A pizza place near the Pentagon received an unusual rush in orders just an hour after the US launched its attack on Venezuela. //

That would be 3 a.m. in Caracas, one hour after the US rained down airstrikes on the capital city that lasted less than 30 minutes. //

The Pentagon Pizza theory follows pizza orders surrounding the Pentagon, speculating that an increase in late nights orders for federal agents corresponds with major historical events.

Any community's arm of force - military, police, security - needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.

Lois McMaster Bujold, "Barrayar", 1991

Most countries stopped testing nuclear weapons after they signed the global Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) starting from 1996. The treaty emerged amid growing concerns about human health and the environment above the ground, underground and underwater, from nuclear pollution.

The US conducted its first nuclear test in 1945. In all, the US has conducted 1,032 nuclear tests, according to the United Nations. The US last tested nuclear weapons in 1992. It signed the CTBT in 1996 but never ratified it.

The Soviet Union conducted 715 nuclear tests, the last of them in 1990. Since the USSR’s dissolution in 1990, Russia – which inherited the former superpower’s nuclear arsenal – has not conducted any nuclear tests. In 1996, Russia signed the CTBT, ratifying it in 2000. But Putin revoked Russia’s ratification of the treaty in 2023.

China last tested nuclear weapons in 1996. //

France last tested nuclear weapons in 1996. It conducted 210 tests between 1945 and 1996.

The United Kingdom conducted 45 nuclear tests from 1952, with the last one conducted in 1991.

Since the CTBT came into effect, 10 nuclear tests have taken place.

In 1998, India and Pakistan conducted two nuclear tests each. India and Pakistan have never signed the CTBT.

According to the UN, North Korea has conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016 and 2017. It conducted two tests in 2016. North Korea has also not signed the CTBT.

Nine states have nuclear arms, including the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.

For decades, Israel has maintained nuclear ambiguity, also known as “opacity”. It has never publicly confirmed or denied the presence of its nuclear weapons programme.

For a brief period of time, I had the honor of serving under General Raymond T. Odierno in Iraq. He was, without question, one of the finest officers I ever worked for—sharp, grounded, and with a great sense of humor that managed to shine through even in the worst of times. He was also hard to miss—towering in stature, both physically and professionally—and a proud graduate of West Point’s Class of 1976. I was only a year old when he graduated from the Academy, yet decades later I’d find myself in a war zone serving under his command.

I’ll admit, there was a time when one of his statements got under my skin. General Odierno once said, “We don’t need more M1 tanks.” As a young officer who grew up believing armored warfare was the backbone of modern combat, that rubbed me the wrong way. The M1 Abrams was sacred steel—a symbol of American power. The idea that we didn’t need more of them felt almost sacrilegious.

But with the benefit of time—and watching the tragic lessons unfold in Ukraine—I can now say he was right. When a $300 drone can take out an $8 million tank, the math doesn’t lie. Warfare has changed. The generals who understood that early on were thinking ahead, not backward. Odierno wasn’t anti-tank; he was anti-waste. He understood that technology, doctrine, and strategy evolve faster than the defense industry’s profit margins.

In one of his amendments, Moulton proposed a clause that he said would have reaffirmed the US military's long-standing doctrine of nuclear deterrence known as "Mutually Assured Destruction" (MAD). In other words, an adversary should think twice about a nuclear strike against the United States because the US would launch an overwhelming nuclear attack in response.

Moulton argued that a missile shield like the Golden Dome would change the decision-making of a potential adversary. If another country's leaders believe the United States can protect itself from widespread destruction—and therefore remove the motivation for a massive US response—that might be enough for an adversary to pull the trigger on a nuclear attack. Inevitably, at least a handful of nuclear-tipped missiles would make it through the Golden Dome shield in such a scenario, and countless Americans would die, Moulton said.

"If nations know that they will get obliterated if they use nuclear weapons against us, they are never going to use them," Moulton said in the House Armed Services Committee's markup hearing.

Rep. John Garamendi, D-California, put it succinctly: "If you're playing defense, you're likely to lose... somebody out there is going to figure out a way to get around it."

Moulton's Republican counterpart on the strategic forces subcommittee, Rep. Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, had a different view of the matter. The US military's existing missile defense system is limited in reach. It's designed to take down a small number of missiles launched at the United States from a "rogue state" like North Korea, not a volley of hundreds of missiles from a nuclear superpower.

"The underlying issue here is whether US missile defense should remain focused on the threat from rogue states and... accidental launches, and explicitly refrain from countering missile threats from China or Russia," DesJarlais said. He called the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction "outdated."

The Storis, in particular, is a welcome addition. The U.S. Navy lacks icebreaking capacity, leaving this function to the Coast Guard, which currently operates only one heavy icebreaker, the Polar Star, homeported in Seattle but regularly engaged in icebreaking operations in the Antarctic. Prior to the commissioning of the Storis, the Coast Guard had only one medium icebreaker, the Healy, available for Arctic operations.

