All Activity

Russia’s 80-Missile Nuclear Battlecruiser Set to Return After Nearly 30 Years in Repair (United 24 Media)

The U.S. Navy has awarded General Dynamics Missions Systems a $194.1 million contract modification for engineering support work on the Nuclear-Armed, Sea-Launched Cruise Missile program, according to a Department of War contract announcement. The cost-plus-fixed-fee modification adds to a previously awarded unpriced letter contract and covers technical and engineering support for the missile’s Fire Control […]View the full article

The U.S. Marine Corps has awarded Dynetics a $40.8 million contract modification to build 14 additional Medium Range Air Defense Radar production-representative systems, according to a Department of War contract announcement. The hybrid other transaction agreement modification also funds depot-level technical manual support, program management, engineering change proposals, logistics support and software support. It further […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has awarded Northrop Grumman an $862.8 million contract to manufacture and deliver M1156 precision guidance kits, according to a Department of War contract announcement. The firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract covers manufacturing, inspection, testing, packaging and delivery of the kits and their variants. Northrop Grumman was the only company to submit a bid after […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy will commission its newest guided-missile destroyer, the USS Ted Stevens (DDG 128), on October 3 in Whittier, Alaska, according to a release from Commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet. The ceremony will be the first Navy ship commissioning held in Alaska since 2013, when the USS Anchorage (LPD 23) was commissioned […]View the full article

President Donald Trump said Wednesday the United States has “virtually unlimited amounts of Mid to High Grade Ammunition” and is manufacturing munitions “at levels never seen before,” pushing back against months of reporting that the war with Iran has strained U.S. weapons stockpiles. Trump made the claims in a Truth Social post published at 7:56 […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy is running open-ended combat deployments in the Middle East without access to most of its regional supply bases, forcing ships to resupply at sea roughly every five to six days rather than pulling into port, The New York Times reported. Iran struck the Navy’s logistics hub in Bahrain on February 28, the […]View the full article

