes after the Israeli military on Tuesday warned people to evacuate nearly two dozen Lebanese border communities hours after announcing what it said were limited ground operations against Hezbollah.

White House officials did not immediately offer any evidence backing its intelligence finding. The official added that the administration was confident in the determination.

U.S. ships and aircraft are already positioned in the region to assist Israel in the event of an attack from Iran. There are three U.S. Navy destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea, an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Oman and fighter jets arrayed throughout the region. All have the abilities to shoot down incoming missiles.

What will the surge of US forces to the Middle East cost the military?

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the carrier Abraham Lincoln to remain in the region over the weekend, and the Pentagon announced that additional Air Force fighter jet squadrons were heading to the Middle East on Monday.

Iran’s state media has not suggested any attack is imminent. Iranian officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

Iran already launched an unprecedented direct attack on Israel in April, but few of the Iranian projectiles reached their targets. Many were shot down by a U.S.-led coalition, while others apparently failed at launch or crashed while in flight. Even those that reached Israel appeared to miss their marks, experts and an AP analysis in September showed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Tuesday statement that Israel is facing “large challenges” as it fights an Iranian axis. In the videotaped statement, he urges the public to listen to public safety guidelines from the army’s Home Front Command. He made no direct mention of a missile threat.

Hezbollah denied Israeli troops had entered Lebanon, but hours later the Israeli army announced it had also carried out dozens of ground raids into southern Lebanon going back nearly a year. Israel released video footage purporting to show its soldiers operating in homes and tunnels where Hezbollah kept weapons.

A ‘few thousand’ more US troops are headed to the Middle East

If true, it would be another humiliating blow for Iran-backed Hezbollah, the most powerful armed group in the Middle East. Hezbollah has been reeling from weeks of targeted strikes that killed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and several of his top commanders.

Israel advised people to evacuate to the north of the Awali River, some 60 kilometers (36 miles) from the border and much farther than the Litani River, which marks the northern edge of a U.N.-declared zone that was intended to serve as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah after their 2006 war.

“You must immediately head north of the Awali River to save yourselves, and leave your houses immediately,” said the statement posted by the Israeli military on the platform X. The warning applied to communities south of the Litani.

The border region has largely emptied out over the past year as the two sides have traded fire. But the scope of the evacuation warning raised questions as to how deep Israel plans to send its forces into Lebanon as it presses ahead with a rapidly escalating campaign against Hezbollah.

Anticipating more rocket attacks from Hezbollah, the Israeli army announced new restrictions on public gatherings and closed beaches in northern and central Israel. The military also said it was calling up thousands more reserve soldiers to serve on the northern border.

U.S. Central Command said it struck northwestern Syria on Tuesday, targeting a senior militant from the al-Qaida-linked Hurras al-Deen group and eight others. They say he was responsible for overseeing military operations.

US-led drone strike in Syria kills al-Qaida-linked leader

On Sept. 16, a “large-scale airstrike” on an IS training camp in an undisclosed location in central Syria killed 28 militants, including “at least four Syrian leaders," Central Command said.

“The airstrike will disrupt ISIS’ capability to conduct operations against U.S. interests, as well as our allies and partners,” the statement read.

There are some 900 U.S. forces in Syria, along with an undisclosed number of contractors, mostly trying to prevent any comeback by the extremist IS group, which swept through Iraq and Syria in 2014, taking control of large swaths of territory.

U.S. forces advise and assist their key allies in northeastern Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, located not far from strategic areas where Iran-backed militant groups are present, including a key border crossing with Iraq.

The increased presence will come from multiple fighter jet squadrons, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters.

Additional personnel include squadrons of F-15E Strike Eagle, F-16, A-10 and F-22 fighter jets and the personnel needed to support them. The jets were supposed to rotate in and replace the squadrons already there. Instead, both the existing and new squadrons will remain in place to double the airpower on hand.

It follows recent strikes in Lebanon and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, a significant escalation in the war in the Middle East, this time between Israel and Hezbollah.

What will the surge of US forces to the Middle East cost the military?

On Sunday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also announced that he was temporarily extending the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and its associated squadrons in the region.

The jets are not there to assist in an evacuation, Singh said, “they are there for the protection of U.S. forces.”

The American and Iraqi governments announced Friday a phasing down of Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve, a U.S.-led military operation to counter the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Previewed for months after U.S. President Joe Biden met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani in April, the decision will close the task force by 2026. The U.S., which has 2,500 troops in Iraq, will then negotiate directly with the government in Baghdad on its military presence inside the country.

Since the war started in Gaza last October, American military personnel around the Middle East have been increasingly under threat. Militia groups sponsored by Iran have targeted U.S. ships and bases, including a strike that killed three troops just across the Syrian border in Jordan this January. The attacks, along with America’s support for Israel, have continued to shift America’s military footprint in the region.

There are now 40,000 U.S. personnel in Central Command, 6,000 higher than normal.

In a call previewing the announcement with reporters, a senior U.S. administration and defense official wouldn’t comment on how many troops would remain in Iraq or where they would operate — other than to say there would not be a full withdrawal.

What will the surge of US forces to the Middle East cost the military?

“It’s time to do that transition. But that doesn’t mean every detail has been worked out,” the defense official said.

The task force itself will end in two phases. The first will arrive next September, when the coalition’s military mission inside Iraq will close. Because ISIS remains a threat nearby, the officials said, Iraq will allow the coalition to keep using its territory for missions across the border into Syria at least until September 2026.

Launched in 2014, when the Islamic State seized swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, the task force includes more than 30 countries and eventually secured 42,000 square miles once controlled by ISIS, the defense official said. The terrorist group lost its ability to hold territory in Iraq in 2017, and in Syria two years later.

Ending the international mission now, the official continued, reflects two changes: a weakened ISIS and an empowered Iraqi military. The coalition has given local security forces more than $4 billion in military equipment and trained around 225,000 personnel.

America has also supported the Iraqi military directly. This week, the U.S. State Department approved a $65 million foreign military sale to Iraq for ship repair and maintenance.

“During these past years, we’ve seen very significant improvement in the Iraqi Security Force’s capability,” the defense official said.

In late August, U.S. and Iraqi forces conducted an operation in western Iraq that killed 14 ISIS operatives, including four leaders, as announced by CENTCOM. Seven American personnel were injured in the raid.

Just before the defense secretary visited Subic Bay, Philippines, the former site of a massive U.S. Navy base, Israel killed the political leader of Hamas, who was visiting Iran.

Austin’s July visit was meant to show his focus on Asia, the region America says is its top priority. Instead, he ended the trip distracted by the Middle East, spending hours containing the crisis on a flight back to Washington.

“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that we keep things from turning into a broader conflict,” Austin told reporters that day.

The U.S. military has spent much of the past year backing up that sentiment.

Since Oct. 7, when Hamas’ attack on Israel provoked all-out war in Gaza, the Pentagon has been on call. When the region has approached a wider war, the Defense Department surged forces there to calm it down. But after a year, some in Congress and the Pentagon are growing concerned about how to sustain that pace, and what it will cost the military in the long term.

Call it the U.S. Central Command squeeze. The Pentagon insists its surge has helped stop the Middle East from falling into chaos. But the longer the region borders on conflict, the more the U.S. tests its endurance for crises later on, most notably, a future conflict with China.

The pressure on the military increased even further this week. After their most intense attacks in almost 20 years, Israel and the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah are close to a larger war. On Monday, Austin yet again ordered more troops to the region, joining 40,000 other American personnel there, 6,000 more than normal. Another aircraft carrier may soon follow.

“We’re caught in this kind of never-ending quagmire of having to divert resources, and we’re burning [out] on the back end,” a senior congressional aide said.

This story is based on interviews with analysts, current and former defense officials and congressional staffers, many of whom were allowed to speak anonymously either because they weren’t permitted to talk to the press or because they were discussing sensitive topics.

Their message was that America’s military wouldn’t exhaust itself anytime soon, but that a year of unplanned deployments and spent missiles come with a cost. Even more, they said, the longer the crisis continues, the more the Pentagon will have to manage tradeoffs between the urgent needs of the Middle East and the rising challenges of the Indo-Pacific.

Merging

The way American military leaders in the Middle East describe it, they woke up to an entirely new world on Oct. 7.

For the last several years, the narrative around U.S. forces in the region had been one of decreased focus, with adversaries in the Europe and the Pacific taking priority.

That changed when Hamas fighters stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 and taking hundreds more hostage. For the short-term, at least, the U.S. was refocused on the Middle East.

“We didn’t know what this was the start of,” an American military official told Defense News. “We immediately started to go to worst-case planning.”

Within weeks of Oct. 7, in support of Israel, the U.S. sent two carrier strike groups, the Gerald R. Ford and the Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and Middle East. It doubled the number of Air Force fighter squadrons in CENTCOM. And to defend its forces already in the region, the Pentagon rushed valuable air defense batteries nearby.

“Our advice to those who might seek to exploit the situation or amplify the conflict is simple, don’t,” a senior U.S. defense official warned in an October press briefing.

This phrase, which became a cliché among senior members of the U.S. government, was still a clear statement of mission. America was sprinting to defend Israel and its own forces in the region.

That became harder the longer the war lasted. Oct. 7 brought direct attacks between Hamas and Israel, but it also upset a delicate balance among other groups.

Soon after the attack, Israel and Hezbollah — which has a formidable force, armed with over 130,000 rockets — started trading fire in a cycle of escalating skirmishes.

