The U.S. Marine Corps formally notified its South Korean counterpart in June that force availability would be constrained for the division-level exercise, known as Ssangyong, a South Korean Marine Corps spokesperson told a press briefing.

The allies remain in close consultations on resuming the drills, the spokesperson said. He did not specify what measures might be taken to prevent future cancelations or to make up for lost training opportunities.

U.S. Forces Korea did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Later on Monday, the U.S. State Department said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken with South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun about a “range of issues” in their alliance.

Rubio told his South Korean counterpart that Washington and Seoul need to remain in close coordination on matters integral to their alliance, according to a State Department statement.

The cancelation of the amphibious landing drill follows U.S. President Donald Trump’s surprise order to scale back a separate annual joint military exercise that ended last Friday, citing the cost and Seoul’s refusal to take part in the Iran war.

Trump also wrote on his Truth Social platform that the Ulchi Freedom Shield drills sent “a signal that was totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful.” Despite the reduction of the exercises, Pyongyang fired 10 short-range ballistic missiles last week and issued a statement denouncing the exercises.

North Korea has long condemned such joint exercises as rehearsals for invasion.

She sat, buckled into her car seat, as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials ordered the windows rolled down and announced they would be detaining Cristy Maryori Villafranca Trejo — the child’s mother and Turcios’s wife — for a missed court appearance.

The child watched as the figures handcuffed her mother.

“It took me a minute to realize what was going on — my heart just dropped,” Turcios told Military Times about the encounter. “It was very hard looking at my daughter crying because of what was going on and not being able to do something and keep my family together.”

On July 11, ICE detained Villafranca Trejo as the family drove home after a trip to Walmart. Turcios said he observed a vehicle following his family out of their military housing subdivision on the way to the store and then, when the family left Walmart, it reappeared.

He was pulled over shortly after, the sergeant said, as unmarked vehicles boxed in the family’s Dodge Durango.

“All I was trying to do was stay calm because my daughter was watching everything that was going on and that was already a lot for her,” he said more than a month after his wife was detained. “She’s only six, and she was going through a lot. She’s still going through a lot right now.”

Turcios, who is stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, has been legally married to Villafranca Trejo since August 2022, according to the couple’s Louisiana marriage certificate. His wife is registered as his dependent in the Army’s personnel system, along with her son and the daughter the couple share. Prior to her detention, the family of four was preparing for a military move to an Oklahoma base where Turcios was set to be stationed.

Instead of preparing to report to his new unit, Turcios said he visited his wife at Camp East Montana, an immigration detention center located on the Fort Bliss grounds.

A July report published by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based international nonprofit, in collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union, found that detainees at the camp were subjected to excessive use of force, medical neglect, barriers to legal assistance and “conditions of confinement that amounted to enforced disappearance.”

Turcios said his wife had experienced an infection. He told Military Times that she was concerned the underwear she had been given was not clean. She also said she had to wear the same clothes for about a week. Human Rights Watch reported accounts of laundry at the facility being returned irregularly and dirty.

As of publication, Villafranca Trejo had not received updates on her status.

“They don’t give us any updates on her case. They’re completely silent from their part — like nobody at all,” he said. “They don’t communicate with my lawyer. They don’t communicate with my wife. They don’t communicate with me. We don’t know what’s going on.”

After his Monday visit last week, authorities tried to deport his wife. They woke her up in the middle of the night, he said, and took her to the airport. Turcios said Villafranca Trejo had a panic attack trying to explain that her appeal was in process and her husband was in the military.

Turcios received a call in the early morning hours asking him to verify her account. Another call came later in the morning saying that authorities had verified his wife’s status and she would be returned to the detention camp.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed that on Aug. 17, Villafranca Trejo “was removed from her scheduled deportation flight after a legal impediment developed.”

In response to questions about her July apprehension, the department responded that on the date in question, “ICE conducted a targeted immigration enforcement operation to arrest Cristy Maryori Villafranca Trejo, an illegal alien from Honduras. Villafranca Trejo illegally entered the United States in 2016 and was released into the country under the Obama administration.”

The statement also added, “Being in detention is a choice.”

Turcios said that his wife, who was born in Honduras, came to the United States looking for “a better life,” before the couple met in late 2018.

He said his wife believed her case had been closed after a series of initial appointments in the early years after her arrival. When the couple began applying for her citizenship in 2024, Turcios said they learned that a missed appearance had led to the issuance of a removal order in 2017.

The couple immediately began working with legal counsel to appeal.

Efrain Diaz-Carrasquillo, an attorney working on Villafranca Trejo’s case, said even though the case is being appealed, her detention is technically legal. She was likely detained because her name popped up in ICE’s system, he said, and because ICE is authorized to detain her, they did.