Remember when we raised the issue of lasers earlier this year? Half decade ago, I wrote this, Lasers are not “new” – they have been growing in power and efficiency incrementally for decades. Each year they are and will increase along the same path. As they do, they will carve out more and more of a utility wedge for defensive and naturally offensive operations. Will they be a wonder weapon that will solve our problems? No. The torpedo wasn’t either … but it did change behavior, tactics, and design of warships. There is another warning from the history of torpedo development; you cannot classify technology or math. Smart nations with resources will see something that works and will then buy or produce something similar … or even better than what you have. As we prepare to send more lasers downrange, we also need to start thinking about what we need to do to build resiliency in the face of receiving fire as well. The enemy – whoever that might become – gets to shoot back. Lasers are not new, it is just that only in the last decade have they moved past the pivot point to being operationally useful. As a byproduct of how systems get installed, in rapidly improving systems, those we have deployed and exercised with are not “the best”, they were just what was ready years prior when installation was authorized. We are “there” now from a technology point of view, and the events of the last few years of combat from the CENTCOM AOR to Eastern Europe tells us we need to quicken our schedule. I think as an institution, our Navy is there as well. The image at the top? That is the same one I used in 2021, and it caught my eye when I saw it again yesterday. We already have some preliminary designs that have gotten some good use forward, but what can help give it the push it needs to get installed on a greater number of ships? Well, the Chief of Naval Operations on Wednesday had an op-ed at WaPo on…lasers...and he used the same image. Admiral Caudle, over to you. Naval warfare is entering an era when the central question may no longer be who possesses the most exquisite weapon, but who can sustain combat power longest under repeated attack. Pure, unadulterated Salamanderesque thinking right off the top—of course I think he is thinking right. A defender who fires multimillion-dollar interceptors against inexpensive drones may win the immediate engagement while losing the larger campaign of endurance. Missile inventories, the number of weapons a ship can carry and how quickly U.S. industry can produce replacements all matter in a prolonged maritime fight. A clear message this decade: you have to plan for sustained combat at sea against the enemy. The time of one-off engagements/incidents is gone…well, they never really left, we just managed to avoid them. Lasers offer the possibility of shifting part of naval defense away from finite stored munitions toward shipboard electrical power. Properly integrated, this shift could allow warships to defeat certain lower-cost threats at the speed of light and at a marginal cost measured more in fuel, power generation and maintenance than in defensive missile expenditures. A diversity of weapons systems. You need the exquisite, but you don’t need ONLY that. There is no single answer. No magic beans…but a diverse toolbox? Essential. It worked for our grandfathers’ warships…it will work for ours. Lasers are not magic weapons. They are line-of-sight systems whose effectiveness depends on atmospheric conditions, beam stability, target composition and dwell time, or how long a beam must remain focused on a target to damage or destroy it. A missile carries its destructive energy with it after launch. A laser, by contrast, depends on the performance of the entire ship: power generation, the ability to deliver steady electrical power, cooling systems, equipment that keeps the beam accurately focused, the condition of lenses and mirrors, the connection to the ship’s sensors and defensive systems, and crew proficiency. Engineering, personnel, training. Part of the argument domestically this year has to be about the changing of technology and the essential need for compute that data centers require, and the energy to produce it. Just like in the early industrial revolution, you needed coal. If you cannot generate enough compute, you lose the economic fight. At sea, it appears that if you cannot generate enough energy, you will lose the war at sea. A ship’s electrical power will increasingly become a measure of its combat power. Future ships with greater electrical capacity will be better able to integrate advanced sensors, directed energy weapons, electronic warfare systems and tactical computing. Ships without sufficient reserve electrical power and cooling capacity will struggle to accommodate future combat systems as power and cooling become as consequential to combat effectiveness as ammunition, speed, range and payload. Cooling may ultimately prove decisive. Even highly efficient lasers generate enormous waste heat. A system converting 30 percent of the electrical energy it consumes into a usable beam must dissipate the remaining 70 percent as heat. The question is whether it can fire repeatedly against multiple incoming threats without overheating, degrading the laser’s effectiveness or affecting other critical ship systems. How much change is needed to our ships? Can you make the changes you need at their next maintenance availability? Can old hulls hold new tech to a sufficient degree? Maybe, but what I do know is that we need to do what we can with what we have now, and it appears the CNO sees it the same way. Directed energy requires a resilient industrial base capable of producing advanced optics, power electronics, semiconductors, cooling systems and shipboard equipment that can be maintained and repaired by sailors at scale. It also requires a fleet able to employ these systems under combat conditions. … The fastest path forward is not to wait for perfect megawatt-class systems. The Navy should proceed incrementally, starting with containerized laser systems — modular, self-contained units that can be added to existing ships with fewer major modifications and manageable power and cooling demands. That containerized system is what we discussed earlier this year, as linked above. It is the “good now,” as opposed to the “ideal sometime”. The end of the article is simply superb. I couldn’t ask for a better mindset. Very well grounded. …the Navy must resist overselling what lasers can achieve. Atmospheric effects will remain an issue. So will competition among ship systems for electrical power and the demands of maintaining complex laser equipment. Commanders will trust these systems only after they repeatedly demonstrate reliability under realistic conditions at sea and as part of an integrated combat system. Directed energy will not independently redefine naval warfare. But fleets that master it technically, tactically and industrially will gain a major advantage when confronting large numbers of simultaneous incoming threats — a challenge increasingly likely to define modern combat at sea. The future advantage may belong not simply to the fleet with the most advanced weapons, but to the fleet that can absorb attacks, preserve its firepower and keep fighting. Directed energy can help give our sailors that advantage. And in a prolonged fight at sea, endurance is combat power. Let’s get to it. Leave a comment Share This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. View the full article

U.S. Special Operations Command has awarded Boeing a $55.4 million order to supply Active Parallel Actuator Systems and related parts for the MH-47G special operations helicopter fleet, according to a Department of War contract announcement. The order, issued under a basic ordering agreement, will be performed primarily at Boeing’s Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, facility and is […]View the full article