The Coast Guard, in a 2023 report, estimated it needs eight or nine polar icebreakers to carry out its role in the Arctic, including four or five heavy and an equal number of medium icebreakers. With China and Russia both becoming increasingly active in the Arctic - and with Russia in particular holding half of the Arctic Ocean coastline - the Coast Guard's role in the north will only become more critical.

At the commissioning of the Solis, Alaska's Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) said:

“I think Singapore has more icebreaking capacity than we do,” Sullivan said. “That has left us far behind our adversaries. Russia has more than 50 operational icebreakers, many nuclear-powered, many weaponized. China, which has no Arctic territory, is building a polar fleet and is spending a lot of time off our shores, including this summer.”

The One Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law by President Trump this summer, includes around $9 billion in funding for new icebreaking ships.

In the late 5th/early 6th century BC, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote of battle:

Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.

We need to build a force of fighters, and more, of warriors. This is a step in that direction. //

Laocoön of Troy
6 hours ago
Amen!

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
‘To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods,

[snip]

When the goodman mends his armour,
And trims his helmet’s plume;
When the goodwife’s shuttle merrily
Goes flashing through the loom;
With weeping and with laughter
Still is the story told,
How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)

anon-j4cj Laocoön of Troy
2 hours ago
When I was a lad of 14, after having read of the Horatius Brothers in Latin class, I was fortunate enough to see the famous painting (Jacques-Louis David, 1784) "Oath of the Horatii" in the Louvre in Paris, France. It was awesome; that and seeing the "Winged Victory" statue made incredible impressions on me. I prayed at the time that through Grace, I would find the "right stuff" within to be able to answer the bell when called. Boomer.

The decision by Secretary Driscoll to travel to Fort Stewart will not go unnoticed by the soldiers. His decision to honor both the guys who took down the shooter and the soldiers rendering aid is a great touch. Personally, I think Thomas and Turner deserved a higher award, the Soldier's Medal, but that is neither here nor there. Most noncommissioned officers will only get a Meritorious Service Medal at retirement.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is trying to revitalize the civilian chain of command in the military, and having the Secretary of the Army present these awards, rather than delegating it to the division commander, sends a clear message about who is in charge and watching day-to-day Army operations. During my service, I couldn't have picked the Secretary of the Army out of a two-man lineup. There is definitely different civilian leadership in today's Pentagon. //

Jerry's Middle Finger Min Headroom
9 hours ago
And it happened within 48 hours of the event, not months or even longer as the administrative process churns along at a glacial pace.

The rank and file notices that too, and it tells them that their leaders care about them.

streiff Jerry's Middle Finger
8 hours ago
Happened less than 24 hours after the event.

If it seems like there's a satellite launch almost every day, the numbers will back you up.

The US Space Force's Mission Delta 2 is a unit that reports to Space Operations Command, with the job of sorting out the nearly 50,000 trackable objects humans have launched into orbit.

Dozens of satellites are being launched each week, primarily by SpaceX to continue deploying the Starlink broadband network. The US military has advance notice of these launches—most of them originate from Space Force property—and knows exactly where they're going and what they're doing.

That's usually not the case when China or Russia (and occasionally Iran or North Korea) launches something into orbit. With rare exceptions, like human spaceflight missions, Chinese and Russian officials don't publish any specifics about what their rockets are carrying or what altitude they're going to.

That creates a problem for military operators tasked with monitoring traffic in orbit and breeds anxiety among US forces responsible for making sure potential adversaries don't gain an edge in space. Will this launch deploy something that can destroy or disable a US satellite? Will this new satellite have a new capability to surveil allied forces on the ground or at sea?

The Heritage Foundation's Defense Budget Tool provides a user-friendly method to aid in both the analysis and transparency of the U.S. defense budget and facilitate more informed debate about how the Department of Defense ought to be directing spending.

Until now, individual line items of the defense budgets have only been published on the website of Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller) each year. This data is published in disparate PDFs and spreadsheets, with no mechanism for viewing all the data at once.
This tool:

• Provides an itemized accounting of the U.S. defense budget for analysis by national security experts.
• Allows a user to create customizable defense budgets that can be saved and shared for future reference.
• Makes defense budget data more accessible to Americans interested in the composition of the U.S. national security budget.

Every member of the military has sworn an oath to the nation since the Continental Army’s creation in 1775. Wording to specify allegiance to the U.S. Constitution was added in 1789, and has remained in all versions of military oaths of enlistment and commissioning since. This tradition sets our military apart from many others around the world, where loyalty is often tied to a ruler or regime. The American oath binds service members to a set of ideals and structures greater than any one administration.

