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☆ The Army Sees Mortars as Safe. Troops Report Signs of Brain Injury.
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-02 | by ( Dave Philipps | More About Dave Philipps | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

After firing about 10,000 mortar rounds during four years of training, one soldier who joined the Army with near-perfect scores on the military aptitude test was struggling to read or do basic math. Another soldier started having unexplained fits in which his internal sense of time would suddenly come unmoored, sending everything around him whirling in fast-forward. “Guys are getting destroyed,” said Sergeant Devaul, who has fired mortars in the Missouri National Guard for more than 10 years. “Heads pounding, not being able to think straight or walk straight. They say you are just dehydrated, drink water.”

Persons: Michael Devaul, ’, ”, Sergeant Devaul Organizations: Army, Missouri National Guard

☆ Pentagon Names Two SEALs Lost in Raid in Arabian Sea
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-22 | by ( Dave Philipps | More About Dave Philipps | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Defense Department identified on Monday the two Navy SEALs who were lost at sea and died this month during a nighttime commando raid on a small ship carrying weapons components bound for Yemen. Active-duty and veteran SEALs said it appeared that the men might have sunk quickly before they could be rescued, and that the circumstances of their deaths raised questions about the planning and conduct of the raid. Special Operator First Class Christopher J. Chambers, 37, and Special Operator Second Class Nathan Gage Ingram, 27, were lost on Jan. 11 when SEALs in two stealthy combat speedboats, shadowed by helicopters and drones, boarded a dhow, a type of small wooden cargo ship, in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Somalia. Both SEALs were quickly lost in the waves.

Persons: Christopher J, Chambers, Nathan Gage Ingram Organizations: Defense Department, Navy Locations: Yemen, Somalia

☆ U.S. Troops Still Train on Weapons With Known Risk of Brain Injury
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-26 | by ( Dave Philipps | More About Dave Philipps | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

And each launch sent a shock wave whipping through every cell in the operator’s brain. For generations, the military assumed that this kind of blast exposure was safe, even as evidence mounted that repetitive blasts may do serious and lasting harm. In recent years, Congress, pressed by veterans who were exposed to these shock waves, has ordered the military to set safety limits and start tracking troops’ exposure. In response, the Pentagon created a sprawling Warfighter Brain Health Initiative to study the issue, gather data and propose corrective strategies. And last year, for the first time, it set a threshold above which a weapon blast is considered hazardous.

Organizations: Special Operations, Pentagon, Health Initiative Locations: Ozark

“My friends, my family, I don’t think they understood why I couldn’t hold it together,” he said in an interview. On a spring morning, a pair of rock-climbing shoes hung by the door of the light-filled cabin where he lives in the Appalachian Mountains. He is trying to move on from Iraq, but a lurking darkness keeps pulling him off course. He made some of the photographs accompanying this article while he was in the Marine Corps, from 2009 to 2018. He is now studying film at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Md.

Persons: “, ”, “ I’m, Daniel Johnson, Matthew Callahan Organizations: Lifeline, Marine Corps, Maryland Institute College of Art Locations: Iraq, United States, North Carolina, Washington ,, Baltimore, Md

☆ U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force Struggle for Recruits. The Marines Have Plenty.
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-17 | by ( Dave Philipps | More About Dave Philipps | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Army, Navy and Air Force have tried almost everything in their power to bring in new people. They’ve relaxed enlistment standards, set up remedial schools for recruits who can’t pass entry tests, and offered signing bonuses worth up to $75,000. The Marine Corps ended the recruiting year on Sept. 30 having met 100 percent of its goal, with hundreds of contracts already signed for the next year. The corps did it while keeping enlistment standards tight and offering next to no perks. When asked earlier this year about whether the Marines would offer extra money to attract recruits, the commandant of the Marine Corps replied: “Your bonus is that you get to call yourself a Marine.

Persons: ” Organizations: Army, Navy, Air Force, Military, Marines, Marine Corps

A group of Ukrainian Army soldiers pierced by Russian grenades and mortar shells arrived at a hospital recently in need of surgery. It would have been a familiar scene from the bloody war grinding on in Ukraine, except for two crucial differences: Most of the wounded soldiers were American, and so was the hospital — the U.S. Army’s flagship medical center in Germany. The Army has quietly started to treat wounded Americans and other fighters evacuated from Ukraine at its Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. When the war erupted in 2022, hundreds of Americans — many of them military veterans — rushed to help defend Ukraine. Most of the wounded have had to rely on a patchwork of Ukrainian hospitals and Western charities for help.

Persons: — Organizations: Ukrainian Army, Army, Regional Medical Center, Ukrainian, Pentagon Locations: Ukraine, Germany, United States

In a sealed room behind a gantlet of armed guards and three rows of high barbed wire at the Army’s Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado, a team of robotic arms was busily disassembling some of the last of the United States’ vast and ghastly stockpile of chemical weapons. In went artillery shells filled with deadly mustard agent that the Army had been storing for more than 70 years. “That’s the sound of a chemical weapon dying,” said Kingston Reif, who spent years pushing for disarmament outside government and is now the deputy assistant secretary of defense for threat reduction and arms control. The depot near Pueblo destroyed its last weapon in June; the remaining handful at another depot in Kentucky will be destroyed in the next few days. And when they are gone, all of the world’s publicly declared chemical weapons will have been eliminated.

Persons: ”, Kingston Reif Organizations: Chemical, United, Army Locations: Colorado, United States, Pueblo, Kentucky

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