Militant groups armed by Iran started attacking Israeli and American forces, especially the 3,500 or so stationed between Iraq and Syria, with three soldiers dying in one such attack in January.

Meanwhile, the Houthis, a terrorist group in Yemen, started firing on commercial ships in the Red Sea, a vital economic waterway where 15% of global trade flowed before last fall.

The Navy’s running sea fight with the Houthis is the longest and most kinetic since World War II, according to service leaders.

“There’s flavors of all those activities in the past and previous rounds that I’ve been involved in, but I don’t recall a period when so many of them have merged,” said another senior U.S. defense official, describing the different attacks.

‘Bear the burden’

As the threats rose, so too did the demand on America’s military. By December, the U.S. began Operation Prosperity Guardian, a multinational mission to protect shipping in the Red Sea. It devoted an aircraft carrier and destroyers to the task.

In April, when Iran lobbed hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, the U.S. and its partners helped intercept nearly all of them.

America’s national defense strategy accepts that its military can’t be everywhere in the numbers it would want. Instead, the plan is to have a movable force. Put more practically: the U.S. argues it can rush to contain crises like the Middle East after Oct. 7 while still deterring a conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific.

“That’s what we were saying before Oct. 7 and we just demonstrated it,” said Dana Stroul, a top Pentagon Middle East official until early this year. “It’s been a proof of concept.”

But the plan requires these emergencies to eventually end. Despite months of intense diplomacy in the region, the administration is now showing less confidence in its proposed ceasefire deal. And now Israel — the country America has spent the last year defending — may itself be opening a new front in the war against Hezbollah.

“You can’t employ diplomacy without the backbone of military capability,” said retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, who led CENTCOM until 2022. “Military capability without diplomatic messaging is not a good way to approach the problem either.”

“You need both but you have to be willing to bear the burden,” he continued.

For some in Congress especially, the concern is that the Middle East is a distraction from the Indo-Pacific.

Pentagon leaders say they calculate the risk in pulling assets from one region to another, and that the choice to move forces away from Asia is a sign that they consider the region stable enough to do so.

Not everyone in the region is convinced.

“I have relayed messages that it is better to invest in deterrence where there is no overt conflict, rather than intervene in a conflict where there is one already,” the Philippines Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an August interview. He wouldn’t specify who in the U.S. those messages have reached.

‘We had mission and purpose:’ A chat with the CO of the USS Eisenhower

Cost and benefit

The benefit, in the Defense Department’s eyes, of such a large response in the Middle East over the last year is to contain a crisis that threatened to engulf the entire region.

The periodic surges haven’t accomplished everything the U.S. has wanted. The Navy regularly intercepts Houthi drones and missiles, but the attacks by the Iran-backed group continue, and most shipping companies have chosen to reroute rather than risk becoming a target. Nor is it certain that the militia group will stop even if there is a ceasefire — something Pentagon officials say they still don’t know.

As the recent fire between Israel and Hezbollah has shown, the U.S. is also stuck responding to the rise and fall in the regional conflict, what Pentagon leaders often liken to riding a roller coaster.

“It’s obviously lasted longer than anyone would want,” the second defense official said.

That notwithstanding, there hasn’t yet been a wider war in the Middle East. And while it acknowledges other forces at work, the Pentagon says it’s helped avoid one.

Amid Red Sea clashes, Navy leaders ask: Where are our ship lasers?

“The force posture does matter,” Secretary Austin told reporters this month. “In some cases, Iran can see … many of the capabilities that we have available. In many cases, they can’t.”

That said, the cost of this posture is also becoming clearer.

The first, and perhaps the most important, part of that tally is the military’s ability to meet future needs, known as “readiness” in defense jargon. By sending more forces to the Middle East, the Pentagon is accepting what amounts to a mortgage: higher costs on its forces to avoid an even bigger bill.

There’s no more pressing example of this trade than aircraft carriers.

These ships are the Navy’s most powerful, most visible weapon, and they’re a primary way the U.S. often flexes its military muscle.

That said, carriers need a lot of maintenance, and spend about two-thirds of their life in port undergoing some kind of repair. The Navy calibrates their time at sea and their time for maintenance, allowing for some margin, but not much.

Central Command spent two years without a carrier after America left Afghanistan in 2021. But since Oct. 7, the U.S. has rotated four of them into the Middle East. Most of them have also been deployed longer than their scheduled seven months at sea.

“If we delay a carrier from going back into port and going back into a maintenance period by a month, it causes an even longer period” of disruption, the third defense official said. “It’s not a one-for-one delay.”

Without specifying the impact of these extensions so far, multiple defense officials and congressional aides said the U.S. is already having to manage “tradeoffs” between the needs of the Middle East today and other areas in the future.

Still, in an interview, the head of readiness for the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command, which oversees the East Coast-based fleet, argued that the schedules and ships themselves have proved resilient and aren’t yet showing higher wear.

“Sailing those ships in harm’s way for more months certainly will put stress on that, but I really don’t see that process breaking,” Rear Adm. Paul Lanzilotta said.

Close calls

This February, the Houthis shot a ballistic missile at the Navy destroyer Gravely in the Red Sea, one of many times the militia group targeted American ships in the waterway.

But this one came close. In fact, the ship used a short-range weapon — rather than the typical missile — to intercept the attack. The Houthis came within a nautical mile of success, according to Navy officials.

This is an example of the other two costs involved in the Pentagon’s response. One is to personnel, who are being targeted by militia groups more often and are, in some cases, being deployed longer than planned. The other is the military’s own weapons needed to respond.

The Navy estimates that between Oct. 7 and mid-July, it fired $1.16 billion worth of munitions while on station in the Red Sea.

Many of these are older versions of missiles — such as Tomahawks and Standard Missile 2 interceptors — that wouldn’t be as useful in a fight against China, said a second congressional aide.

Still, as long as the Navy is around the Red Sea, it will need to fire weapons that cost more than what they’re shooting down — an equation known in the military as an “exchange ratio.” That deficit has fallen as the U.S. escorts fewer vessels and experiments more with other ways to stop these attacks, multiple officials and analysts told Defense News. But there’s only so many ways the military can adapt, and it won’t risk losing sailors or ships that cost billions.

“We’ve dodged disaster so far, but that doesn’t really mean it’s mission accomplished,” said a third congressional aide.

In April, Congress passed a $95 billion addition to the Pentagon budget, with $2.44 billion in extra money for Central Command. That funding was designed to last six months, according to the first congressional aide, which would mean it’s almost out today.

The Pentagon comptroller office declined to offer an estimate of how much more the surge in forces is costing and whether the Defense Department was still running a deficit to pay for it.

Multiple staffs in Congress said the bill for the last six months will be about the same number as in April: $2 to $3 billion.

Lawmakers can either pay the bill down in another supplemental or by folding the total into their overall defense spending bill, as the Senate did with $1.75 billion for Central Command. That said, lawmakers will soon start the year on a short-term budget called a continuing resolution, which freezes Pentagon spending at last year’s level.

‘Still in the crisis’

Meanwhile even as funding runs out, the war in Gaza shows no sign of ending.

In August, after Austin returned to Washington from the Philippines, he sent a fighter squadron, a submarine, destroyers and a second aircraft carrier rerouted from the Indo-Pacific this year to CENTCOM. Iran didn’t attack, and Hezbollah’s response to an Israeli strike was limited. After a month and a half of relative calm, one of the two carriers in the region left.

During regular briefings, the Pentagon even started arguing that it had gotten in the “headspace” of Iran.

Then, earlier this month, Israel detonated thousands of devices belonging to Hezbollah and launched airstrikes in Lebanon — prompting the group to vow revenge. The two sides are now exchanging heavy fire across the border. Austin postponed a trip to Israel and Jordan this week, containing yet another flare up.

Between the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and CENTCOM, the U.S. now has at least one submarine, an aircraft carrier, three amphibious warships and nine destroyers, a defense official said. Two of those destroyers are in the Red Sea and were once slated to exit, the official said. After the attacks last week, the official continued, the Pentagon ordered them to stay.

In a call with reporters after Israel and Hezbollah’s latest standoff began, a senior administration official yet again said that the U.S. had helped avert a wider war and that a ceasefire was the best option for all in the region.

In the days after, Israel continued striking Lebanon killing hundreds in attacks that escalated their conflict further.

Another carrier strike group deployed for Europe this week on a previously scheduled deployment. The defense official said the Pentagon is drawing up plans in case it needs to divert into CENTCOM and transit the Red Sea.

“We very much will maintain that deterrent posture, because we are still in crisis,” the senior administration official said.

But Navy flattops have undertaken anything but regular deployments in the past year.

Other East Coast carriers have seen their deployment plans uprooted by the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, one that has repeatedly threatened to engulf the Middle East in a broader war since it began nearly a year ago.

American aircraft carriers have been at the forefront of Pentagon efforts to prevent the conflict from widening.

Fellow East Coast carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower was diverted to the Middle East last fall and spent nine months there before heading home this summer, while fellow carrier Gerald R. Ford conducted its own extended cruise in the Mediterranean Sea that ended earlier this spring.

West Coast carrier Theodore Roosevelt steamed over from the Indo-Pacific to relieve the Ike in July, and was later joined by the Abraham Lincoln.

TR departed the Middle Eastern waters of U.S. Central Command earlier this month.

So while the Navy says Truman’s deployment will be to Europe, it remains to be seen whether events in the Middle East will conform with those plans.

Ike’s deployment “highlighted the need for continuity in our sustained presence amid escalating international tensions,” Adm. Daryl Caudle, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, said in a statement this week.