The U.S. Air Force has awarded Sierra Nevada Corp. a $31.8 million contract to design a modification kit that would convert standard C-130J Super Hercules aircraft into ski-equipped LC-130Js, according to a Department of War contract announcement. The Colorado-based company will perform non-recurring engineering work, covering the design, development and analysis of the kit, at […]View the full article

Russia’s state defense conglomerate Rostec says it will unveil a new, previously undisclosed weapon on its Su-57E export fighter at an airshow in Egypt next week, the company said in a statement. The Su-57E, an export version of Russia’s fifth-generation Su-57 fighter, is scheduled to fly at the El Alamein International Airshow 2026, running September […]View the full article

Ukraine’s Kramatorsk Heavy Machine-Tool Building Plant, the maker of the Bohdana self-propelled howitzer, says it has not received a state order in nine months and may have to halt production and furlough workers if a new contract does not arrive soon, the company’s representative told Oboronka in an interview published September 3. The plant, known […]View the full article

Show LinksOperation Economic Outcast is a recipe for success against Iran, Richard Goldberg USS Abraham Lincoln Commander Dan Keeler arrives in Pattaya, Thailand U.S. Navy Ships deployed in Iran conflict graphic, @Schizointel The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945, Rick Atkinson Germany says Russia behind Leipzig airport drone attack S… Read more View the full article

