“Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will retire next year. The nation’s top military officer by law can only serve a single, non-renewable term of four years, and thus a successor will need to be nominated by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Secretary Austin should nominate an Air Force officer, current Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown, to lead the Joint Chiefs. If he does, media coverage will undoubtedly focus on the fact that Brown is the first African American to lead a branch of the armed forces. However, that is not the reason why Brown should be the next Joint Chiefs Chairman. The logic of his appointment resides in other institutional, strategic and operational considerations. The fact that he is temperamentally and experientially suited to the job is icing on the cake,” writes Loren Thompson.
Space Training and Readiness Command knew it had a difficult road ahead. When it began its work in earnest in August 2021, the Space Force’s new training branch was immediately faced with pulling together scattered pieces of the Pentagon’s nearly 80-year-old military space enterprise into a singular training hub. STARCOM boss Maj. Gen. Shawn N. Bratton spent that first year hashing out how to bring people into the service, whether as a new recruit or from elsewhere in the military.
The Israel Air Force will hold one of its largest drills in years with the U.S. Air Force simulating offensive strikes against Iran’s nuclear program. The drill will take place over the Mediterranean Sea and Israel. It will include long-range flights such as those that Israeli pilots might need to make in order to reach the Islamic Republic. The exercise will include refuelers as well as fighter jets from both forces.
“News from Ukraine provides signs for hope with Ukrainian forces reoccupying Kherson, and Russians surrendering to drones. However, this conflict is still far from over and much remains on the line, both for the people of Ukraine and for security implications around the globe. The longer the conflict extends, the greater the costs on the Ukrainian people and the coalition supporting them. This can be measured in lives lost, economic hardships borne by Ukraine’s friends, and increasing political strain among western nations. Vladimir Putin is a master at opportunistically maximizing the divisive potential afforded by these realities. That is why the United States, and its allies need to increase the scale and scope of the military tools they are providing the Ukrainians—to empower faster battlefield gains that will ultimately drive a resolution of this conflict,” writes retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
Transferring Patriot surface-to-air missile systems, which have a relatively robust defensive capability against shorter-range ballistic missiles, to the Ukrainian armed forces is under consideration, according to the Pentagon and NATO. Authorities in Ukraine have been seeking Patriots since before Russia's all-out invasion, but there has been reinvigorated interest in these systems more recently as the country has been subjected to major missile strikes on its power grid. There are also fears that Russian forces could soon begin employing Iranian short-range ballistic missiles as part of this campaign, which threatens to leave many Ukrainians literally in the dark and cold in the middle of winter.
The Missile Defense Agency is set to soon host one-on-one meetings with commercial players interested in helping develop and deploy an advanced, next-generation system to shield the U.S. from missiles and associated threats. According to a recently published pre-solicitation notice, MDA officials intend to issue a solicitation to buy services and capabilities to drive the making of this envisioned “integrated, layered Missile Defense System” in the near future.
This fiscal year is going to be the “year of training” for the Defense Department, and the Pentagon’s official in charge of developing training policy across the joint force is teeing up several efforts to make that a reality, including standing up a new military executive steering group in the near future. “So let me start by being very blunt. We are running out of time,” said Caroline Baxter, deputy assistant secretary of defense for force education and training.
Turkish air strikes and the threat of another incursion are distracting Kurdish forces from fighting ISIS, the commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces said. “Our joint work alongside international coalition forces here have been … temporarily paused against ISIS because of the recent air strikes,” Gen. Mazloum Abdi said through a translator during a virtual press conference.
A long-anticipated decision on whether the headquarters for U.S. Space Command will remain in Colorado Springs, Colo., or move to Huntsville, Ala., a saga that has been drawn out since the waning days of President Donald Trump's administration, will conclude soon, according to the command’s top general.
Getting out of the military is one of the hardest things military personnel will ever have to do, and the longer they've been in, the more difficult and nerve-racking the process can be. Many tools are available to service members to help with applying for a post-military job and how to land it—but not many that help to envision what having that job might actually be like.