US sending more troops to Middle East as violence rises in the region

Caudle added that the Truman and its strike group “will contribute to the ongoing training and combat readiness of our naval forces.”

“The operational experience gained through these deployments is invaluable for maintaining a deep bench of skilled warfighters with trust and confidence in their system’s reliability, adaptability, and lethality in a rapidly changing security environment,” he said.

The Pentagon announced Monday plans to beef up its troop presence in the Middle East and cautioned that a wider regional conflict could emerge, following recent strikes from Israel against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

However, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder declined to provide specifics on the troop increase.

“In light of increased tension in the Middle East and out of an abundance of caution, we are sending a small number of additional U.S. military personnel forward to augment our forces that are already in the region,” Ryder said Monday. “But for operational security reasons, I’m not going to comment on or provide specifics.”

Members of the House Armed Service Committee questioned Army leaders about the rules during a hearing Thursday. The rules, introduced in June, say commanders must ensure troops are trained about off-limits extremist activities, take action when they spot extremism in their units and report any incidents to the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General.

Oops! Army training mislabeled nonprofits as terror groups for years

The rules codify the Pentagon’s definition of extremist activities, which was updated in 2021 to include online interactions that promote terrorism, as well as rallies, fundraising and organizing in support of extremist ideologies, among other prohibited behaviors.

Rep. Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii, questioned Lt. Gen. Patrick Matlock, the Army deputy chief of staff, about who makes the final determination when a soldier is accused of engaging in a potential extremist activity. Matlock said that responsibility fell to commanders, who could consult with legal and law enforcement experts before coming to a decision on whether something should be labeled as extremism.

“I think the problem here is we have a diffused sense of accountability,” Tokuda said. “If every single command has its own arbitrary, subjective ability to make a determination on an extremist activity, therein lies your problem, and I think you have to answer the question of where does the buck stop.”

Army imposes stricter rules for addressing extremism among troops

Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., likewise said there was too much “gray area” about what constituted active participation in extremism. The Army’s rules add another layer of accountability but don’t solve the problem, she said.

“There still seems to be enough of a gulf that you could drive a Mack truck through,” Sewell told Matlock and Agnes Gereben Schaefer, the assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs. “There’s still gray area, and that leads to ambiguity and subjectivity. It makes it harder for those of us who hear legitimate complaints from our service members about extremism to actually have those addressed.”

Sewell joined other Democratic lawmakers to advocate for legislation in 2021 that would’ve established an office of countering extremism within the Defense Department. That measure was dropped due to Republican opposition.

Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., asked Army leaders Thursday about how troops were educated on the extremist policies. The Army’s new rules mandate the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command add information about prohibited extremist activities into initial active duty training, precommissioning training, commander training and professional military education, among other training programs,.

Commanders also have the responsibility of advising troops periodically about extremist activities and how they are “inconsistent with the Army goals, beliefs and values, as well as the oaths of office and enlistment,” the rules state.

Matlock said he had reviewed the training materials ahead of Thursday’s hearing, and he described them as “very well designed.”

“It’s delivered in a standard package across the Army,” Matlock said. “We take maintaining good order and discipline in our formations very seriously, and the extremism policy is a key part of how we do that and deliver combat-ready units.”

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

The administration will use its fastest tool available to deliver the aid: directly shipping its own stocks, a process it’s heavily relied on to support Ukraine’s self-defense. This $567 million package has already received the Pentagon’s approval and is now awaiting the president’s signature.

As it stands, it would be almost double a package of $345 million sent last year. The president will likely approve the tranche before the fiscal year expires at the end of the month, said one aide and an official, who like others speaking for this story were not permitted to talk to the press and were granted anonymity.

The new package of aid has not been previously reported.

Taiwan is by far the most delicate issue in America’s relationship with China. Beijing maintains the democratically governed island is part of its rightful territory, and won’t rule out military force to one day unite with it. The U.S., meanwhile, is Taiwan’s oldest and largest supplier of military aid.

The impasse often leads to public displays of frustration. At this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s largest defense summit, China’s Minister of National Defense Adm. Dong Jun warned that supporters of Taiwanese “separatists” would be punished — shortly after China’s military held large drills around the island.

And in a briefing this week, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned U.S. military support, arguing it “sends a wrong message to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”

Still, at a September defense conference hosted in Beijing, which a top Pentagon official for China attended, members of the People’s Liberation Army were gentler. The month before, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also traveled to China, where he met with senior members of the government and helped schedule a long-sought call between America’s top military leader in the region and his Chinese counterpart.

The security assistance will fund training, stockpiles, anti-armor weapons, air defense and multi-domain awareness, according to a U.S. official, who would not be more specific. It will also include drones, which are key to America and Taiwan’s “asymmetric” strategy to defend the island against China’s much larger military.

The ambiguity is typical for aid to Taiwan, which the U.S. rarely discusses in detail due to its sensitivity. Neither the Pentagon nor the National Security Council would comment for this story, except to say that America maintains the right to support Taiwan’s self-defense, per longstanding government policy.

“We have no comment on this matter. Taiwan will continue to enhance defense capabilities and closely work with the United States so as to actively uphold peace, stability and prosperity across the Taiwan Strait and in the Indo-Pacific region,” a spokesperson for Taiwan’s unofficial embassy in Washington said in a statement.

In an effort to hasten support for Taiwan, Congress gave the administration the authority to send Taiwan up to $1 billion in its own stocks each year — a more direct show of support than previous assistance from arms sales. That said, lawmakers didn’t give the Pentagon an actual budget, and the department has been loath to send equipment it can’t replace.

After debating a further package of aid last year — one supported by members of the State Department and White House — Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin paused any further aid to Taiwan without funding.

That money arrived in April, when Congress included $1.9 billion to replenish U.S. stocks sent to countries in the Indo-Pacific. Leaders across the Pentagon have since been planning how to use that funding, most of which will go to Taiwan.

The package now close to approval went through several rounds of revisions, according to multiple officials. The Pentagon initially planned a smaller amount, but in a meeting of different parts of the administration this summer, multiple senior officials said it needed to be far larger — leading to the expanded $567 million figure.

The Pentagon is also now working on a third package of drawdown aid to Taiwan, which the government plans to complete by the end of the administration in January, the U.S. official said.

The April bill featured a further $2 billion in longer-term security aid for the region, $1.4 billion of which went to Taiwan in a separate package approved — though never announced — this summer. The U.S. green-lit the sale of $228 million in repairs and spare parts for military kit this week, adding to the $19 billion in such foreign military sales Taiwan is waiting on for delivery.

A Pentagon watchdog recently published a scathing report on the first round of support last year. It found that shipping issues caused by the American military led to aid arriving in Taiwan later than expected, covered in mold and in some cases expired. Fixing the issues cost the two sides a further $730,000.

“More broadly, the delivery of non-mission-capable items inhibits the [Defense Department’s] ability to achieve established security cooperation goals and may lead to loss of partner confidence in the United States,” the report said.

After the training became public, the Army pulled the slides and began an investigation, said Lt. Gen. Patrick Matlock, the Army deputy chief of staff.

Matlock and Agnes Gereben Schaefer, the assistant secretary of the Army, testified about the investigation results Thursday in front of members of the House Armed Services Committee.

Nonprofits that were incorrectly labeled as terrorist groups included People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, known as PETA, as well as the anti-abortion groups Operation Rescue and National Right to Life. The advocacy groups Earth First, Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front were also listed.

“Incorrectly labeling legitimate organizations as terrorist groups not only undermines the credibility of the training, but also puts service members at risk of being unfairly scrutinized or penalized based on their associations or memberships,” said Rep. Andy Kim, D-NJ. “We must be cautious and purposeful in how we define and identify threats to our national security.”

The slides had been used in trainings since 2017 and had not been reviewed or approved at any level, Schaefer said. About 9,100 soldiers saw the slides over the past seven years.

“The training materials were very poorly developed, and we fully acknowledge that failure,” Matlock said. “That length of time is almost unexplainable.”

The soldier who created the slides was an employee of the local garrison and added the nonprofits based on open-source research, Schaefer said. The Army didn’t find any evidence that the soldier sought to subvert Defense Department policy or to further a personal political viewpoint.

Republicans and Democrats criticized Matlock on Thursday after he refused to reveal what disciplinary measures the soldier faced. Matlock said only that the soldier was re-trained, and the chain of command took action. He cited privacy and safety concerns as the reason he wouldn’t give more details.

Almost every congressperson who questioned Matlock took issue with him not divulging the punishment. Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., described his reticence as a lack of transparency, and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said he was “playing games.” Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., accused Matlock of not being deserving of the rank of a four-star general.

Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., the chairman of the House’s military personnel subcommittee, said repeatedly that Matlock’s silence on the issue was an embarrassment.

“I respect you, but your inability to discuss accountability with us today greatly undermines your position, your authority, your leadership,” Banks said to conclude the hearing. “I think it’s embarrassing to the US Army.”

Members of Congress first became aware of Fort Liberty’s antiterrorism training this summer, when photos of slides used during a July 10 training were shared online. In a statement at the time, Fort Liberty officials said the slides were not vetted appropriately and would no longer be used.

National Right to Life issued a news release calling the situation “deeply offensive to all pro-life Americans,” and PETA told Military Times the Army made the correct decision to get rid of the “counterfactual presentation.”

The Army is doing a service-wide review of its training materials to make certain they reflect the Defense Department’s antiterrorism policies and don’t contain information similar to what was shared at Fort Liberty.