Over the course of the last 18 months or so, you’d have to have been at an extended ibogaine, psilocybin, and 5-MeO-DMT retreat not to suffer through the gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes as the Department of War moves to a resize and align the American General Officer and Flag Officer (GOFO) cadre. It is nothing like what is going on in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The PRC isn’t a nation at war, even a low-boil war—so what is going on there isn’t all that germane when looking at what is going on in the U.S. What is the next large-ish power that is at war? Russia. How are things looking with their GOFO cadre? Lucky for us, the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) put out last month a study just on that. Everyone should take a moment to add to their Labor Day reading list CNA’s The Future of Russia’s Military Elite Promotions, Careers, and Advancement in the Russian Senior Officer Corps. The lead author is a regular guest of the Midrats Podcast, Dmitry Gorenburg, so you know it’s good. This paragraph from the second page of the executive summary caught my attention: Commanders are demoted, but bureaucrats are arrested. Most commanders are removed from their position, some retire, and others shifted to other commands. Meanwhile, MOD bureaucrats are likely to be not only removed from their position but also arrested and prosecuted. The few cases of operational commanders being placed under arrest are highly heterogeneous, with no clear pattern. So, when a military operation goes sideways, accountability is focused at the top, and not just those operationally forward—but those charged with supporting the fight in the rear? Huh. In our expanded definition, we categorize three types of officials: military elites with command positions, military elites in the MOD bureaucracy, and civilian elites in the MOD bureaucracy or MOD-aligned industrial complex. We derived four findings from this dataset: • Most removals of military elites in command positions are dismissals from their post or retirement (whether natural or forced) rather than arrests. Military elites who have been arrested are almost uniformly MOD bureaucrats with military ranks. • Most civilian upper tier elites captured in the dataset are associated with the May 2024 removal of Sergei Shoigu from his longstanding position as minister of defense. Some of these elites were dismissed or shuffled around to new positions; others have been arrested. The process of removing Shoigu-affiliated elites continued well into 2025. • The vast majority of public, upper tier elite removals occurred in 2024, immediately after the reshuffle. These removals were a mix of dismissals and arrests for corruption. • The majority of the general officers who were dismissed are at the colonel general or general of the Army rank, which suggests that they held key operational commands and reflects potential punishment for poor wartime performance. … Until 2024, nearly all removals were dismissals from command positions.60 These dismissals occurred in a steady stream after the initial failure of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in spring and summer 2022 and across the first half of 2023, as depicted in Figure 8. Command removals in 2022 and 2023 were associated largely with perceived poor wartime performance, although barring a public statement, we cannot conclusively verify each individual removal. This ambiguity is one reason why we capture all removals regardless of assessed or reported motivation. Here’s what happened in 2024. The year 2024 began with a small number of dismissals in the winter and spring (primarily from command positions). One notable example is Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov, the CinC of the Russian Navy. His removal is difficult to characterize; he was approaching retirement age but may also have been removed for the poor performance of the Black Sea Fleet.68 The major wave of removals occurred in the period immediately before, during, and after the May 2024 cabinet reshuffle. During this reshuffle, Shoigu was removed from his position, and many of the members of his network within the MOD were either similarly removed from their positions or arrested under corruption charges.69 In Appendix E: Removals Summary Table, we provide a list of all removals in the dataset who are affiliated with Shoigu. The part of Shoigu’s patronal network that has been targeted in wartime purges is somewhat amorphous but has been widely reported on in Russian media.70 The network represents the accumulation of loyalists spread throughout the MOD bureaucracy in particular over Shoigu’s tenure as minister, which lasted more than a decade.71 Among its highest status victims so far have been the civilian MOD bureaucrats Ruslan Tsalikov, First Deputy Minister of Defense (removed June 2024, arrested March 2026); Timur Ivanov, Deputy Minister of Defense for Construction (arrested April 2024); and General of the Army Pavel Popov, Deputy Minister of Defense for Innovation Research (removed June 2024, arrested August 2024). The purge consisted primarily of deputy ministers and personal aides to Shoigu, although Russian commentators claim that the 2025 removal of General of the Army Oleg Salyukov, former CinC of the ground forces and Deputy Commander of the Joint Group of Forces in Ukraine, was due to his association with Shoigu. After Salyukov’s removal, he retired and was sent to the Security Council, which Shoigu now chairs.72 Because Salyukov was close to retirement, whether this should be considered political removal or natural retirement is difficult to determine. How many senior leaders have we let go for poor battlefield performance since 2001? How many have been otherwise invited to pursue excellence elsewhere prior to their PRD? It would be real interesting to see a U.S. version of this chart for GOFO since 2001. …then show the number of Field Grade (O4-06) relieved for cause over the same period. Don’t snicker about the arrested numbers. I know of at least one U.S. four-star removed and then arrested…the former Vice Chief of Naval Operations was arrested on federal bribery and conspiracy charges in 2024. The report has 166 pages of discussion not just of how the Russians clean house of their GOFO, but also of some patterns in their awards and promotions—but the part on GOFO accountability is what got my attention. Worth a read…a lot will sound very familiar to you…and there is some good insight that might explain some of the underperformance of the Russian military since 2022. Especially their short command tours reminds me of some of the problems we had in Vietnam that we repeated in GWOT. Russian military culture is very different from the American military culture, but there is a not-insignificant degree of overlap to the point that there is value in reading about it. If nothing, they are closer to the U.S. than the PRC. Highly recommended. h/t S.Leave a comment Share This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. View the full article

Swiss manufacturer ANAVIA completed on-site customer acceptance of six HT-100 Naval unmanned helicopters purchased by the Angolan Navy, the company said, following individual flight tests and sign-offs for each aircraft delivered. The acceptance was conducted jointly with ADSB, a partner involved in the delivery. ANAVIA said each of the six aircraft underwent its own flight […]View the full article

American Rheinmetall has won a $710,000 subcontract from Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace to produce machined components for the MCT-30 turret used on the U.S. Marine Corps’ ACV-30, the amphibious combat vehicle variant equipped with a medium-caliber gun. The work will be performed at American Rheinmetall’s Lapeer and Lansing, Michigan facilities, with deliveries scheduled throughout 2026 […]View the full article

General Dynamics Land Systems has teamed up with Ford Motor Company and Ricardo to compete for the UK Ministry of Defence’s Light Mobility Vehicle program, the companies announced. The team’s proposal is built on the Ford Ranger platform, which General Dynamics UK described as Europe’s best-selling pickup truck for 11 consecutive years. “Combining the strengths […]View the full article