“The fact that ICE has, or is entitled to detain her doesn’t mean they have to,” he said, adding she has no criminal record. “She married an American citizen, and they are trying to adjust her status in USCIS,” Diaz-Carrasquillo said, referring to the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services, the federal agency that processes residency and citizenship authorizations.

“She’s doing everything possible to adjust her status and be legal in the United States,” he said, but her case could take years.

Turcios, who deployed to the Middle East in 2023, said the unexpected detention has upended his family’s life and made fulfilling his duties as a noncommissioned officer difficult.

He said Villafranca Trejo supported him throughout his career and was the mainstay of his military family care plan, a formal document detailing who will care for a soldier’s dependents during a deployment. Without her, he is essentially a single parent, responsible for school drop-offs and leading soldiers.

Military Times spoke with an active-duty soldier who worked with Turcios, who described the noncommissioned officer as approachable and dependable.

“You can see the results of his leadership in his soldiers,” said the soldier, who was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal. “They’re consistently on time, prepared, know what they’re supposed to be doing, and are ready to execute whatever mission or task is put in front of them.”

When ICE pulled the family’s vehicle over, Turcios said his patrol cap — marked with sweat from extensive wear in uniform — was on the dashboard. Despite the ordeal, the soldier said his wife’s detainment has not changed his feelings about his service.

“I love this country, and I’m proud of serving in the Army,” he said, adding that his wife supports his career wholeheartedly.

The situation faced by Turcios’s family, however, is becoming more common.

An Associated Press report published in August found that more than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty service members had been detained under the Trump administration, and at least six have been deported.

In response to the AP’s investigation, over 60 lawmakers penned a letter announcing the launch of an investigation into whether or not the Pentagon is coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security to deport military members and their families.

In the letter, lawmakers said reports suggested the two agencies were collaborating “to identify and detain non-citizens during routine check-ins, visits, and drop-offs at military installations — converting military bases into ‘traps’ for individuals this Administration deems deportable, all while DoD continues to recruit new service members with the promise of immigration protections.”

Though military spouses and close family members are not guaranteed legal residency or citizenship, spouses have historically been offered programs like Military Parole in Place, which grants legal temporary residence to a service member’s undocumented family.

The Pentagon did not respond to questions from Military Times about whether DoD tracks immediate family members who have been detained or deported, or if it has assessed the effects on readiness.

Asked about resources available to soldiers should their family members be detained, a Pentagon official said in a statement, “We would refer you to the military service departments, as each service provides varying but limited legal assistance in line with federal law.”

Turcios, meanwhile, said he is paying out of pocket for his family’s legal assistance.

For now, he makes appointments to visit his wife. They speak through a window and cannot touch.

The couple’s daughter, who watched her mother’s arrest from the back seat, often wonders aloud about her. The child started school this year without Villafranca Trejo.

“She asks me every day, ‘When is my mom coming back home?’ and I don’t have an answer to that,” Turcios said. “It’s just heartbreaking for me, just looking at her and not being able to give her an answer when her mom is coming back to our family.”

VoteVets, a non-profit group and political action organization that largely supports Democrat veteran candidates, launched a 10-day billboard campaign Monday in 10 U.S. cities that features photos of President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on a fiery background.

“Trump & Hegseth’s Iran War means higher prices for you with no end in sight,” the signs declare.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, senior adviser to VoteVets, told Military Times the effort is intended to connect “affordability with accountability,” linking political leaders’ actions with higher costs at the gas pump and grocery stores.

“[Service members] tend to be married young with children, and when you allow the cost of living — not just gasoline, but the whole business, grocery stores — … it’s a visible increase in prices that we are bearing,” Eaton said during an interview Friday.

Iran and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, killing numerous Iranian leaders, including its top official, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Trump said the strikes were meant to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

“[Iran] attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas and could soon reach the American homeland,” Trump said in a social media post following the attack.

Since the opening salvos, other regional powers have become involved, and the control of the Strait of Hormuz — a vital shipping lane through which roughly 25% of the world’s oil is transported — has fallen into dispute, interrupting maritime commerce.

The conflict has caused natural gas and oil prices to swing, affecting prices of the commodities. But Eaton said the billboards also seek to call attention to the rising national debt, which surpassed $40 trillion this week.

The national debt limit has doubled in the past decade under President Joe Biden and Trump, growing by $8.4 trillion while Biden was in the White House. When Trump took office in January 2025 that debt was hovering at $36.1 trillion.

“That level of accountability to affordability, that linkage is also what we’re trying to make clear to everybody,” Eaton said.

The locations of VoteVets’ billboard campaign include: Dayton, Ohio; West Point, New York; Fayetteville, North Carolina; San Antonio, Texas; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Tampa, Florida; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Tomah City, Wisconsin; and Savannah, Georgia.