“We fully acknowledge that this incident has revealed a gap in our processes at the command level that has existed since these slides were first developed in 2017 and that we need to alleviate the potential for individuals to develop training materials without appropriate supervisory review,” Schaefer said. “The recently directed Army-wide review is intended to close that gap.”

That review began a couple of weeks ago and would last until early next year, Matlock said. As of Thursday, no other problems had been found.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

From drones and unmanned surface vessels to the more advanced operation of ship-board guns, the Navy is expanding its combat skills and broadening training. It is also working to overcome recruiting struggles so it can have the sailors it needs to fight the next war.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti is laying out a series of goals, including several that will be highly challenging to meet, in a new navigation plan, or NAVPLAN, she described in an interview with The Associated Press. The objective is to be ready to face what the Pentagon calls its key national security challenge — China.

“I’m very focused on 2027. It’s the year that that President Xi (Jinping) told his forces to be ready to invade Taiwan,” Franchetti said. “We need to be more ready.”

The new plan includes what she considers seven priority goals, ranging from removing delays in ship depot maintenance to improving Navy infrastructure, recruiting and the use of drones and autonomous systems.

One significant challenge is to have 80% of the force be ready enough at any given time to deploy for combat if needed — something she acknowledged is a “stretch goal.” The key, she said, is to get to a level of combat readiness where “if the nation calls us, we can push the ‘go’ button and we can surge our forces to be able to meet the call.”

What the Navy is learning from its fight in the Red Sea

The announcement of the goals comes as U.S. leaders are treading a fine line, pledging a commitment to the defense of Taiwan while also working to keep communication open with Beijing to deter greater conflict.

Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy that split from communist China in 1949, has rejected Beijing’s demands that it accept unification. China says it will do so by force if necessary. The United States is obligated under domestic law to help defend Taiwan and give it weapons and technology to deter invasion.

An important element in any Asia-Pacific conflict will be the need to control the seas. Franchetti said the U.S. can learn from how the Ukrainians have used drones, airstrikes and long-range unmanned vessels to limit Russian ship activity in the western Black Sea and keep access open to critical ports.

“If you look at the Ukrainian success in really keeping the Russian Black Sea fleet pushed all the way over into the east, that’s all about sea denial and that’s very important,” Franchetti said.

She added that Ukraine has been innovating on the battlefield by using existing systems, such as drones, in different ways.

The Navy’s monthslong battle with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen has provided other lessons.

“I think probably no one is learning more than the Navy, because really, this is the first time we’ve been in a weapons engagement zone for this sustained period,” she said.

She said sailors are watching their attacks and analyzing the data as ships respond.

Earlier this year, the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower was stationed in the Red Sea to respond to help Israel and to defend commercial and military ships from Houthi attacks. The carrier returned home after an eight-month-plus deployment that the Navy said was the most intense running sea battle since World War II.

F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets routinely launched off the carrier’s deck to take out Houthi weapons, and Navy destroyers persistently fired rounds of missiles and used on-board guns to shoot down incoming strikes and drones.

On board the destroyer Mason, which was stationed with the Eisenhower, Franchetti in August met and promoted one of the destroyer’s fire control sailors who worked on its large, fully automatic artillery gun. Unlike missiles, many of the drones launched by the Houthis were more complicated and challenging to target and shoot down, and he was able to adjust the gun to better defeat them.

“He could see how it was performing against the Houthi threat,” Franchetti said, “and he came up with a different way to use the gun to make it more effective in these engagements.”

She did not identify the sailor and declined to provide details on the exact changes he recommended. But it resulted in new formal military tactics and procedures that were distributed to all other ships.

Another key effort will be to improve Navy development of unmanned and autonomous systems and weapons and integrate them into training and combat. As the military brings on new technologies, including unmanned surface vessels, the Navy needs to ensure it has trained sailors who can use and repair them.

The new navigation plan notes that the Navy is now working on concepts and requirements for larger robotic systems and the artificial intelligence applications they could use to understand and control the battlespace.

Navy leaders also understand the financial restraints they will likely face from Congress — limits that rivals such as China do not have. China outpaces the U.S. in the number of ships and is expected to do so into the future.

Navy officials said that while they would like a bigger naval force, they need to offset that by working more effectively with the Army, Air Force, Space Force and Marines, which is something the U.S. has historically done very well.

A challenge will be eliminating the maintenance overruns that often prevent ships from being able to deploy on time. Getting ships in and out of depots on time, Franchetti said, is critical to having a combat-ready Navy.

“These are the things that we know that we need to be able to do to have the force that’s going to be more ready every single day,” she said.

Military Times would like to learn more about their time in uniform. Did you serve with Walz or Vance, who served under the name James D. Hamel? If so, we want to hear from you. When and where did you serve with them? What impression did they leave?

Send your thoughts to nikki.wentling@militarytimes.com and lshane@militarytimes.com.

Vance joined the Marine Corps in 2003 under the name James D. Hamel and served a four-year enlistment as a combat correspondent. He deployed to Iraq with the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing from August 2005 to February 2006. His last duty station was Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina.

Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard. He joined the Nebraska National Guard in 1981, and he transferred in 1996 to the Minnesota National Guard, where he served in the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery. In August 2003, Walz mobilized with the unit in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and was stationed in Vicenza, Italy.

The Eisenhower entered the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations in November, just weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas War. The ship’s arrival in the region marked the first time a carrier operated in those Middle Eastern waters since the end of the Afghanistan war in 2021.

While there, the strike group shot down a barrage of Iran-backed Houthi drones and missiles on a regular basis – earning the crew the Combat Action Ribbon for their actions. The carrier’s air wing also led the first strikes against Houthi facilities in Yemen in January, and employed several weapons in combat for the first time.

Capt. Chris “Chowdah” Hill, the Ike’s commanding officer, spoke to Navy Times this month aboard the Eisenhower about how the crew navigated the conflict in the Red Sea, led the international effort Operation Prosperity Guardian to safeguard civilian merchant vessels in the region and how leadership worked to maintain morale among the crew through multiple deployment extensions.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Navy Times: This was an historic deployment on so many fronts, and Navy leaders have described the conflict in the Red Sea as the Navy’s most kinetic conflict since World War II. So to start off, I wanted to get your perspective on what were some of the key takeaways and memorable moments for you from this deployment?

Chris Hill: I could talk about this all day. So I would characterize it overall as the most complex naval engagement for the U.S. Navy since World War II. And I’m looking back to Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Gulf War II, all that stuff – just a very busy situation in the Red Sea involving multi-domain threats on the surface, in the air, and new kinds of systems, like some of the new drones and some of the anti-ship ballistic missiles, which had never been fired in combat until this moment, and the first time they’ve been shot down, which we did.

So that was unprecedented, in that sense. We’ve overused that word on our end, but it was truly unprecedented. The admiral and I and other warfare commanders, with our combined experience, anywhere from 25 to 35 years in the Navy, we hadn’t seen anything like this, right? So the big question is, were we prepared? So that’s a question that we have to look at throughout.

But going back, for this ship, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, it’s an older ship, going on 47 years, still fully capable. The ship did two back-to-back deployments during COVID in 2020 and 2021. A lot of sailors didn’t get to see the world, which is quintessential Navy – go visit port calls and interact with local populations. And that has a strategic impact of some sort as well.

So leading up to deployment, we are expecting to do something more akin to what we did in the 80s and 90s – some NATO engagements, lots of port calls, mainly focused in the Med. It was very exciting for sailors. We talked about it all the time. I made a lot of promises, and it all went out the window on Oct. 7. So Oct. 7 occurs, Hamas invades Israel, and we’re deploying on our normal schedule a week later on Oct. 14.

We didn’t really have a specific mission yet, because the situation was still developing, but we were given orders to…meet up with the Gerald R. Ford in the Eastern Med, which we did. While we’re en route, the USS Carney was ahead of us by about a month I think, maybe a little bit more, but they were already in the Red Sea and they happened to be in a position where they intercepted dozens of missiles and drones early on.

Ike carrier heads home as Houthi attacks continue in the Red Sea

So that was kind of a foreshadow of what we would expect when we got there. And so we ended up going to the Red Sea, but we were just transiting through initially. Ultimately ended up in the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf to counter Iran. And then we weren’t there too long before we were directed back into the Red Sea because of the situation there where the Houthis were essentially targeting merchant vessels, making an attempt to shut down the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb. So on Dec. 31, we went back into the Red Sea. We remained there for about six-and-a-half months and were engaged very frequently, both defending other ships, defending ourselves, and also bringing the fight to the enemy quite regularly.

NT: Tell me a little bit about Operation Prosperity Guardian. What was the Eisenhower’s involvement with that like? How did that effort form, and what kind of support did the Eisenhower and its strike group provide?

Hill: We were the main element of Operation Prosperity Guardian, which was designed to defend merchant vessels and that involved providing escorts and just defending ships whenever we could. Doing a wholesale escort mission in an area that is that congested is really hard for a single strike group. Having said that, we were regularly saving a lot of lives. And that was the implied mission, it wasn’t the stated mission. Stated mission was to degrade Houthi capability and also provide protection. So we did both of those simultaneously while we were out there.

NT: The last time I was on this carrier was before getting underway during Large Scale Exercise. At the time, there was a lot of talk about being in the 6th Fleet, but always being prepared for things to change. And you mentioned in your first response a little bit about how things changed after Oct. 7. Can you share what that was like, realizing that the carrier might head into the Middle East for the first time since 2021?