Russia’s state defense conglomerate Rostec is marketing an export version of its Zubr short-range counter-drone system, called Bizon, to potential customers in Egypt, according to a statement from the company’s High Precision Systems holding. The system, designated TKB-1167 and developed by High Precision Systems, is armed with 7.62mm PKT machine guns and designed to engage […]View the full article

A Russian Aerospace Forces Mi-8 helicopter crashed onto a highway on Sakhalin Island on September 2, coming to rest on its side in a roadside ditch after what the pro-Russian military Telegram channel Fighterbomber described as a complete loss of power from fuel exhaustion in both engines. Video and photographs of the incident show the […]View the full article

Ukraine’s Navy said it destroyed a Russian uncrewed surface vessel near Snake Island in the Black Sea on Tuesday, according to Militarnyi. Footage released alongside the announcement shows the drone boat being struck by a precision munition dropped from an unmanned aerial vehicle after being detected. The vessel caught fire and detonated following the strike. […]View the full article

South Korea’s Navy has selected GE Aerospace to supply gas turbine engines for its next-generation KDDX destroyer program, with GE Marine set to deliver 12 LM2500+G4 engines to power six ships, the company said. Each destroyer will carry two LM2500+G4 engines, integrated into a full electric propulsion configuration. GE Aerospace said the setup is intended […]View the full article

A senior U.S. Army acquisition delegation toured Hanwha Aerospace’s production facilities in Changwon, South Korea, on August 26 to review the company’s manufacturing capabilities across artillery, rocket systems and other land defense platforms. The delegation was led by Brent G. Ingraham, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. The visit included a […]View the full article

The German Navy successfully completed a dual firing trial of Israel Aerospace Industries’ Naval LORA ballistic missile, launching the weapon from an operational German vessel and hitting its target with precision in both test scenarios, IAI said. The trial was conducted as part of the German Navy’s Operational Experimentation program, known as OPEX, a testing […]View the full article

General Dynamics Land Systems released the first publicly available photo of its Wolf XM30 prototype in transit this week, showing the vehicle wrapped entirely in a black tarp and strapped to a flatbed trailer. The image follows the company’s confirmation that it delivered the prototype to the U.S. Army at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, on […]View the full article

