Author: Braxton Taylor

Jordan’s Bulls. The Belichick-Brady Patriots. A midsize Toyota pickup with a bed full of flip-flops and a PKM. These are the dynasties we came to accept as the natural order — and they’ve all met their end.Fans of technicals — civilian vehicles converted for combat use — know that not much has changed since the days of M16A2 iron sights and chocolate chip camo. The same Toyotas that roamed the streets of Mogadishu in the 1990s are still puttering around the Middle East today (no, really, the same actual vehicles, likely without so much as an oil change). ‘Get in,…

The Defense Department will review the list of medical conditions that automatically disqualify potential recruits from joining the U.S. military or require a waiver to serve.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness last week to review the medical standards for accessions to determine whether any should automatically disqualify an individual or require a service secretary’s approval for a waiver.In a memo to senior Pentagon officials Thursday, Hegseth said the effort will ensure that the DoD would “never compromise our high standards” and that young Americans “seeking to serve in the greatest fighting force…

Fifty years later, the surreal images of U.S. sailors and Marines scrambling to push, drag and muscle helicopters overboard into the sea in 1975 remain emblematic of America’s long and ultimately futile effort to win “hearts and minds” in Vietnam.The helicopters had to go to make room for more helicopters carrying Americans and South Vietnamese to land aboard the ships of naval Task Force 76, which had been assembled off the coast to aid in evacuations as North Vietnamese regulars pressed to take Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and end the war in April of that year.There had been…

Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday rejected Democratic efforts to discipline or otherwise hold Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accountable for recent turmoil in the Pentagon, including his use of a commercial messaging app to discuss sensitive military operations.While debating a $150 billion Pentagon spending bill Tuesday, Democrats offered several amendments to address the drama surrounding Hegseth, including ones that would have prevented any of the funding from being used until Hegseth is gone or limited the amount of funding available until he reviews classification policies.With Republicans holding a majority in the committee, the amendments were doomed from…

Marine Corps leaders said they have cleared backlogs of delayed duty station moves and are working to widdle down delayed bonus payouts they said were caused by Capitol Hill’s late budgets.In December, Military.com reported that nearly 1,000 Marines were at risk of losing out on bonuses the service had promised them upon reenlistment, and roughly 3,000 Marines could not move on time to their next installation because the Corps had to rely on funding from the previous year’s budget cycle, due to a stopgap solution from Congress known as a continuing resolution, or CR.Now, service officials said they currently have…

The Marine Corps is looking for medium-sized cargo drones to handle supply missions across the far-flung islands of the Pacific. One company hopes its acquisition of a drone from an uncrewed-logistics pioneer will put it in the running.On Tuesday, Piasecki announced it had acquired Kaman Air Vehicles’ KARGO program, a medium-lift drone that fits in a standard trailer and can lift a 500-pound payload for long distances, or a 1,000 pound payload for short missions of about 100 nautical miles, John Piasecki, the president and CEO of Piasecki Aircraft, told Defense One. But those numbers will likely change as the…

After reports of two major strikes against targets inside Yemen, officials at U.S. Central Command are refusing to discuss whether either action resulted in multiple civilian casualties or if either strike was militarily justified.The silence on this topic is a sharp contrast from the official public presence of the combatant command. On social media, U.S. Central Command’s presence has been a near constant stream of U.S. fighter jets and other military equipment and boasts about “continuous 24/7 operations” and claims that Yemen’s Houthi rebels are terrorists since the bombing campaign began over a month ago.Press reports citing Houthi sources have…

SK Customs recently unveiled its most recent edition of its “Lost States of America” series of limited production 1911 pistols with the new “Lost State Of Montezuma” model. This full-size single stack 5-inch Government framed 1911 pistol in .45 ACP commemorates James Gadsden, who is best known for facilitating the Gadsden purchase in the American Southwest. “We are commemorating James Gadsden in this context to highlight his influence on the territorial expansion of the United States,” said Simon Khiabani, owner and founder of SK Guns. “His efforts in securing the Gadsden Purchase not only reshaped the United States’ southern border,…

First released in 2012, “Call of Duty: Black Ops II” was a futuristic first-person shooter where much of the action takes place in 2025, but some players say the game predicted the future in a way only “The Simpsons” ever could. It begins with the start of the Second Cold War, a war started by an international businessman with a large cult of personality amid a trade war where China cuts the U.S. off from rare earth metals.Bit spooky, right? Some “Black Ops II” players are now playing “Bingo” with current events, and you really don’t want to see the…

SAN FRANCISCO — The final round of a cybersecurity competition run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will take inspiration in part from a Chinese hacking campaign discovered last year that was found to have burrowed into major U.S. telecommunications systems and their wiretapping platforms.The final round of DARPA’s AI Cyber Challenge, scheduled to run at the DEF CON conference in August, will task seven teams with crafting an AI-powered system designed to secure open-source software that underpins critical infrastructure sectors like water systems and financial institutions.Teams will be expected to use AI to find and fix bugs in…