Hill: When we’re doing our our work ups, it ends in a capstone event called Composite Unit Training Exercise, or COMPTUEX, about five to six weeks long involving the entire strike group consisting of four destroyers, a cruiser, the aircraft carrier, the embarked air wing and staffs, anywhere between six and 7,000 people overall involved.

We prepare for a range of threats, some of the most high end threats, to some of the threats that are currently in existence that we have dealt with over the past 10 to 20 years. So you create a range of a threat so you could be deployed to any theater – 7th Fleet in the Western Pacific, or in the Middle East. I think we got sufficient training in that process, because there was a lot of variety. We were evaluated. We did well, but you never know what to expect, right? In every single conflict I’ve been involved in, there was always a learning experience that had to happen. After day one, you start to look at, okay, what does the enemy have, and how are we going to counter it? We’re professionals. We sit down, we plan these things out. And if the plan doesn’t work, we debrief and we immediately change it, right? We have kind of this rapid learning process.

We also had organizations back home, technical organizations, part of the Navy, that could say, “Hey, you need to use this tactic or this technique or this procedure, and it will help.” So you have tremendous support stateside to feed us information. So learning was constantly happening, and it was very effective. So I can’t really say that we were surprised by anything. It’s the expectation in our culture that you will see things that you didn’t expect, and then you do something about it.

NT: You mentioned that the leadership of this strike group has 25 to 35 years experience, and yet you’d never seen anything like this kind of conflict. What was that learning curve like, and how did you adapt as the deployment went on to some of these threats?

Hill: We had all been involved in other combat operations, right? For me, for example, flying the E-2 Hawkeye, I was used to doing command and control – both in training, in combat – of running the air battle, right? So that was kind of intuitive for all of us. So in that sense, there was no, no surprise, right? It was easily adaptable for us. One of the things we had to look at, though, was how is this going to impact the crew, being in this environment? So a lot of questions came our way. How is the crew doing? What are you doing for the crew? And it became an item that we talked about with media locally.

I would say things like, “Hey, the crew is doing great.” And occasionally I’d have a sailor that would come up to me say, “Sir, I don’t agree with you. I’m not doing great.” That’s partly because we’ve all been on short and long deployments. Even if you’re not doing combat, being at sea in an austere environment like the Red Sea, where it’s hot, the water’s hot, so the engines aren’t as efficient. It impacts your quality of life. And this is a known thing by sailors going back centuries. It is a tough life by itself.

Now you add the complexity of warfare, I would say the warfare element was inspiring to many. And I talked about that – we felt like we had mission and purpose. We were actually doing something to make a difference in the world. We were affecting the enemy. We were showing American resolve by being there, right?

You know, I would say to sailors, “What if America said, ‘You know, we don’t care. We’re not going to show up.’” That’s not what we do with the United States Navy – we care about freedom and navigation as part of our core mission going back to 1775, right? So, a lot of discussion about that throughout the ship to remind the sailors that they were really contributing to something significant, and also mentioned the fact that, “Hey, what is going on is unprecedented for the U.S. Navy at least in modern history going back 70 years.” That was what contributed to morale in the positive. It might have been the one thing that sustained us through an extended deployment in the aggregate.

So we’re looking at all these things as we’re evaluating how we did, what we could have done better – there’s always room for improvement on any deployment. But that was a big takeaway: the mission and purpose matters. And how do you measure it? How do you measure morale? I joked back in the day that I can measure morale by counting smiles.

But it’s really hard to quantify. You can get it through feedback from sailors, so you have to now elicit feedback. I would bring sailors in this very room right here, 10 to 15 sailors a couple times a week. Through over the past almost year-and-a-half now, I have seen more than 2,700 sailors come through this room. We talked about morale, how the morale was, what we could do better – listening to sailors try to get that feedback. And then explaining my philosophy, and I had expectations for them. They were required to love and value each other. And I realize sometimes, if everybody’s your brother and sister, that doesn’t mean you actually get along with them every time. But the expectation is they are your brother and sister, so you still love and value them, right? And at the end of the day, if someone’s going after them or they’re getting attacked, you’re going to jump in front of that system. That’s the kind of environment we wanted to create – that’s sort of like the warrior mindset or warrior ethos.

NT: Speaking of morale, I understand that the ship had Wi-Fi during this deployment and I wanted to ask how that contributed to morale and also combatting disinformation.

Hill: Wi-Fi is a game changer here, right? And I realize that there are operational security concerns, there’s times when you have to turn it off. It could expose you to hacking and all these other things that we worry about, and we have plans in place to mitigate that stuff. But as a human person, when you’re having a tough day, who do you call? Right? Do you call mom and dad? Do you call your spouse? Everybody has their call person.

Sometimes the connectivity doesn’t work. We had some connectivity issues with Wi-Fi. When you have 5,000 people trying to get on a system with only a handful of satellites to connect to, it was a challenge, but I’d like to see the Navy continue this process in a very careful, measured way to provide those resources to sailors so you can allow them to connect to their external support networks. That might be the thing that gets them through a tough day. We all have tough days. This is normal human behavior, right? What is the thing that can get them through? If Wi-Fi is a conduit for that, then let’s invest in this, right? The technology exists now. It’s less expensive than it was, say, 10 years ago. Let’s take advantage of it.

Also, the Wi-Fi opened up an opportunity to get into a little bit of more social media, right? So I was never a social media guy. I was always wary of it. I’m not the kind of person that likes to show pictures of myself, and very reserved in that sense. But I decided to take a risk, working with my public affairs officer, I said, “Why don’t we use one of the social media sites, and I’ll actually talk about my leadership philosophy or something like that.” But it actually took off in a weird way. Parents got involved because they’re worried about their sailors, right? Just like my mom was. And so I would get hundreds and hundreds of requests to see pictures of their sailors, and I couldn’t keep up with it. I didn’t have enough time in the day for something like that. But every day, I would try to bring up one sailor and show them off to the world, and just show the world that these are normal, ordinary young folks doing extraordinary things, and some people found some beauty in that, and so we just kept it going, right? Also, I gave them a cookie.

22-yr old cryptologic technician technical from Euless, TX was requested to the bridge by her uncle. She works in intelligence and anti-ship missile defense (how crazy is that?!). How did she survive 9 months of deployment?
Gym and jujitsu! Her advice to others: “Find peace in… pic.twitter.com/bMkWzIYdwW

— Chowdah Hill (@ChowdahHill) August 25, 2024

I’m not trying to recruit for the U.S. Navy by any means, but maybe I’m recruiting the parents so that they can convince their children that it’s an environment where it could be enriching and could change their lives. Which I do get to see all the time as a leader of a ship, right? We as leaders, we see this, and this is what kind of motivates us to continue on, like a school teacher. Seeing a student start, mature, and get better in class – it’s motivating for a school teacher.

Someone had said in the media that this social media was sort of an information warfare campaign of some sort. It was not intended to be that way. If it just so happened that the enemy claimed they sunk the ship – which they made several claims, but they didn’t touch us – I could show a picture of the flight deck and show life as normal. I could show we’re baking cookies. Capt. Demo, our facility dog, is walking around the ship just like a normal day, which was all true, right? So if you want to call that information warfare, have at it.

NT: I know the carrier air wing was incredibly active during this deployment, and led the first strikes against Houthi facilities in Yemen. And then they also fired off several weapons in combat for the first time. So what was the decision-making process like between you and the CAW, and what was it like to employ these weapons and conduct these strikes?

Hill: In terms of striking, it’s an interesting process, and you have to bring in our intelligence specialists and their leadership that actually tries to find the targets, and then you have to vet it. And that vetting process, depending on what theater you’re in or the intensity of the war, typically goes up a chain of command off ship. And they could say, “Yes, we approve that target,” and then we will do the weaponeering. So we have people that are experts on that, and that’s usually coming from the air wing. So they’re saying, “Okay, for this target, we need this type of weapon, missile or bomb.” You want to minimize collateral damage. You don’t want to escalate the problem, right?

We’re very, very careful about that. This isn’t World War II, right? And plus, we don’t want to expend and waste things that are not going to strike. Our weapons are extremely precise, and we want it to stay that way, right? Only target the stuff that needs to be targeted. And then, when that decision is made on the type of weapon, then they come to me, because I’m the holder of the weapons and I have two giant weapons magazines. The ability to fight a war long term – I can’t give you the amount of months, because it depends on the intensity of a given day – but I could have gone on indefinitely, probably a minimum of 10 more months, given the equipment I had. Maybe there would be an occasional reload of this or that, or the other type of missile, bomb. But extraordinary capability within an aircraft carrier with its embarked air wing to fight a battle.

Naval aviator becomes first American woman to secure air-to-air kill

All of our weapons have evolved over time. This was the first time we’ve seen ballistic missiles shot in combat. First time they’ve been shot down by our ships. So that’s different. We knew drones were coming. We’ve been talking about this for decades, and now we saw them. So we had some foreshadowing with the Carney, and so nothing was a shock to us, right? It was more, “Hey, this is interesting. Let’s do what we do and figure out a way to stop it.” And we were doing that regularly.

NT: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced during this deployment?

Hill: One of the things that I was challenged with was making sure people were getting the right amount of sleep so that they could perform well, that they had good reaction times. Mood matters to me, how you interact with other sailors, and a lot of that can get ruined if you’re not sleeping. And I would say, I don’t think the Navy historically has done a great job on sleep hygiene, but we’re getting better. So a lot of leaders are talking about it. We understand the value of sleep. So when you’re in actual combat, it’s quite frequent that you have to launch alert aircraft to go after a target or something, which we did many times, that might not fall into the window of our normal flight ops. So we’ll have a normal battle rhythm, anywhere between 10 to 14 hours per day, flying aircraft throughout the entire day. It’s cyclical, right?