The group’s 1,000-plus digital billboards are slated to stay up until Sept. 2.

“We are going where veterans and military families are around our nation’s military installations, and underscoring the cost of Trump and Hegseth’s neocon war to them directly,” the group said in a press release.

The Defense Department’s Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military, released Friday, estimated that 20,492 active-duty service members, including 9,860 women and 10,632 men, were sexually assaulted in the year preceding the fiscal year 2025 survey, down from 29,000 in 2023.

The 2025 figures represent a drop in sexual assaults from roughly 35,900 in 2021.

“The FY 2025 report underscores our ongoing commitment to maintaining high standards, protecting our people, and building a unified, ready, and lethal fighting force,” Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata said in a statement Friday.

The assault estimates were derived from the department’s 2025 Workplace Experiences Survey that polls troops on various topics such as sexual assault and harassment, work climate, leadership and training.

According to the fiscal year 2025 survey, the estimated rate of assaults dropped among active-duty women from 6.8% to 4.3%, and among active-duty men from 1.4% to 1.0%.

At the same time, reports of sexual assaults increased, with 7,998 filed in fiscal year 2025. Given the results of the survey, an estimated one in three individuals filed a formal report of an assault, up from one in four in 2023.

Defense Department officials have long encouraged service members to report assaults as a means to address the issue in the ranks. The Pentagon uses the reports metric to help determine whether department and service sexual assault prevention and reporting initiatives are succeeding.

“Estimated percentage of victimized service members making Restricted and Unrestricted Reports – desired state is increase,” the report stated.

According to the report, the Marine Corps had the highest prevalence of unwanted sexual contact against women, at 6.8% of female Marines. The Navy had the highest prevalence of unwanted contact against men, at 1.5%.

The Air Force had the lowest prevalence of unwanted contact reported by its members at 2.8% by women and 0.7% by men.

The report noted that a majority of service members trusted their leaders to handle the problem, with 72% of women and 80% of men saying that those involved were “treated fairly.”

Trust in the system also has risen since 2023, according to the data, but female members still struggle with confidence in the process.

In 2025, 64% of men and 41% of women said they believed the system would protect their privacy, up from 61% and 41%, respectively.

69% of men and 45% of women said they trusted the military to ensure their safety after a sexual assault, up from 66% and 43% in 2023.

Female service members reportedly expressed more confidence in the resources provided by their sexual assault response coordinators and support team, with more than 60% saying they were satisfied with support from their victim advocates, sexual assault response coordinators and assigned attorneys.

Male troops were less satisfied with the services of their sexual assault teams; however, between 36% and 47% expressed confidence in their victim advocates, response coordinators and counsel.

The military services were required in 2023 to establish independent legal structures to handle serious crimes, including sexual assault, domestic violence, murder and manslaughter. The Office of Special Trial Counsel directly handles investigations and decisions to prosecute such cases, removing the chain of command from a role it historically held in judicial proceedings.

The first survey since the Office of Special Trial Counsel’s creation found that men were “significantly more likely” than women to trust that the office would treat them fairly if they were to experience a sexual assault, with 65% of men reporting favorably. Just 44% of women expressed the same confidence, however.

In the past, service members have hesitated to report incidents of sexual assault out of fear of retaliation from their leadership, peers and/or perpetrator. A 2021 study found that 31% of men and 28% of women said they experienced retaliation after a sexual assault.

The report released Friday found that retaliation continues to be a concern. Among women service members who indicated an experience of Unwanted Sexual Contact (USC), 17% reported saying they experienced retaliation prohibited by law. For both men and women, one of the most common reasons for not coming forward was “worrying about backlash from coworkers and peers.”

Along with the decrease in sexual assault, the prevalence of sexual harassment also declined among men and women. An estimated 4.4%, or 44,656 service members, said they experienced sexual harassment, down from 5.8% in 2023. Among women, 17.5%, or 39,744 service members, said they experienced sexual harassment, down from 24.7% in 2023.

Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group dedicated to promoting equality and ending sexual assault in the ranks, said Friday that its analysis of the 2025 data found that service members experienced 38% more unwanted sexual contacts than a decade ago. The group also noted that the 4.3% rate of sexual assault among military women in 2025 was the same as the rate reported in 2016.

The Defense Department cautions that the survey measure was substantially revised in 2021 and that prevalence estimates from 2021 onward cannot be scientifically compared with estimates from earlier years.

The rate among men, at 1%, was higher than the 2018 rate of 0.7%, the group noted.

The advocates said they have heard from personnel whose prosecutions never occurred or whose evidence and documents were lost, and victims were pushed out of the military without proper medical care, including mental health treatment.

“I wouldn’t take these numbers at face value, and neither should the American public. They are not what we are seeing,“ said Protect Our Defenders Senior Vice President Josh Connolly.