First of all, let’s set the stage a bit here. Back in March of this year, the following was announced to the world. The War Department has launched a task force to ensure the curriculum at its institutions of higher learning is structured to build warfighters rather than social justice warriors, said Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. “At the Department of War, we have a duty to ensure that our professional military education develops real leaders, warfighters who dominate into the future,” Hegseth said. “We’re committed to making our own senior service colleges maintain the highest of standards, that those places align with President [Donald J.] Trump’s commitment to the American people [and] that our military will remain the strongest in history.” … "This task force will have 90 days to assess whether our senior service colleges ... are actually effective," Hegseth said. "They are going to identify any deficiencies and make sure they're focused on core national security issues. We want military leaders who are critical thinkers, that have studied the principles on which our founding fathers established this republic and that are educated and prepared to win wars." … Under the direction of the undersecretary of war for personnel and readiness, the Senior Service College Task Force will review the War Department's senior service college educational standards in advance of the 2026-27 academic year. The task force will assess institutional effectiveness by identifying deficiencies in standards and evaluating the colleges' alignment with the National Defense Strategy. It will also review the curriculum. Fairly straightforward. Get a group together in March, 90 days gets you to mid-June. Doesn’t say who is on it, but I don’t see where anyone asked. You can assume that these would be idea people, politically aligned with the present administration, who know which end of the tube the round comes out of, and are not insiders to academia. I can see how you would want to keep the commission members in the background while they do their work. However, I do know that they were not wearing masks as they went about their business. I don’t see the big deal. Monday evening, we got a shrug. Click the above to get the full quote from the good Under Secretary. Perfect tone. Why did he feel the need to put this out? Well, late Sunday afternoon, Dan Lamothe and Tara Copp published in WaPo, Pentagon secretly installs military influencers in civilian roles. I know most of the time the writers don’t have a say in the titles of their articles, but … really people. What breathless drama click-baity stuff…but it got people reading. This was a small group of people looking at the senior war colleges. This isn’t Seven Days in May. As I started to read Dan & Tara’s article, this was when I started to see where this whole thing is going to get kind of fun anyway. Dan has better things to do than read my stuff on a regular basis, but we have had pleasant exchanges on X for almost a decade. Tara and I have been mutuals on X for at least half a decade and have always had pleasant exchanges as well. I do my best to read their stuff when I see it, as it is always worth the time. They’re solid professionals on the Pentagon beat, but, really. I don’t think this is their finest hour, especially considering some of the topics in the previous administration that were not covered at all. I fully realize that one cannot cover everything, but it isn’t like news is quiet this August in the international arena. Perhaps this was pushed by their editor? I don’t know. It’s a bit of a hash, and in the background you can hear a little axe grinding over the Late Unpleasantness. The Pentagon has secretly installed several conservative military veterans with large online followings in government roles, declining to disclose their assignments as they amplify Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s viewpoints and attack those who scrutinize the Trump administration, according to people familiar with the matter and corroborating material. At least some of the influencers have been assigned to civilian roles that could lead to changes in policy, the people familiar with the matter said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Just because an official announcement does not go out doesn’t make anything a great secret. I’ve known people who have been put on this commission or that commission during both (R) and (D) administrations who no one knew they were doing it until a final report came out, or you happened to see them at the end of a table. Enlighten me otherwise, but I don’t see anything nefarious here. Additionally, in 2026 if you are an idea person and do not have any type of online presence where you bounce your ideas off the ether and yell into the void—then you are a rather unique bird, and I’m not sure you are what the cool kids call a “change agent”. Welcome to the second quarter of the 21st century. Neither the Pentagon nor those involved have disclosed the government roles despite the Trump administration’s claims that they are running the most transparent Defense Department ever. Those involved include Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel, and Kurt Schlichter, a retired Army colonel, people familiar with the matter said. Pentagon records reviewed by The Washington Post show that both have active official government email addresses as of this past week and are assigned to the office of Anthony Tata, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. The email addresses include a “.civ” suffix, meaning they are labeled as civilian employees, rather than as military personnel or contractors. Shrug. This is where it gets even more fun. Rob and I have been mutuals on X for a minute or two, and Kurt and I have not only been mutuals for years, we’ve broken bread, had some drinks, and I’ve had the distinct honor of meeting his wife (who is a saint and a