But what about when we’re not there? If it’s a single carrier, we have to provide alerts at night, sometimes in the very early morning. The air wing as well, we had to make sure we very carefully monitor when people were actually sleeping and that that sleep occurred at a normal time. You can’t just say, “You can now do your eight hours of sleep right now.” You have to time it so that’s the time when they normally sleep. So creating the sleep battle rhythm that’s circadian friendly, that allows people to be alert and respond to any threat. So we did a little bit of adjustment on that, because we didn’t expect to do as many alert launches, and we did a lot.

NT: I know one thing the commanding officer of the Carney said after returning from deployment was that there were a lot of quick decisions that had to be made navigating this conflict in the Red Sea and the Middle East. Can you speak a little about that, and what that was like for the Eisenhower?

Hill: I would say the quick decisions were largely with the destroyers. Ballistic missiles were not a concern for me, because I had them as protection, right? But the response time is just seconds. They have to identify and make a decision quick. But we train our operators to make the decision without asking permission from the captain of the ship, who might be sleeping at that very moment or doing something else. Or he’s got a radio on him, and for whatever reason, it’s not working. It’s garbled. So our tactical action officers, the people that work in our combat cells on every ship, are trained to respond very quickly. Also our systems help you in that matter. Like these are pretty advanced algorithms of these systems. They can help you identify a threat, provide you with recommendations. So that makes the process easier, right? So very impressed with both the equipment we had, the missiles we had, and how the sailors performed. It was like a perfect nexus of all three.

NT: There were multiple extensions during this deployment. You guys were gone for a long period of time, and now there’s two carriers in the Middle East. In terms of pacing, how long do you think carriers can be engaged in this kind of conflict?

Hill: If you look at it isolated, we are capable of being engaged forever. Any ship is capable of going for years on end without returning home. We have that capability. We just don’t exercise it because it’s an all-volunteer force. We want to get people home, cycle other people in. Some need the experience in that environment, but that’s looking at things isolated. We also have other parts of the world where we want to be, so we have to carefully apportion where our carrier strike groups are, and manage that appropriately. So that’s stuff that we think about and talk about all the time on our end.

NT: What do you hope sailors take away from this deployment, as they look back on it?

Hill: When they’re 80 years old and they have their walker, maybe they’re on an oxygen tank that they say, “You know what? I was on the Ike.” And telling the stories to their grandchildren, who are probably rolling their eyes. “And I was proud to be on the Ike. It was tough, but we did a great job against the enemy.” Right? And I want them to have that veteran experience where there’s some pride in what they accomplished. You don’t always see that in American history, right? But I hope that that happens many decades from now.

NT: What’s it been like for the crew since returning from deployment, and what are the next steps for the ship?

Hill: So coming back, most sailors are doing just fine. Some said it was weird coming home – nine months away from families. For some it was lonely, because they don’t have families to go to, so they weren’t around their peers all day long because their peers went home, right? We always monitor that. We want to make sure everybody’s good. So there’s a big effort to keep track of that situation and talk about it. So I talked about it through several times. Like, what you’re experiencing is absolutely normal. If it’s too hard to handle, then you can go seek help, and we have those resources, as I talked about, but it hasn’t been anything unusual in terms of post-deployment behavior, if you will. I haven’t seen anything unusual, and I’ve done many different deployments. And even for me, it’s like, it’s weird coming home and it takes a few weeks to readjust. And we got underway recently, we did a friends and family day, one day in and out, and kind of got back into our battle rhythm.

Despite false Houthi claims, the Ike aircraft carrier fights on

Then we did an ammo offload for about a week to get in our battle rhythm, restore mission and purpose. And so my main thing looking forward is, how do I provide mission and purpose if we’re not at sea doing that mission, right? So our new mission is to upgrade the ship in a shipyard period, and this is based on the life cycle of ship…so that we can make the ship even better for follow-on deployments. And there’s probably a couple more deployments left in the ship’s life.

NT: How will you remember this deployment?

Hill: I might remember the fact that during some engagements, I was wearing my pajamas and my Adidas slides, and I think I’m old enough where I think I’ve earned the right to do that every now and then. People may disagree with me on that, and I’m probably indicting myself, but there were times where, you know, just not enough time to slap on a uniform or take a shower, right? We had to do work.

On the video-sharing platform TikTok, this type of content is so prevalent that it earned its own label: “miltok.”

A few of the more popular profiles post disclaimers on their pages indicating their content does not represent the Defense Department. But some experts studying the use of disinformation in warfare think it should.

Researchers with RAND Corp. suggested the Pentagon empower active-duty influencers to tell stories about their service on social media as a means to build support for the military and protect against attempts to undermine it.

RAND studied Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to understand how U.S. enemies could weaponize disinformation in future wars, as well as draw lessons from Ukraine’s response. They expect U.S. adversaries to sow false narratives in future wars as a way to fray alliances, encourage attacks against U.S. forces and undermine American service members’ will to fight.

Their report, shared earlier this month, contained 12 recommendations for the U.S. government, including several calls to action for the Defense Department. In their study of the Ukraine-Russian war, researchers discovered that social media posts by Ukrainians — including Ukrainian troops serving on the front lines — created a groundswell of support that helped defend against Russian disinformation campaigns.

Ukraine’s actions could serve as a blueprint for that type of effort in the United States, the researchers said.

“The U.S. military and broader U.S. government should strategically seek to promote such online voices to help support U.S. national security objectives,” the Rand Corp. report reads.

The Ukrainian military allowed troops to post on social media and gave them only broad guidelines for using it in order to leverage soldiers’ creativity, the researchers said.

One Ukrainian officer garnered more than 140,000 followers on X by sharing photos of his unit’s daily activities. Another 132,000 people follow a Ukrainian service member who posts on TikTok about cooking meals in war-torn areas of the country. His bio reads, “a cook from the hell of war.”

These and other military influencers help show the human side to war, said the RAND report, which was authored by Todd Helmus and Khrystyna Holynska.

“This has helped to personalize the content and the war in ways that official, government-produced slick propaganda videos could never match,” the report states. “The result is that many Americans and Europeans are reminded of the war, its costs, and Ukraine’s tactical victories every time they scroll through Twitter or TikTok.”

The RAND researchers weren’t the first to recommend that DOD support social media influencers in the ranks as a means to combat disinformation.

Lt. Col. Mike Knapp, a U.S. Air Force pilot and social media specialist, wrote commentary for the Modern War Institute in January, arguing the services should provide an influencer toolkit and work to authenticate the social media profiles of service members gaining traction on the platforms.

The U.S. military currently does not encourage social media use and Army rules actively restrict what soldiers can share on their personal accounts, Helmus wrote in research last year.

New Army social media policy pushes stricter rules

In addition to working with military influencers, Helmus and Holynska suggested the Pentagon develop a mandatory media literacy course for troops to build their resilience to disinformation.

Russia targeted Ukrainian troops with disinformation that painted their resistance as futile and encouraged them to surrender. The U.S. military can expect the same type of narratives from adversaries in future conflicts, the RAND researchers said.

In Ukraine, the military’s strategic communications department created explainers to educate troops on Russian disinformation, blocked sources of Russian messaging, implemented media literacy campaigns and provided troops information about what to share and how to behave online.

Following Ukraine’s lead, the Pentagon should mandate media literacy training, the researchers argued, adding that the military’s current training — an online course titled “influence awareness” — is not enough.

The authors cited a report in the US Army War College Quarterly that described the training as prefabricated, inflexible and underdeveloped and urged the U.S. military to work with media literacy experts to develop in-person training programs.

“Every minute of every day, men and women in uniform are attacked by a weapon that threatens them, their services, and the nation,” that report says about disinformation and propaganda. “Yet the U.S. military has not trained them to prepare for this onslaught.”

RAND researchers also suggested that the Pentagon add disinformation threats into wargaming and maintain the capabilities of the psychological operations forces to counter disinformation during conflicts.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered the TR to extend its deployment for a short time and remain in the region as fellow carrier Abraham Lincoln was pushed to get to the area more quickly.

The Biden administration beefed up the U.S. military presence there last month to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies and to safeguard U.S. troops.

U.S. commanders in the Middle East have long argued that the presence of a U.S. aircraft carrier and the warships accompanying it has been an effective deterrent in the region, particularly for Iran. Since the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip began last fall, there has been a persistent carrier presence in and around the region — and for short periods they have overlapped to have two of the carriers there at the same time.

Prior to last fall, however, it had been years since the U.S. had committed that much warship power to the region.

All the Houthi-US Navy incidents in the Middle East (that we know of)

The decision to bring the Roosevelt home comes as the war in Gaza has dragged on for 11 months, with tens of thousands of people dead, and international efforts to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas militant group have repeatedly stalled as they accuse each other of making additional and unacceptable demands.

For a number of months earlier this year the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower remained in the Red Sea, able both to respond to help Israel and to defend commercial and military ships from attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. The carrier, based in Norfolk, Virginia, returned home after a more than eight-month deployment in combat that the Navy said was the most intense since World War II.

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss troop movements, said the San Diego-based Roosevelt and the destroyer Daniel Inouye are expected to be in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s region on Thursday. The other destroyer in the strike group, the Russell, had already left the Middle East and has been operating in the South China Sea.

The Lincoln, which is now in the Gulf of Oman with several other warships, arrived in the Middle East about three weeks ago, allowing it to overlap with the Roosevelt until now.