“Survivors are more afraid to come forward than they were two years ago, and this administration has spent the past year giving them reason to be – rolling back whistleblower protections, making it harder to report anonymously, warning people who come forward that they may be punished for it. A number that falls because people stopped talking is not progress,” Connolly said.

In the report, department officials attributed the decline to numerous changes they have made to address sexual assault and harassment in the ranks, which they called harmful behaviors that “act as internal adversaries, eroding the very foundation of our operational readiness and unit lethality.”

According to the department, the DoD assessed Sexual Assault and Prevention and Reporting Offices in Indo-Pacific Command in 2025, engaged at joint bases to improve collaboration across the services, conducted unit evaluations and standardized the workforce to address issues with the program.

“Dignity, respect, and discipline are foundational to the warrior ethos and the overall preparedness of the force. Sexual assault and sexual harassment undermine these values, eroding trust and threatening the mission,” Tata said in the release.

The department sought to fund 90% of its maintenance needs, but the GAO found that the services continue to request funding for only about 80% of their needs, according to the report released Friday. The funding shortfall led to an estimated $285 billion of maintenance backlogs in fiscal 2025.

“DOD has not fully determined the risks to its mission and to the quality of life of its personnel as a result of not meeting its funding goal,” the report reads. “Fully determining and communicating these risks would provide better information to DOD and Congress to weigh budget priorities.”

GAO authors examined Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force military installations across the U.S. and its territories for this report.

The report found that the department does not request the full amount of maintenance funding as recommended by its Facilities Sustainment Model, which estimates the average annual sustainment funding requirement for facilities based on their size, location and other factors.

This contributed to the increased backlog of deferred maintenance needs. Even though in 2014 an Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics memorandum was issued to establish a goal of funding regular maintenance at 90% or higher of the amount estimated by the Facilities Sustainment Model, the GAO continues to find that the services are not meeting that goal.

Instead, the Army, Navy and Air Force requested about 80% for fiscal years 2017 through 2020. The Marine Corps requested funding decreased from 80% to 40% over the past five fiscal years, opting to fund more facility restoration and modernization projects in exchange for reduced sustainment funding, the report says.

Maintenance and improvement projects’ backlogs can contribute to service members’ quality of life and negatively affect installations’ missions.

“By requesting less funding for installation maintenance and improvement projects than its models and experts recommend, DOD has chosen to accept some degree of risk that mission or quality of life will be negatively affected,” the report says.

In past reports, the GAO has found that barracks maintenance were “chronically neglected” and resulted in poor conditions of enlisted service members that affected their quality of life. Thousands of service members lived in substandard barracks, with some hosting potentially serious health and safety risks, a 2023 report found.

Of the 31 recommendations issued in 2023, the department implemented 19 as of April 2026. But many remain unaddressed, such as establishing an oversight structure for barracks, the report says.

The GAO found that challenges in hiring and retaining key maintenance workers are seen in remote and isolated locations and other obstacles include private sector employment competition as well as federal hiring, pay and work eligibility practices.

Military departments have not fully identified the extent of maintenance workforce shortages or created plans to address the hurdles.

The GAO also found that installations rely on maintenance work order data systems to respond to needs, but the tracking is limited and the data is generally unreliable for determining the effectiveness of maintenance performed across the services.

In the report, the GAO made 13 recommendations, including strengthening departmental oversight, determining risks associated with funding maintenance below levels proposed and improving maintenance data reliability.

The department fully or partially concurred with 12 recommendations and did not concur with one.

Matilda 1, a specialized stern landing vessel that can transport troops from ship to shore or from beachhead to beachhead, is notable for its shallow draft, allowing it to navigate littoral waters the way few other vessels its size can. But it’s also different in how the Marine Corps acquired it for use.

The 240-foot boat was designed by the Australian firm Seatransport and constructed by Indonesian builder Karimun Anugrah Sejati. It became operational earlier this year and was made available to the Marine Corps via a three-year charter agreement with the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, managed by the firm MariGuard LLC.

The charter agreement, the second of its kind undertaken by the Warfighting Lab since 2021, allows the service to experiment with its stand-in forces concept that envisions more Marines island-hopping in the Pacific and operating from remote and austere beaches. And the Corps is able to do so without having to invest heavily in in-house shipbuilding or even make an outright purchase of a commercial vessel.

The charter agreement “allows us to move a lot quicker,” Maj. Brandon Griffith, who leads Logistics, Science and Technology at the Warfighting Lab, told Marine Corps Times. “That’s part of what we’re looking at, is the viability of that approach.”