Unfortunately, this noble intent is being misinterpreted. Ill-informed pundits, academics, military officers, lawmakers, and even ordinary American citizens frequently describe the military as “apolitical.” But that isn’t quite right. The military exists to enforce the political will of the United States—by force if necessary. It’s not above politics; it’s an instrument of it. A correct reading of the military oath clarifies this: troops swear to uphold the enduring framework of the nation, not the transient preferences of elected officials.

So, what does loyalty to the Constitution actually mean? How is a service member to judge whether their actions align with that oath? Most don’t know. Those who do have learned through personal initiative—not institutional instruction. //

This problem can be solved. I propose three key reforms:

1. Mandatory Annual Constitutional Training

The White House recently mandated an 80-hour Constitution and rule-of-law course for executive branch employees, capped by a two-day in-person session. The military can follow suit by requiring holistic annual constitution training for every military member. Numerous free, reputable programs already exist to support this effort:

National Constitution Center’s Constitution 101 Course
American Bar Association’s Civics Education Series for Military Members
Hillsdale College’s Constitution 101: The Meaning and History of the Constitution. //

2. Required Pocket Constitutions

Every service member should be issued a laminated pocket Constitution, worn as part of the uniform. If troops are still required to wear dog tags in this day of DNA identification, there’s no reason that carrying the document to which they swear is a bridge too far.

3. Memorization of Founding Principles

In the Army, we are required to know the Soldier’s Creed and Army Song by heart, ready to recite from memory on command. Promotion boards evaluate enlisted soldiers on their ability to recite these and other military codes. Why not include selections from the Constitution—or Declaration of Independence? //

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) provides the fastest route for implementation. With Republican majorities in Congress, there is an opportunity to require annual, rigorous, non-partisan instruction in the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law for all military personnel. This training must reject “living document” ideology in favor of fidelity to textualism.

Military officers have become accustomed to obeying and implementing unlawful directives because they know that the oath is presently meaningless and that all power—in practice—is held by individuals in the chain of command, rather than the nation’s founding documents, U.S. law, and military regulations. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth must purge ideologues who corrupted the institution—but that alone won’t fix the culture.

The development of the small nuclear device began in June 1960 with the M54 SADM (Special Atomic Demolition Munition). The M54 was put into production in August 1964. The weapon was 12 inches in diameter, 18 inches long, and weighed approximately 59 pounds. The transport configuration added many more pounds to the weight of the device, and demanded specialized skills to operate.

SADM had a variable yield estimated to range from the equivalent of 10 to 1,000 tons of TNT! //

This device, though, was aimed not at making enemy soldiers glow in the dark, but for blowing up bridges and other infrastructure, while also making it glow in the dark. For most bridges, even the Golden Gate or the Brooklyn Bridge, though, a 1-kiloton nuke seems like a bit of overkill.

But then, no war was ever lost by making the enemy too dead. The weapons programs of the Cold War sure seem to support that assertion, too. //

RedRaider85
4 hours ago
Nuke ‘em til you they glow, then shoot ‘em in the dark!

Around 03:13 UTC on 21 June (22:13 local time) a flight of US Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling aircraft departed Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma. Operating in two flights of four aircraft, the Stratotankers headed northeast toward Missouri. Those aircraft quickly climbed to the top of Flightradar24’s most tracked flights list—not because thousands of people find aerial refueling aircraft over the central US fascinating, but for the inference of their purpose.

Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Phelan cited the case of the USS Gerald R. Ford, America's largest and most expensive nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which carried a price tag of $13 billion. The ship was struggling to feed its crew of over 4,500 because six of its eight ovens were out of action, and sailors were barred by contract from fixing them themselves.

"I am a huge supporter of right to repair," Phelan told the politicians. "I went on the carrier; they had eight ovens — this is a ship that serves 15,300 meals a day. Only two were working. Six were out."

He pointed out the Navy personnel are capable of fixing their own gear but are blocked by contracts that reserve repairs for vendors, often due to IP restrictions. //

In a rare display of bipartisanship, both Democrats and Republicans agreed that the Army shouldn't be waiting on contractors to fix its kit and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memo directing the service to add right-to-repair provisions to its contracts.

"On a go-forward basis, we have been directed to not sign any contracts that don't give us a right to repair," Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll told the House Armed Services Committee on June 4. "On a go-back basis, we have been directed to go and do what we can to go get that right to repair."

In the post on Monday on X, Scott shared a graveside picture of the family of fallen Marine Sgt. Christopher James Jacobs was taken at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on May 25, 2015.

The photo showed Jacobs' widow, Brittany Jacobs, sitting by her late husband's grave while wiping tears from her cheeks. Standing next to his father's headstone was their son, Christian Jacobs, who wore Marine dress blues as he placed his little hand and cheek on the final resting place of his father.