There also are a number of U.S. ships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and two destroyers and the guided missile submarine Georgia are in the Red Sea.

The Russian government used the websites to spread propaganda in an effort to bolster its interests, reduce international support for Ukraine and influence voters in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, as well as in other foreign elections, the Justice Department alleged in an affidavit. Russian actors tried to stir anti-military sentiments, among other tactics, the affidavit says.

Some of the websites were designed to mimic authentic news outlets, such as The Washington Post and Fox News, by publishing fake articles under copied logos and the names of real journalists, the Justice Department said. In other instances, the perpetrators created unique media brands to push propaganda.

One of those brands was Warfareinsider, which describes itself as reporting on the “latest military news,” the Justice Department alleged. A summary of the site states, “Stay sharp to look at it from the different perspective.” On Thursday, the web address led to a page with a large red banner reading, “This website has been seized.”

The Justice Department’s actions follow months of warnings from private technology companies and disinformation experts about the threats Russia and other countries pose to the November election. The affidavit released Wednesday included one exhibit from the cybersecurity company Recorded Future, which published a report in December saying Russian campaigns “aimed to exploit societal and political divisions ahead of the 2024 U.S. election, fueling anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment, criticizing U.S. military competence and amplifying political divisions around U.S. support for Ukraine.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday the U.S. government “will be aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by the Russian government, or any other malign actor, to interfere in our elections and undermine our democracy.”

Disinformation creates ‘precarious year for democracy,’ experts warn

“As alleged in our court filings, President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, including Sergei Kiriyenko, directed Russian public relations companies to promote disinformation and state-sponsored narratives as part of a campaign to influence the 2024 U.S. presidential election,” Garland said. “An internal planning document created by the Kremlin states that a goal of the campaign is to secure Russia’s preferred outcome in the election.”

The Justice Department did not identify which candidate Russia sought to boost, and it redacted the names of political parties in the Russian planning documents released Wednesday, labeling them as “U.S. Political Party A” and “U.S. Political Party B.” However, the Russian documents make clear that the Kremlin favors former President Donald Trump, seeing him as skeptical of U.S. support for Ukraine. For instance, the documents describe “Political Party B” as being “left-wing” and currently holding power, and “Political Party A” as conservative.

“It makes sense for Russia to put a maximum effort to ensure that the ‘U.S. Political Party A’ point of view (first and foremost, the opinion of ‘Candidate A’ supporters) wins over the U.S. public opinion,” one Kremlin planning document states. “This includes provisions on peace in Ukraine in exchange for territories, the need to focus on the problems of the U.S. economy, returning troops home from all over the world, etc.”

One of the Kremlin documents listed their targets for pro-Russia messaging, including voters in swing states and conservative states, U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent, Jewish individuals, white individuals and gamers who occupy right-wing segments of the internet like 4chan.

Russia proposed using Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X and Reddit to spread their messages, describing those sites in the documents as being “free from democratic censorship.” The planning documents advised operators of the fake news sites to sow division by spreading certain narratives, including the “risk of job loss for white Americans,” “privileges for people of color,” “the threat of crime from people of color and immigrants” and “overspending on foreign policy,” among other topics.

At the same time it announced the seizure of the 32 websites, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against two employees of RT, a Russian government-controlled media outlet. They were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people who work on behalf of foreign entities in the U.S. to register with the Justice Department.

The department alleges the employees paid about $10 million to a Tennessee-based content creation company to make social media videos that bolstered Russia’s interests.

The company posted about 2,000 videos since November 2023 on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and X, and it garnered more than 16 million views on YouTube alone. The content of the videos includes discussion about immigration, inflation and other issues meant to amplify divisions within the United States, the Justice Department said.

The Justice Department didn’t name the company, but The Associated Press and other media outlets identified it Wednesday as Tenet Media, which hired six right-wing influencers who boast millions of subscribers on YouTube and X. Those influencers include Lauren Southern, Tim Pool, Tayler Hansen, Matt Christiansen, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson. One influencer was paid a monthly fee of $400,000, plus a $100,000 signing bonus and additional performance bonuses, the indictment says.

The aim of the RT employees was to trick Americans into unwittingly consuming and sharing Russian propaganda, FBI Director Christopher Wray said. Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen described the scheme as psychological warfare.

The Justice Department’s actions Wednesday follow sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department in March against two Russian marketing and communications companies that created fake social media accounts and websites to spread Kremlin-approved disinformation. One of those firms, Social Design Agency, monitored and collected information about social media influencers in order to analyze trends in public opinion and gauge the effectiveness of their disinformation campaigns. The list of influencers included veterans, the Justice Department said.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

Virginia resident Thomas Robertson was sentenced in 2022 to serve seven years in prison on charges of interfering with police officers during a civil disorder and entering a restricted area with a dangerous weapon. Robertson carried a large wooden stick during the riot and was photographed in the Capitol’s crypt making an obscene gesture in front of a statute of John Stark, an American general during the Revolutionary War, prosecutors said during the jury trial.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper reduced Robertson’s sentence Wednesday to six years in prison, The Associated Press reported. The new sentence follows Cooper’s dismissal of one of Robertson’s convictions: obstructing the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in June that a charge of obstructing an official proceeding must include proof that a defendant tried to tamper with or destroy documents — a distinction that did not apply to Robertson’s case, nor most of the hundreds of Jan. 6 criminal cases.

The Army veteran is the first Capitol riot defendant to be resentenced following the Supreme Court’s ruling. In court filings, prosecutors had urged the judge to preserve the original sentence.

Army veteran sentenced to 7 years in prison on Capitol riot charges

Robertson, who declined to address the court at his first sentencing hearing, told the judge Wednesday that he looks forward to returning home and rebuilding his life after prison, AP reported.

“I realize the positions that I was taking on that day were wrong,” he said of Jan. 6. “I’m standing before you very sorry for what occurred on that day.”

Robertson served four years in the U.S. Army from 1991 to 1994, and then joined the Army Reserve in 2001, his attorneys wrote in court documents. He deployed to Iraq in 2008 and was injured by gunshot and mortar shrapnel in Afghanistan in 2011, the documents state. He underwent 10 surgeries for his injuries.

After recuperating, Robertson joined the police department in Rocky Mount, Virginia, and became a sergeant. He was off duty but still working for the police department when he joined the Capitol riot. The town fired him after his arrest.

In a Facebook post on Nov. 7, 2020, Robertson said, “I’ve spent most of my adult life fighting a counter insurgency. (I’m) about to become part of one, and a very effective one.”

Before his initial sentencing in 2022, Robertson wrote a letter to the judge, saying he took full responsibility for his actions on Jan. 6 and “any poor decisions I made.”

He blamed the vitriolic content of his social media posts on a mix of stress, alcohol abuse and “submersion in deep ‘rabbit holes’ of election conspiracy theory.”

“I sat around at night drinking too much and reacting to articles and sites given to me by Facebook” algorithms, he wrote.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

The new rule is part of a step-by-step guide for reporting extremism and gang activity released by the Marine Corps at the end of August. The guidance streamlines the reporting process, which has been inconsistent across the services.

The lack of uniformity for reporting and tracking allegations complicated efforts by the Defense Department Office of Inspector General to gauge the military’s response to extremism, the IG reported in 2023. The watchdog determined the DOD investigated 183 allegations of extremist activity among service members in 2023, but the IG doesn’t know how many allegations were made that weren’t investigated.

“The report highlights ongoing challenges in compiling and validating data, emphasizing the need for consistent implementation of data collection,” the IG said.

The National Defense Authorization Act approved by Congress in 2021 mandated the IG to report every year how effectively the Defense Department prevents and responds to extremist activities in the ranks. That same year, the Pentagon expanded its definition of extremist activities to include online interactions that promote terrorism, as well as rallies, fundraising and organizing in support of extremist ideologies.

The changes were made in reaction to the presence of veterans and service members at the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. As of May, 222 individuals with military backgrounds had been charged or convicted in connection with the attack, and 24 were active-duty troops, National Guard members or reservists, according to data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

The new Marine Corps reporting guidelines follow similar rules imposed by the Army in June. The Army’s rules require commanders to train troops about off-limits extremist activities, take action when they spot extremism in their units and report any incidents to the Inspector General.

Army imposes stricter rules for addressing extremism among troops By Nikki Wentling

During an initial call about an allegation, the Marine Corps Operation Center will talk through reporting requirements with commanders and help determine whether the incident is a threat to mission success. If it is a threat, the allegation would trigger a faster reporting timeline, the guidelines say.

If an instance of extremism or gang activity isn’t mission-critical, commands have three days to send a serious incident report detailing the allegation to Marine headquarters. For senior service members, commands must send the report within one day.

Marine headquarters will share those reports with the Judge Advocate Division, which will share redacted reports to the Inspector General of the Marine Corps, the new guidelines stipulate.

In addition to calling the Marine Corps Operation Center and filing a serious incident report, Marine commands must notify several other groups about the allegations. Those include the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the Marine Counterintelligence Element, the Marine Corps Insider Threat Program and the staff judge advocate in the chain of command.

If a service member who’s facing an allegation has a security clearance, the command’s security manager must also be informed. The security manager will then determine whether to suspend the Marine’s access to classified material, the rules state.

Lt. Gen. James Bierman, the deputy commandant for plans, policies and operations, sent the message outlining the new rules. His message orders commanders to share the guidelines with their units and to spend time instructing all personnel about the requirements.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

Increasing hostility between Democrats and Republicans in the lead-up to the 2024 election created an opening for unaffiliated or independent candidates, the Pew Research Center reported. Iraq War veteran Paul Rieckhoff seized on that moment, launching Independent Veterans of America earlier this summer.