Matilda 1 will “bridge the gap” as the Navy develops its Medium Landing Ship (LSM) program, a ship class intended to move Marines and their equipment to remote beaches. The LSM has already been christened the McClung class, after Marine Maj. Megan McClung, who was killed during a deployment to Iraq. Ultimately, between 18 and 35 ships are planned for the class. But while the first ship has been ordered, construction has yet to begin.

According to Warfighting Lab releases, the Matilda 1 is named in honor of the partnership between the Marines and the Australian Army dating to World War II.

“After the pivotal Battle of Guadalcanal, the 1st Marine Division adopted the Australian folk song ‘Waltzing Matilda’ as an unofficial anthem,” lab officials said. “The name MATILDA 1 pays tribute to this shared legacy of mutual defense in the Pacific.”

The chartering of Matilda 1 follows a similar charter agreement with the HOS Resolution, an offshore supply vessel that helped shape LSM concepts and design in the Pacific between 2021 and 2024. Griffith noted that the older converted vessel — with ramps added for onload and offload — wasn’t designed for the mission the way Matilda 1 was.

“It was kind of our first, you know, dip in the toe in the water of this type of craft,” Griffith said.

And it’s likely these kinds of charter arrangements will continue as the Corps presses forward with experimentation and shaping its future maritime mission.

“This is a Pacific-focused charter now, but it’s a concept that we’re definitely looking to expand across the globe, across all the component commands,” Griffith said. “A lot of what we try to do, experimentation-wise, may focus on one theater, but that doesn’t mean the lessons learned aren’t applicable across the board.”

While Matilda’s lease period only started in June, it has already proven several key capabilities. In collaboration with the Australian military, it’s been operating in and out of Darwin, Australia, demonstrating an ability to land on a 1:40 beach gradient, classified as a moderate to gentle slope — a shallow beach that most larger vessels struggle to land on.

It will soon travel to Okinawa for exercises with III Marine Expeditionary Force, where its capacity, range and stability will be use-tested, among other things.

The vessel has a stated range of 4,000 nautical miles, a capacity of 84 shipping containers and the ability to handle relatively rough sea states thanks to its V-shaped hull.

“Almost all amphibious vessel designs are incapable of long-distance offshore voyages,” Stuart Ballantyne, CEO of Seatransport, told the news outlet Baird Maritime in March. “This vessel can achieve 85% of her designed speed in head sea state five and predominant waves in standard tradewind areas.”

Amid the Navy’s continuing efforts to invest in the landing vessels, the performance of Matilda 1 has been encouraging as the Corps grapples with a cost it finds acceptable.

“It’s kind of the best of both worlds, if you will, and has proven out pretty well so far,” Griffith said.

In November 2025, U.S. Army Europe and Africa, in collaboration with the Department of the Army and U.S. European Command, charged the unit with learning from dedicated drone forces, including those fielded by Ukraine, and feeding those lessons back to the Army to support the Pentagon’s push for U.S. drone dominance.

The official, who spoke on background, said in a statement that after the massive, multinational Exercise Saber Junction in August and September, the battalion will return to its airborne infantry mission.

The statement did not include the unit’s name or the number of soldiers.

The move, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes as Acting Chief of Staff of the Army, Gen. Christopher LaNeve, issued the Army’s strategic roadmap titled “The Army Azimuth.”

In the public statement, LaNeve said the Army needed to “counter enemies who employ stand-off weapons, including unmanned systems and WMD.” For American troops, he emphasized, “the fundamentals of Soldiering, ensuring a strong grounding in warrior ethos, individual Soldier readiness, and small unit tactical skills.”

The Pentagon has focused heavily on expanding its drone arsenal following a June 2025 executive order directing the U.S. military to enhance its unmanned aerial systems capabilities. Following that order, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a July 2025 memorandum in which he said that “U.S. units are not outfitted with the lethal small drones the modern battlefield requires,” and pledged to revamp the military’s drone acquisition and fielding efforts.

U.S. Central Command this month announced the creation of a multinational task force that will use one-way attack drones in the air, on the water and underwater alongside regional partners. CENTCOM’s task force follows its 2025 establishment of Task Force Scorpion Strike, which is based in the Middle East and outfitted with one-way attack drones.

Following revelations from families about some U.S. service members aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln struggling with mental health after 250 days without a port visit, sailors, retirees and lawmakers told Military Times that troops were absorbing consequences of longtime flaws within the sea service that have been worsened by the current conflict.

The Navy has struggled for years to meet high operational tempo demands, they said. Deployments are regularly extended, scheduled maintenance is missed and the shipbuilding pace remains glacial, leading to delays in delivery and an undersized fleet.

The issues have spanned multiple presidential administrations but have been compounded by the handling of the Iran war and ensuing military operations, sources said, leading to dire circumstances for some sailors.

Leaders have disputed the descriptions of deteriorating conditions aboard the Lincoln and denied reporting about quality-of-life concerns.

