Pentagon officials and service health care professionals gathered this week for the annual state of military health care conference. The mantra was consolidation and transformation to eliminate redundancy and improve response to changing patient demographics—in a word, jointness. Officials cited the changes to be wrought under BRAC 2005, such as the replacement of historic Walter Reed Army Medical Center in D.C. with a national medical center at Bethesda, Md., and consolidation of military medical training at Ft. Sam Houston, Tex. Officials also had high praise for military medicine on the battlefield and in medical evacuation.
A half-dozen pilots from one of the Air Force’s premier F-16 units, the 20th Fighter Wing at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., have been awarded one of the service’s highest decorations for their role in Operation Midnight Hammer, the June 2025 strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.