Twenty years ago, Rieckhoff founded Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, one of the largest organizations of post-9/11 veterans in the United States. Now, he’s looking to harness the recent interest in unaffiliated candidates by encouraging independent veterans to run for office.

While independents aren’t likely to win many spots this year — in the race for president or in other national, state and local elections — Rieckhoff is taking a long view, with his new group aiming to propel unaffiliated candidates onto ballots and someday spark a movement in which independents gain more votes.

“Independents can win. It’s possible this year, at the local level, undoubtedly,” Rieckhoff said. “And in the future, we’re trying to create an America where independents can win at every level, where people vote on the candidate and not just on the party.”

Veterans in particular have a political edge, and they bring a “voice of reason and clarity to politics,” he argued.

Rieckhoff said his new group isn’t focused on the presidential election this year. Instead, it’s vying to get independent veterans into other offices, ranging from local school boards to the U.S. Senate. Starting last week, candidates could apply to be endorsed by the group.

Candidates have until Aug. 31 to apply. To be considered for an endorsement, candidates must register as a member of Independent Veterans of America, file as an independent or unaffiliated candidate for office and complete an interview with the group’s leaders. Independent Veterans of America will confirm the military service record of all candidates, Rieckhoff said.

Those veterans selected by the group will receive funding, campaign management tools, voter data, media opportunities, technology training and the opportunity to speak at the group’s candidate convention in September in New York City.

“We’re going to get behind them as best we can,” Rieckhoff said. “We hope to be able to drive media attention, drive online support, drive volunteers and drive money. These folks are against the machine. We’re able to bring them together, and we think that’s going to be a powerful force.”

Independent Veterans of America is expected to announce its endorsed candidates next week. The first wave of endorsements is likely to include about a dozen candidates, Rieckhoff said.

Rieckhoff began interviewing some of those potential candidates in May on his podcast, Independent Americans. The first was Shelane Etchison, an Army veteran who’s running for Congress in North Carolina’s ninth district, home to Fort Liberty.

Etchison was based at Fort Liberty for the duration of her military service. She was part of a Cultural Support Team, a pilot program that inserted women alongside Special Operations soldiers on combat missions in Afghanistan.

She later deployed to Syria, where she served with Kurdish women to fight against the Islamic State. After 11 years in the Army, she earned two master’s degrees from Harvard.

The district where she’s running is a Republican stronghold, with the GOP holding it since 1963. Etchison is campaigning against the incumbent, Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., who has served in Congress since 2013 and touts his status on his website as the “12th most conservative member of the House.”

“I don’t care how entrenched an incumbent is, we have to have competitive elections. We have to at least try,” Etchison said on the podcast. “People still need to have choices on the ballot. I’m excited they’re going to have another choice.”

Rieckhoff was inspired to create Independent Veterans of America by his experience serving as CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. That group trained veterans to be political advocates in Washington.

Some of those veterans have since joined the Democratic or Republican parties and continued their careers, but most didn’t want to choose a party — and didn’t find their path in politics, Rieckhoff said. Since then, Rieckhoff said he has seen more veterans he knows skew independent.

According to a Gallup poll from January, independents constitute the largest political bloc, with 43% of U.S. adults identifying as such in 2023.

“There’s a promising generation of leaders that don’t want to be a Democrat or Republican,” Reickhoff said. “Especially now, with our bitterly partisan and divided political landscape, veterans want to be able to continue to serve without having to compromise their values to a party.”

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

Nathan Thornsberry, 42, of North Branch, Michigan, wrote the book, “January 6: A Patriot’s Story,” and was using Facebook to promote a revision, “January 6th Redux: A Patriot’s Story.” An acquaintance saw Thornsberry’s social media post about the second book and submitted a tip to the FBI, according to court documents.

The Justice Department said authorities used video footage and images from the Capitol breach to identify Thornsberry and charge him with felony charges of obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder and assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers, as well as four misdemeanors.

Police bodycam footage showed Thornsberry pressed against a metal bike rack officers were using as a barricade. Authorities allege Thornsberry pushed against the barricade and yelled, “Bring it!”

In the images of Thornsberry on Jan. 6, he’s wearing a black jacket with a large U.S. Marine Corps emblem on the back, as well as a “Trump 2020″ shirt and gloves with reinforced knuckles.

The Marine Corps confirmed Tuesday that Thornsberry served for five years and reached the rank of corporal before leaving the service in 2011. He worked as an air traffic controller and combat engineer, and he deployed to Afghanistan in 2009. Thornsberry’s last duty station was Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where he served as part of the 8th Engineer Support Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group.

Thornsberry published his first book under the name Nathaniel Matthews in February 2022 and sold copies on Amazon, authorities allege. A description of the author on Amazon says Matthews is an Afghanistan War veteran who served in the Marine Corps. The FBI subpoenaed Amazon for records that show the Nathaniel Matthews author account was registered by Nathan Thornsberry.

The revised version of the book was posted for sale in March 2023. According to court documents, an excerpt of the book said, “This work is based on the eyewitness report of the author and review of available video and photographs.”

In the book, Thornsberry wrote he traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the Stop the Steal protest, which consisted of supporters of former President Donald Trump who believed unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Thornsberry also described his belief of a conspiracy theory about a deep state group of unelected officials secretly controlling the U.S. government.

In his description of the events at the Capitol, Thornsberry wrote he was attempting to protect other protesters when he was pushed against the police line. That account is not consistent with video footage from the scene, which shows Thornsberry “voluntarily pushing against the police line with no one blocking his exit,” federal authorities said in court documents.

With Thornsberry’s arrest, nearly 1,500 people from all 50 states have been charged with crimes related to the breach of the Capitol, and 550 people have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, the Justice Department said.

As of May, 222 of the individuals charged or convicted for their involvement that day had military backgrounds, according to data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

Choosing to keep the second carrier in the Middle East means there will now be two carriers and their warships available for U.S. Central Command amid the threat of a full regional war erupting.

The TR arrived in the Middle East in early July, while fellow carrier Abraham Lincoln steamed into the region last week.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the decision in a statement over the weekend.

Theodore Roosevelt replaced the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose deployment to the region had itself been extended multiple times, earlier this summer.

The extensions are part of America’s surge in forces to the region this month in an attempt to avert a larger conflict between Israel and Iran and its proxies.

USS Abraham Lincoln arrives in Middle East

In addition to Lincoln, another fighter jet squadron, and other assets have also been rushed to the region. The Georgia, a ballistic missile submarine, is still on its way to CENTCOM, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters Monday.

Ryder didn’t say how long the Roosevelt would be extended or exactly when the decision was made, only saying Austin chose to do so over the weekend.

The surge seeks to provide some gray-hull deterrence after Israel launched two strikes in late July that heightened regional tensions — one in Lebanon’s capital that came in retaliation for an earlier strike from Hezbollah, and another in Tehran, killing the political leader of Hamas.

Since then, the U.S. and its partners in the region have been bracing for return strikes from Hezbollah and Iran. The first came this weekend in an attack involving more than 230 rockets fired from Lebanon, according to the Israeli military. Preemptive strikes from Israel mainly thwarted the salvo, and both sides signaled that they were deescalating afterward.

When asked in a morning press conference with reporters Monday whether America’s surge in forces to the region had worked as intended, Ryder agreed.

“I think that the additional forces in the theater send a very clear message to all actors in the region that were serious when it comes to supporting the defense of Israel,” he said.

Ryder said the U.S. had helped Israel spot incoming rockets from Hezbollah but hadn’t participated in Israel’s preemptive strikes in Lebanon. Israel didn’t need kinetic support, Ryder said, but the U.S. is prepared to aid in its defense going forward.

“We continue to assess that there is a threat of attack” from Iran, Ryder said.

U.S. officials said the latest package of aid includes air defense missiles, munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), Javelins and an array of other antiarmor missiles, counter-drone and counter-electronic warfare systems and equipment, 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition, vehicles and other equipment.

In a world of drones, Ukraine’s artillerymen rushed to defend Kharkiv

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid has not been publicly announced. The formal announcement could come as soon as Friday, which is the eve of Ukraine's Independence Day.

The weapons are being provided through presidential drawdown authority, which means they are taken from Pentagon stockpiles and can be delivered more quickly.

The aid comes as Ukrainian forces continue to broaden their surprise offensive into Russia, where officials say they have taken about 62 square miles of territory around Kursk. Russian troops, meanwhile, are making gains in the east, around the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a critical logistics hub.

Pentagon officials have said repeatedly that the U.S. has been talking with Ukrainian leaders to get a better assessment of their longer-term goals for the Kursk operation, particularly as they see Russia advancing near Pokrovsk.

If Pokrovsk falls, the defeat would imperil Ukraine’s defenses and bring Russia closer to its stated aim of capturing the Donetsk region. Russian soldiers are now just 6.2 miles away.

Asked about the Kursk operation, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Thursday that “we are still working with Ukraine on how that fits into their strategic objectives on the battlefield itself.”

The U.S., she said, understands that Ukraine wants to build a buffer zone along the border, but the administration still has more questions about how it furthers Ukraine's broader war effort.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made his first visit Thursday to the border area where his forces launched the offensive on Aug. 6. He said Kyiv’s military had taken control of another Russian village and captured more prisoners of war.

The latest package of aid brings the total amount of U.S. security assistance to Ukraine to more than $55.7 billion since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.