Asked recently by reporters about families’ concerns over the length of the deployment, President Donald Trump dismissed the question, saying that it’s “not nearly long enough.”

Asked about those same concerns, Adm. Daryl Caudle, the service’s chief of naval operations, told Military Times, “Sailors first is not a slogan — it’s a warfighting imperative.”

“The sustained pace of operations in the Middle East has only reinforced that taking care of our sailors and maintaining combat readiness are inseparable,” Caudle said.

‘We need more ships’

Following outcry about conditions aboard the Lincoln, the Navy moved the Nimitz-class carrier USS George Washington from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East, where it arrived Wednesday. The ship is reportedly replacing the Lincoln, which will now steam toward its homeport of San Diego.

The move temporarily leaves the western Pacific without a U.S. aircraft carrier, the presence of which is a key part of the U.S. military’s effort to deter China in the South China Sea and reassure regional allies.

Operational tempo concerns, meanwhile, are nothing new for the service, according to retired Vice Adm. Fozzie Miller, who served as commander of U.S. Fifth Fleet and U.S. Central Command from 2012 to 2015.

Miller joined the Navy in 1979. From his early days in uniform, the service’s goal, he said, was to operate at a level that was neither too harsh for the individual sailor nor too unbearable for the equipment vital to mission success. An adequate number of warships was integral to maintaining that balance.

“We could use more carriers or less [operational] tempo,” Miller said. “It’s one or the other, but we’re a global Navy with global responsibilities, and so if we’re going to fulfill those, we need more ships.”

Rear Adm. Thomas Moore, who led the Navy’s acquisition program and went on to become commander of Naval Sea Systems Command, told Congress in 2013 that the service is “an 11-carrier Navy in a 15-carrier world.”

The demand is unlikely to dwindle, he said.

Thirteen years since Moore’s statement, the Navy is still at 11 carriers. With the USS Nimitz scheduled to retire at the end of next year, that number may soon be 10.

The USS Harry S. Truman and USS Gerald R. Ford are currently sidelined for maintenance after deployments, the latter of which notched a post-Vietnam record 326 days at sea in May after it was extended to support operations in the Middle East. The Nimitz-class USS John C. Stennis is undergoing a years-long overhaul.

The USS Ronald Reagan, also a Nimitz-class, is expected to be deployable by the end of August after a 17-month repair period. The Nimitz-class USS George H.W. Bush is in the Middle East.

“We just don’t have enough aircraft carriers right now in this rotation to sustain all the things we want to do, and I think this is a long-standing problem,” said Steven Wills, a Navy surface warfare officer who retired after 20 years.

In 2014, the Navy began implementing the Optimized Fleet Response Plan, or OFRP, deployment model, which places maintenance, training, evaluations and a single eight-month deployment within a 36-month cycle.

The service says the framework is intended to produce a more comprehensively manned and trained force while providing predictability to deployment schedules for sailors and their families.

In 2016, however, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that heavy operational demands led the Navy to increase ship deployment lengths and reduce or defer ship maintenance.

Those decisions made deployments less predictable, ate into training time, contributed to declining ship conditions and increased the time ships required for much-needed maintenance.

From fiscal 2014 through 2019, Navy ships spent more than 33,700 additional days in maintenance beyond intended scheduling, leading to fewer vessels available for training or operations.

An upended supply network

While the Navy has long struggled with carrier availability, current U.S. leadership has created more operational tempo issues through poor planning and insufficient wartime support, according to lawmakers and a sailor who deployed in support of the Iran war.

“Logistics was a complete failure the entire time out there — food, supplies, parts,” said the sailor, who served aboard an Independence-class littoral combat ship and was granted anonymity due to fear of reprisal.

Iranian attacks damaged the Navy’s longstanding logistics hub in Bahrain in February, disrupting the regional supply network supporting ships operating in the Middle East.

The Navy shifted the new logistics hub to Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that sits more than 2,000 miles away from the service’s carrier strike groups in the Middle East.

Diego Garcia’s distance proved to be problematic, the sailor said, with the hub requiring the LCS to place a food order 30 days in advance.

Those orders were nearly impossible, however, with an influx schedule exacerbated by poor planning, the sailor added. Sailors were unable to resupply from the hub, instead grabbing whatever could be salvaged from replenishment-at-sea oilers.

“There’s no excuse for why, if we’re at war, we can’t get an expedited food order,” the sailor said.

Rep. Mike Levin, D-Calif., told Military Times that the logistical issues described by the sailor were due to preparation failures.

“I’ve spoken to a lot of people who’ve been deployed, and you know, the basic problem seems to be that if they were going to use Bahrain as a hub to restock, to get food and to provide rest and all that,” Levin said. “If that was the idea, well, clearly that didn’t work out. After February, March — [the administration] should have thought of that.”

