The Army’s end strength continues to decrease under the service’s most recent budget request. The service unveiled its part of President Joe Biden’s overall defense budget request for fiscal 2024 to Congress today. The service is asking to fund an Army with 452,000 active duty soldiers, 325,000 soldiers in the Army National Guard and 174,000 soldiers in the Army Reserve. That’s a drop of 21,000 soldiers from the active rosters as compared to last year’s request for 473,000 active troops. And last year’s figure was already the smallest active Army since before World War II, Army Times previousl ..read more

A YouTuber this week posted a video of the inner mechanics behind the oft-polarizing AR-15 rifle. The video, in explaining exactly how the rifle works, shows why the weapon is an efficient, and ultimately dangerous, weapon. “I have always enjoyed animation and illustrating how things work,” designer and 3D animator Matt Rittman says in his bio. “I’m especially interested in firearms and anything mechanical. My aim for this channel is to provide easy to understand, how-it-works 3D animations.” Rittman’s AR-15 rendering is one of several videos on the mechanics of firearms. The AR-15 was first ..read more

The Pentagon has come under heavy scrutiny for its actions — and its inaction — on Jan. 6, 2021. Most notably, the D.C. National Guard arrived at the Capitol more than three and a half hours after the violence began. And it emerged this summer that the Pentagon wiped the phones of top officials as they departed at the end of the Trump administration, deleting key records from that day. But in testimony given behind closed doors to the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, Army Gen. Mark Milley, the Defense Department’s top uniformed officer, has helped shed some light on wha ..read more

War and military life are increasingly public affairs, both overseas and in garrison. Russia’s unprovoked re-invasion of Ukraine in February has sparked a deluge of combat footage online, much of it surfacing on YouTube and TikTok, with explosions synchronized with the distorted rolling bass lines of phonk music. U.S. troops are increasingly finding their voice on policy issues across social media, as well. A coalition of Army moms connected via Facebook, for example, and launched a grassroots movement that ultimately won them a seat at the table influencing the service’s new parenthood polic ..read more

ABOARD A C-40 MILITARY TRANSPORT JET—The National Guard is shipping doses of Novavax’s newly approved COVID-19 vaccine out to units in hopes it will help shrink the number of unvaccinated Guardsmen who face expulsion. About 10% of National Guardsmen — around 45,000 soldiers and airmen — are not fully inoculated against the coronavirus that has killed more than 1 million people in the United States and nearly 6.5 million worldwide since December 2019. They run afoul of the Pentagon’s mandate that all troops must have completed a one- or two-shot regimen by June 30 to comply with medical require ..read more

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Army’s space, cyber and special operations commands said they formed a “triad” to enhance operational capability across all domains. The triad concept is to integrate and converge inherent capability from U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Army Cyber Command and Army Special Operations Command to provide campaign options to commanders globally. “We know Army space capabilities will become even more formidable when used in concert with cyber and special operations,” Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler, commander of Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said Aug. 9 at ..read more

Advisers at 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade were busy this past year on a new mission mentoring foreign forces in Latin America — but not always in ways Army brass wanted. The 800-soldier unit racked up at least 60 misconduct offenses, including incidents with alcohol, drugs and adultery; a battalion commander was fired; members of one advising team are facing punishment for their behavior in Colombia; and another team’s actions in Honduras are under investigation, according to internal records and interviews conducted by Army Times. Advisers deployed to Central and South America were al ..read more

NORFOLK, Va. — An Army lieutenant who was pepper-sprayed, struck and handcuffed during a traffic stop in Virginia can present his claims of false imprisonment and assault and battery to a jury, a federal judge has ruled. But the summary judgment Tuesday said federal immunity laws shield the two officers involved from facing Caron Nazario’s claims that they violated the Black and Hispanic soldier’s constitutional protections against excessive force and unreasonable seizure, as well as his right to free speech by allegedly threatening him with arrest if he complained about their behavior. U.S. D ..read more

A member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is facing charges in what the Justice Department is calling a “murder for hire” plot that targeted former National Security Advisor John Bolton. Iranian national Shahram Poursafi, 45, who also goes by Mehdi Rezayi, allegedly plotted the murder-for-hire in response to the United States’ January 2020 assassination of Qassim Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force. Poursafi offered to pay $300,000 to anyone who would carry out the assassination of Bolton in or around Washington, according to a DoJ release. Soleimani ..read more

FORT STEWART, Ga. — More than 3,800 Army soldiers are returning to Georgia five months after their rapid deployment to Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Several hundred troops arrived home Tuesday to Fort Stewart, where cheering parents, spouses and children welcomed them with waving flags and homemade signs. Members of the 1st Armored Brigade of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division found themselves scrambling to deploy in early March, barely a week after Russian troops invaded Ukraine. The soldiers from Georgia went to Germany to train alongside NATO allies in a show of force i ..read more