"If the heaviness of the sacrifice was ever captured in a photo, it's this one," Jennings captured his post. Remembering the fallen on this #MemorialDay."

https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2001141435/

Speaking to "Fox News Sunday" host Shannon Bream, the 70-year-old actor revealed ahead of the event that one of the pieces of music at the Memorial Day concert on PBS is called “Rise” and it’s one of the pieces of music his late son, a composer, composed before he died in 2024 following a five year battle with a rare bone cancer. He was 33.

“It’s an incredible thing,” Sinise said when asked about getting to hear his late son’s music being played by the National Symphony Orchestra. “I had sent them a piece of music that Mac had written. It’s a piece called the ‘Rise.’” //

He later posted his speech from the evening with actor Esai Morales, which will have you standing up and shouting “USA, USA.”

“America began as an idea, a dream; the blood of those who placed duty before itself made that dream a reality,” Sinise said. “Our Armed Forces answered the call to service even before the United States became a nation.”

“This year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of our armed forces,” he added. “On April 19th, 1775, the shot heard round the world was fired on Lexington Green when militiamen from Massachusetts faced off against British forces. Two months later, the Congress authorized the establishment of a united fighting force drawn from across the colonies. George Washington was nominated to be its leader over eight arduous years of struggle with Great Britain. What emerged as the United States Army became the symbol around which 13 fractious colonies rallied and ultimately won their freedom.”

“The principles established at its founding remain unwavering. Always place the mission first, never accept defeat, and never quit … Our Armed Forces gave birth to our nation,” he continued later. “Today, they sustain that nation’s freedoms on land, sea, air, and in space. This Memorial Day, we salute their selfless devotion to an America made possible by their sacrifice."

“Our Army, Navy, and Marines have always been proud to serve, and we, as a grateful nation, owe them our thanks,” Morales concluded. “More than that, we owe them our country.”

Expect to see a lot more of his conversion of anecdotes into data in opposition ot Hegseth's enforcement of President Trump's directives. I think that we'll also see a lot of folks who developed gender dysphoria under Obama as a tool to advance their careers and make themselves bulletproof to charges of incompetence suddenly "cure" themselves as they look at the trans gravy train coming to an end. //

anon-kcqz
36 minutes ago
While I applaud SecDef Hegseth doing this for cultural reasons, let's not lose sight of the fact that divesting ourselves of these lunatics is part of a broader overall strategy to evaluate every member of the service for whether or not they could contribute meaningfully in a war. Hegseth is giving us back our teeth, and the whole world will become more peaceful as a result. //

stm-33
18 minutes ago
The Pentagon has spent 51 million of your tax dollars in the past four years to treat over 4200 transgender troops. Biden and former Secretary of Defense Austin turned our once proud military into a "woke" joke and disastrous social experiment. Since when is it a good idea to have mentally ill troops in the military; especially ones that need continual harmful hormonal injections that can possibly cause psychotic episodes. They had troops flying rainbow flags and were painting "rainbow bullets" on Marine helmets in recruiting ads. The Chinese and the Russians were rolling on the ground laughing and the armed services couldn't meet 75% of their recruiting goals.

Thank God, that Trump has stopped this nonsense as is constitutionally his right as Commander in Chief. Amazingly, the fact that recruiting has reached a 20 year high in just a few short months after Trump was elected should tell you everything you need to know how harmful and ridiculous this whole idea was.

A Chinese company has developed an AI-piloted submersible that can reach speeds “similar to a destroyer or a US Navy torpedo,” dive “up to 60 metres underwater,” and “remain static for more than a month, like the stealth capabilities of a nuclear submarine.” In case you’re worried about the military applications of this, you can relax because the company says that the submersible is “designated for civilian use” and can “launch research rockets.”

“Research rockets.” Sure.

You can't serve two masters, and while I'd like to say the transgender activists in the military are trying to serve two... they ultimately aren't. Their central focus is themselves, and you could say it's also their cause if you want to be generous, but really, this is just a me-centric kind of activism.

The military suffered from their inclusion. They were a clear sign that the U.S. armed forces weren't taking themselves seriously and were giving themselves over to vanity and mental illness. With Pete Hegseth now in the driver's seat, recruitment has skyrocketed. That's not an accident. The military has returned to a mentality of service, and strength is now back as a priority.

Weakness in a business that deals in death can get you killed, and selfishness is weakness at its core.

There is no shortage of generals in our military:

There are about 800 general officers in the military, but only 44 of those are four-star general or flag officers. Hegseth has already directed the firings of more than a half-dozen three- and four-star generals since taking office, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown Jr., saying those eliminations were “a reflection of the president wanting the right people around him to execute the national security approach we want to take.” //

SLOTown Hoosier
17 minutes ago
We have more 4-Stars today in the Army than the Army and Air Force combined in WW II.