‘People can break, too’

At least two sailors attempted to jump overboard from the USS Abraham Lincoln, families of Lincoln sailors previously told Military Times.

While the individual mental circumstances of the incidents remain unknown, the frantic operational tempo of combat operations inevitably takes a natural toll on service members, according to one sailor who has deployed to the Middle East aboard an aircraft carrier during the current conflict.

“Just like machines, people can break, too,” said the service member, who was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal from leadership. “They need rest.”

Time to rest was not always available. Losing sleep was sometimes part of ensuring safety.

If equipment broke, sailors would, at times, work well beyond normal shifts until it was fixed. In some instances, completion of the task could mean the difference between life and death.

In a 2021 review, the GAO found that just 14% of Navy officers surveyed slept at least seven hours per night during a recent deployment, while 67% reported five hours or less. GAO also found that the Navy routinely assigned fewer sailors to ships than workload studies indicated were needed to safely operate them.

By 2023, surface-fleet sailors were averaging 5.25 hours of sleep every 24 hours, below the Navy’s standard of providing at least 7.5 hours of sleep opportunity. GAO identified crew shortfalls and mattress problems as challenges to managing fatigue.

For its part, the Navy has implemented measures to try to address the issue, including initiating a study involving about 1,600 sailors wearing Oura rings to monitor sleep and other biometric indicators while underway.

But lack of sleep, according to personnel, has been just one detriment experienced during the conflict with Iran. Service members have also faced food shortages onboard the carrier, the sailor said, with quality that fluctuated between bad and horrible.

“It was either undercooked, overcooked or unrecognizable at all,” the sailor said.

As extensions piled on, a decline in morale took on a recognizable tone at the phone center or in conversations at the galleys. Humor darkened even more than usual, and port visits meant less and less.

“These things have been happening on deployments for always,” said Parker Moore, a nuclear reactor operator who served aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln before its recent deployment. “It is bad, but it is always bad.”

During Moore’s time on Lincoln, the stigma surrounding mental health remained prevalent. There were mental health professionals aboard the ship, but if a sailor sought help, the service member could be taken off their job.

“They’re terrified to disappoint the people around them,” Moore said. “If I don’t do my job, there’s only 30 people who can do it, right? So now there’s only 29 people.”

Following the report on mental health issues aboard Lincoln, the Navy said it had not observed an increase in suicidal ideation or suicide attempts. The service did note, however, that additional counselors and resources were being sent to the crew.

Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command, visited Lincoln on Saturday and issued a statement claiming that the ship had the lowest number of mental health cases among the Navy’s 11 active aircraft carriers.

Lack of transparency

The Pentagon under the Trump administration has become increasingly tight-lipped over the information it provides to Congress.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth released a memo in October 2025 informing Defense Department personnel, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that authorization was required for any communication to leaders on Capitol Hill.

Hegseth also dodged several questions from lawmakers during a July Senate hearing on the Iran War.

When Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., asked the Pentagon leader whether previous statements about Iran’s military being “destroyed” and “made combat ineffective” were true, Hegseth declined to answer.

Hegseth has also not held a Pentagon press briefing about the Iran war for more than 100 days, with the last coming on May 5.

To alleviate concerns over short-term problems with current military operations like those aboard the Lincoln, Congress must be able to carry out oversight, lawmakers said.

Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., told Military Times that the Pentagon should be sharing information that would allow political leaders to assess whether the president and defense secretary were deploying assets in the most mission-effective way.

Invoking the War Powers Resolution would allow lawmakers to hold the current administration accountable, some Democrats have argued.

The resolution requires the executive branch to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying military forces and allows lawmakers to enforce the removal of military forces within 60 to 90 days unless Congress has declared war or authorized military force.

Levin supports that approach, he said, and asked that his Republican colleagues stand up and ask tough questions.

Republican members of the House and Senate armed services committees did not respond to Military Times’ requests for comment.

“I think back to George W. Bush,” Levin said. “I disagreed wholeheartedly with Iraq, but you think about the steps that he took. You think about … Secretary Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, others — their consistent engagement.”

For the LCS sailor, planning deficiencies are already rearing their head.

Though the ship did assist with the Navy’s blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, turning away more than a dozen vessels, it will now be sidelined longer than scheduled because of deferred repairs.

It is one example, the sailor said, of there being no long-term plan for ship rotations.

“‘We’re gonna keep you out here,” the sailor said of the impression made on them, “until your ship can’t operate or function anymore.’”

The goal is to create a variant of the SeaSparrow that can be used by the 12 nations in the NATO SeaSparrow Project Office consortium, or NSPO, according to the Navy Sources Sought notice. The deadline is Oct. 19.