hoot. He married WAY up.) Yes, I know people IRL. It happens. So, now I have one mutual vs. two mutuals. The problems with our war colleges are not new. Heck, we’ve been discussing them here and over at the OG blog for the better part of two decades. We knew a panel had been put together. I’m not all that happy that once again the Navy does not have a seat at the table, but, well, here we are—again. I started laughing at the next pull quote as: The below was done to spark competitive conflict between three Bull O6s (Ret.), or… …it wasn’t intentional, but will have the impact anyway. I don’t care what someone may say: all idea people on X are measuring follower count because we are all barely hidden needy attention hounds. (also, follow @cdrsalamander if you do not already). Both served for decades in uniform and, since retiring, have turned from the military to conservative commentary. Maness has more than 135,000 followers on X, while Schlichter has nearly 620,000. Another retired Army colonel and influencer, Thomas Anderson, was listed in Pentagon records earlier this year with a “.civ” email address and assigned to Tata’s office, according to people familiar with the matter and records reviewed by The Post. An attorney, he writes online under the pen name Cynical Publius and has more than 323,000 followers on X. He was no longer listed in Pentagon records late this past week, the people familiar with the issue said. Thomas, Tom, CV, or whatever we call him after a few gin and tonics, and I are also mutuals on X. Now it’s 1 v. 3. Rob, Shipmate, you need to up your game. I know you have almost 3X as many followers as I do on X, but Kurt has lapped you five times and Thomas almost three. Get to work. If you ain’t first, you’re last. It just gets funnier. Sources, people…sources. The assignments for all three have not previously been reported. Questions have been raised online about influencers’ connections with the Pentagon, including in an article last week by the Bulwark. … Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman and Air Force veteran, posted that it appears the Pentagon “is using your tax dollars to hire influencers on X to put out partisan talking points.” “How many more people that are blue checkmarks on X that are putting out information on behalf of the federal government, and Donald Trump, and the Republican Party ... are actually special government employees?” said Kinzinger. Bulwark and Kinzinger? What, someone from MSNOW and the little lady from Code Pink wasn’t available? OK, now we get to the point. Maness, Schlichter and Anderson appeared on behalf of the Pentagon’s Senior Service College Task Force at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in May, two people familiar with the visit said. The task force was organized in the spring with the goal of rooting out ideology deemed “toxic” or “woke,” Hegseth said in March. This really should have been earlier in the article. Again, this is nothing new…at all. Regardless of what some people who have lived too long inside a commute of DC may think, there was a huge problem with “Woke 1.0” at our war colleges and service academies. Then we go to the point where—as a former N1-manpower bubba for a spell—I had a flashback that brought about an eye-twitch and a need to go PT to get it out of my system. The individuals are assigned as either “special government employees” or “highly qualified experts,” people familiar with the issue said. Schlichter appears in a government database with an “HQE” designation after his name, according to material reviewed by The Post. SGEs are limited by law to working no more than 130 days in any 365-day period. Those with HQE status can work full- or part-time, with or without compensation, according to government guidance on the issue released in 2023. It was not clear what financial agreements were reached with Maness, Schlichter and Anderson, and when each of their assignments began. I’m convinced some manpower/admin weenie fed this story to WaPo. Only that type of staff person finds this stuff even remotely interesting. For some reason—was there a word count that had to be reached?—Dan and Tara started to make this into a grab-bag of issues…strangely involving more of my X mutuals. Tata’s team has taken on a number of culture-war issues, including scrutinizing war colleges for “woke” ideology and reviewing how the Biden administration adopted covid vaccine mandates for U.S. troops. And their counterparts in the Obama and Biden administrations didn’t address “culture war” issues? I’m sorry, but everyone is allowed to play this game. Then there’s the tell. Hegseth, a former Fox News personality and Army National Guard officer, has attempted to reshape the public discourse about Pentagon affairs. Last year, he imposed new restrictions on Pentagon press corps members that forced dozens of journalists out of the building and later introduced a new, primarily right-wing press corps to replace them. I’m sorry…I warned my friends in the Pentagon press corps not to play chicken on this topic. They played a game and lost. They shouldn’t stay mad about it; it bleeds into their reporting. The increased attention on the Pentagon’s influence efforts comes after another conservative influencer, Jennica Pounds, accused a State Department official this month on social media of attempting to entrap her into publishing government secrets. Pounds, writing under the pen name DataRepublican, posted text messages online that showed the official approached Pounds with documents to publish and tout as a journalistic scoop. Jennica is another mutual of mine. Now it is 1 vs. 4 on my X-mutuals. She has addressed this topic herself. Give it a read, I can’t improve on it. Back to the main topic, in case you were wondering about money… After initial publication of this story, Anderson said on social media on Sunday night that he was asked to join the task force after he published an article