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President Announces Space Force as 6th Military Branch

President Donald Trump has directed the Pentagon to create a "space force" as a new, sixth military branch to oversee missions and operations in the space domain.

"We must have American dominance in space," Trump said during a speech at the National Space Council meeting, held at the White House on Monday. "I'm hereby directing the Department of Defense to immediately begin the process to establish a space force as the sixth branch of the armed forces."

"We are going to have the Air Force, and we are going to have the space force," Trump said. "Separate, but equal. It is going to be something so important."

Trump then directed Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to "carry that assignment out."

South Korea, US cancel Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise for 2018:

South Korea and the U.S. have canceled a major military exercise planned for August to fulfill one of President Donald Trump’s promises to North Korea from last week’s summit.

“Following close cooperation, South Korea and the U.S. decided to suspend all planning activities for the [Ulchi Freedom Guardian] defensive exercise slated for August,” Yonhap News Agency reported, citing a text sent to South Korean news services.

“The South and the U.S. plan to continue consultations over additional measures,” Yonhap reported, citing the text.

Last week in Singapore, Trump announced he was canceling the exercises, which he said were provocative, as one of the exchanges in order to have North Korea denuclearize.

Calling all retirees:

The Army is looking for recruiters and instructors to go back on active duty.

The Army is short on recruiters, and as hundreds of thousands of American teenagers graduate high school in June and ― perhaps ― turn their attention to enlisting, the service is pulling out all the stops to man those recruiting stations.

Specifically, the service is looking for 150 retired staff sergeants and sergeants first class, who have either been recruiters or instructors, to come back on active duty.

The Army also is looking for a handful of officers and warrants.

“This opportunity is a normal strength management tool used by the Army to meet critical skill requirements, while preserving unit readiness in the operational Army,” according to a Thursday release from Training and Doctrine Command.

This kind of measure has been used before in the Army, according to a spokeswoman, though she did not elaborate on how often or when it was last used.

“The policy of retired soldiers returning to active duty on a voluntary basis is used frequently to assist Army commands across the force and is used by commanders at their discretion,” Megan Reed told Army Times.

In a statement signed by both Trump and Kim during the historic summit in Singapore, the two countries agreed to the “immediate repatriation” of those fallen service members who are already identified, the Associated Press reported.

Roughly 7,800 Americans remain unaccounted for from the 1950-1953 war. The Korean military conflict technically lasted from 1950 to 1953 but was ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.

Of those 7,800 Americans, 5,300 are believed to have been lost in battles in North Korea or prisoner-of-war camps.

Happy Birthday, Army!

Video from Military Times
"Sorry, we don't have any cake. But here's a video instead."

South Korea military exercises ‘suspended indefinitely’

Major U.S. military exercises with South Korea have been ‘suspended indefinitely,’ Agence France Presse reported Thursday, citing a senior U.S. official.

The Pentagon did not immediately comment on the report. However the department has repeatedly indicated over the last two days that it was working toward fulfilling President Donald Trump’s direction that the exercises be cancelled.

“We are working to fulfill the President’s guidance. The Department of Defense is aligned and continues to work with the White House to ensure we provide options that meet the President’s intent,” Pentagon spokesman Marine Corps Lt. Col. Christopher Logan said in a statement.

Study to Prevent Soldier Injury

The Army is notorious for breaking soldiers’ bodies. But it’s now working on ways to prevent that.

Serving in the Army often results in such permanent injuries to soldiers’ backs, necks, knees and ankles that being “broken” by the time you get out has become a well-worn cliche.

Treating those injuries is expensive both in dollars and readiness, so the Army is launching headlong into an effort to prevent the musculoskeletal wear and tear synonymous with long runs, ruck marches and jumping out of perfectly good airplanes.

In 2017, the head of the Center for Initial Military Training introduced a holistic health and fitness strategy that would focus on strength and conditioning, recovery, nutrition and other preventive measures at the soldier level.

But the Army is taking it a step further, with a massive study that will follow 4,000 trainees through their first eight weeks in the Army, measuring not only their initial muscle and bone strength, but any changes once they’ve completed basic training.

“Our goal is to basically understand who’s at risk — particularly, who’s at greatest risk ― and why, and what we can do about it,” Stephen Foulis, a research physiologist with the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, told Army Times in a May 8 phone interview.

Last September, a West Point cadet’s pictures of himself at his graduation ceremony flaunting his devotion to communism made national headlines and sparked fury from current and former soldiers. Spenser Rapone posted pictures on social media in which he was wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt under his uniform and wrote “communism will win” under his cap. This was really the least of it as a deeper dive into Rapone’s social media profiles revealed that he does not support the U.S. Constitution and believes that our government cannot be reformed and must be destroyed so that a communist government can be erected in its place.

SOFREP reported on Spenser Rapone at the time in an article titled, “The Calls are Coming From Inside the House: America’s Communist Insider Threat.” At the time, SOFREP spoke to a former Delta Force Sergeant Major who expressed concern because West Point is the feeder mechanism to put officers into the Ranger Regiment and Special Forces, which in turn acts as a feeder for JSOC units like Delta. By Rapone’s own admission, he followed a communist philosophy advocated by Rudi Dutschke.

Dutschke advocated a strategy he called the, “long march through the institutions of power.” This entails burrowing inside the institutions of society, including the military, and subverting them from within and ultimately setting the conditions for a communist revolution. As we’ve seen in the recent past, ideological actors working inside the system such as Edward Snowden can do a tremendous amount of damage to national security. The idea of an avowed communist subverting important military units and functions from within has the potential to be catastrophic.

A top Army general on Monday approved the sentence handed down to Pvt. Bowe Bergdahl, the former Taliban captive who was spared prison time after pleading guilty to desertion and misbehavior charges last year.

Gen. Robert Abrams, the chief of U.S. Army Forces Command, upheld the sentence handed down by the judge, Army Col. Jeffery R. Nance, in November at that conclusion of a weeklong sentencing hearing in Bergdahl's court-martial, FORSCOM spokesman John Boyce said Tuesday in a statement. Abrams was the convening authority in the court-martial, the senior official who oversees the case and must review and approve the judge's findings.

Nance sentenced Bergdahl to forfeit $10,000 in pay, a drop in rank from sergeant to E-1 private and a dishonorable discharge, which stops him from receiving any medical or other benefits offered to most veterans. The judge could have sentenced him to as much as life in prison. Prosecutors had requested Bergdahl serve 14 years confinement.

Nance has never publicly acknowledged his reasons for the sentence.

His decision to spare the soldier prison-time sparked outrage among some people in the military community and drew the ire of President Donald Trump within hours of his ruling. Trump tweeted the sentence was "a complete and total disgrace to our country and to our military."

Second Lt. Simone Askew has been named one of Glamour Magazine’s top 10 College Women of the Year.

Askew, who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy on May 26, is the first African American woman to serve as First Captain of the U.S. Military Academy’s Corps of Cadets, the highest ranking student post at the academy.

Askew graduated as an international studies major.

She was selected as First Captain of the Corps of Cadets for the 2018 academic year in early August.

As First Captain, Askew was responsible for the overall performance of the near 4,400 cadets at West Point and served as a liaison between the corps and the administration.

In August, West Point officials said that Askew exemplifies the academy’s values of duty, honor and country.

More...