in February recommending changes to the war colleges. Anderson said he was a special government employee through July 26 with work “exclusively limited” to the task force. “At no time have I ever received any compensation of any kind from any government source of any kind for anything I write or have ever written on X or in any magazine or other source,” Anderson wrote. Again, I had to giggle at the description of something so benign as wet water. Volunteers helping the government improve something that—if you judge the results of the last three decades—is not quite hitting on all cylinders. While in Carlisle task force members met with students and professors over a number of days and asked questions about the performance of leaders like Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of the people familiar with the visit said. Some students were uncertain how candid they should be and whether there would be negative consequences if administration officials did not like the answers, this person said. The other person familiar with the visit said the task force members had concerns about the syllabus for a class focused on how military officers communicate with Congress. Then the authors dove into some of the opinion pieces Rob and Kurt have penned over the years…like opinion people do. If you want to challenge an ossified, defensive, and not-quite-fit-for-purpose-entity, you have to bring in people who are willing to challenge, ask uncomfortable questions, and put their perspective on the table for others to agree with, critique, improve, or throw away. If you are only getting quiet, consensus types, then you will simply continue to do the same thing and make the same errors that got you to this suboptimal position. Speaking of people who ask uncomfortable questions, Another military influencer, John Konrad, also defended Pounds while noting he had discussions with the administration this spring about becoming a special government employee at the Pentagon. Konrad, a former member of the U.S. Merchant Marine and founder of the maritime website gCaptain, said that the Pentagon sought him out for a role and he later felt “ghosted.” Now we’re 1 vs. 5 on X-mutuals. John and I have been communicating for almost two decades at this point. We know each other IRL, and most recently played Statler and Waldorf at the Surface Navy Association gaggle earlier this year. But wait…can we get to 1 vs. 6? The Pentagon also brought on Jerry Dunleavy, a journalist with the conservative Just the News, to assist Hegseth’s team with an ongoing review of the fall of Afghanistan. The Pentagon disclosed Dunleavy’s involvement in May. As for Dunleavy, listen to his August 2023 and November 2024 visits to the Midrats Podcast and buy his book. Kurt over at Townhall put out a good response to all this. Once WaPo published, a bunch of other outlets picked it up, regurgitating the original regurgitation. Oh well. I do appreciate that the regime media has now acknowledged me as an important conservative influencer. I got 300 or so new followers for @KurtSchlichter. Thanks for the validation, jerks. For those of you who missed this non-story, which would be most of you, on Sunday, WaPo decided that the fact that the Department of War (DOW) hired three retired colonels to investigate and report on the status of the military’s war colleges is a major scandal of epic proportions. Move over, Watergate! Guys who served their country continue to do so! The article claims “they amplify Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s viewpoints and attack those who scrutinize the Trump administration,” which is true to the extent that we agree with the Secretary of War; it’s funny how they whitewash leftist critics as “those who scrutinize the Trump administration.” We were lambasting lefty haters before this gig; we’ll be doing it after, only now validated by WaPo as key conservative voices. The article’s implication was that we were somehow being paid to tweet DOW talking points, which is false. But it had the predictable effect on the predictable dummies of X, who obediently morphed from screaming that I am a “Zionist Jew lover” and “Epstein protector” to a “fed.” It was all an IQ test, and a lot of people failed. The article in question is titled “Pentagon Secretly Installs Military Influencers In Civilian Roles.” But even the title is a lie. No one was secretly installed in anything. We were asked to do a very specific job within our military and civilian wheelhouses, and we did it. We didn’t make it about us, which is apparently an alien concept in D.C. Read it all…and so he doesn’t get mad that I told you to buy Jerry’s book, check out Kurt’s offerings as well. So, did we actually learn anything from this article from Dan and Tara? I don’t think so, though they did prompt Tata to put out a statement inside a day later. I get the point they are making, but there is nothing more partisan about this Pentagon’s appointment habits than those of any other administration. There is no such thing as a “non-partisan” person in DC—including in the defense arena. Those who are open about their opinions are by nature partisans. Those whose political opinions are unknown are well-trained partisans. You can do good work with both, but the former are always more comfortable to be around than the later. Well, that’s my view of the goings-on around the DC natsec community. It was just amazing to watch such a great collection of my mutuals get their time in the barrel together…and come out the other side just fine. I’m not saying this Pentagon is a Salamander Enterprises operation…but it has that vibe. I’ll take it. As for Dan and Tara, they have a hard job, but I don’t think this added more light than heat…but it did raise the profile of the review of the senior service colleges. I look forward to their report. Leave a comment Share This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. View the full article