The NSPO is looking for a weapon that can be employed against a wide variety of threats. The NSV SeaSparrow “should have capability against current and future threat classes spanning a variety of threat characteristics including velocity (low-speed to high-speed), altitude (sea skimming to high diver), maneuverability (non-maneuvering to high Gravitational (G)-Force maneuvers), and signatures,” the Navy said.

The NSV is also meant to defend the fleet against massed salvos of missiles and function despite jamming.

The weapon “should be able to work in complex natural, contested, Radio Frequency (RF), Electro-Optical (EO), and/or Infrared (IR) environments.”

“The missile should have the capability to discriminate and resolve between multiple closely spaced targets and provide threat-track measurements to support missile guidance, navigation and lethality functions,” the Sources Sought notice continues. “The missile should have the capability to handle threat countermeasures.”

The notice included a graphic that appeared to depict surface ships — including two aircraft carriers — being targeted by a dozen missiles and torpedoes, plus a hostile fixed-wing aircraft and a helicopter. The friendly ships appeared to be using active illumination to paint some threats, while the SeaSparrow used its on-board sensors to intercept others.

NSPO seeks a modular, open-source design that would give the U.S. government “maximum rights in technical data, computer software, and computer software documentation (including source code), design artifacts, and interface specifications.”

“This approach will simplify future upgrades, promote interoperability across consortium platforms, and outpace evolving threats,” the notice said.

The NSPO wants contractors who can provide a complete missile system, including airframe, propulsion, guidance and software. The missile should have no more than a 10-inch diameter and fit inside a Mark 41 vertical launch tube.

The Sources Sought notice emphasized that the missile and its technical data should be releasable to the entire NATO SEASPARROW Consortium: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the U.S. Other users include Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.

The Block II RIM-162 Evolved SeaSparrow is currently manufactured by Raytheon, which doubled production to more than 350 missiles in 2025. Amid naval operations in the Persian Gulf, where Iran has launched numerous missiles and drones against dwindling stocks of U.S. and allied interceptors, future demand for short-range air defense weapons is likely to be brisk.

First fielded in 2004, the Evolved SeaSparrow is descended from the 1950s AIM-7 Sparrow radar-guided air-to-air missile.

Though the original Sparrow had a mixed combat record as an aerial combat weapon in the Vietnam War, the Evolved SeaSparrow was intended as a low-cost defense against anti-ship missiles, aircraft, helicopters and fast attack boats. The current version has an estimated range of around 30 miles.

Inside an office building in West Los Angeles, retired Marine Maj. James Capers Jr. stood tall and strong in his signature spit-shined black cowboy boots. Under the shadow of a red Force Recon Association hat and tinted glasses, Capers’ eyes wore a hardened look that made no effort to hide the darkness and despair that gripped him at that moment.

It was the fall of 2009, and Capers had come in search of a new mission. As the enlisted chief of the Marine Corps’ Hollywood liaison office, I’d been advised that Capers had been recommended for the Medal of Honor for his actions in Vietnam 42 years earlier, and he would likely soon become the first Black Marine officer to receive the nation’s highest award for battlefield valor. Our job was to support the major as he made the move from North Carolina to California, where he planned to complete his memoir and share his story in Hollywood.

I expected to meet a larger-than-life warrior. Instead, I met a soft-spoken, humble man who was grief-stricken over the recent loss of his wife to cancer. His eyes told the story of a wounded soul. At the time, I had no idea I was meeting him in the middle of what would become one of the longest Medal of Honor fights in American history.

That fight finally ended in June at the White House after President Donald Trump clasped a powder blue ribbon around Capers’ neck and straightened the gold, star-shaped medal over his chest. The ceremony concluded a nearly 20-year struggle that profoundly shaped the latter decades of Caper’s life — a trial marked by devastating grief, institutional rejection, deteriorating health, and extraordinary perseverance.

“Jim, the nation kept you waiting far too long,” Trump said at the ceremony. “So I say to you, congratulations. You made it.”

The moment was the culmination of a push to recognize Capers that began in 2007 after a general at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, initiated an investigation to determine if Capers and others who served in Vietnam with 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company in 1966 and 1967 should be considered for valor awards or upgrades to medals they had already received. The elite special operations detachment, which fought in the rice paddies and triple-canopy jungles of Southeast Asia, had come to be known as “the lost detachment” because administrative records of their exploits were lost for years. After reviewing detailed records and accounts of Capers’ bravery and combat leadership in Vietnam, the general, James L. Williams, believed Capers’ actions were worthy of the Medal of Honor.

‘I had to make sure I kept my troops alive’

Capers is a legend of the Marine Corps’ elite Force Reconnaissance community. In his first enlistment in the infantry, Capers stormed a beach south of Beirut, Lebanon, in 1958, with 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines. After that deployment, he tried out and was selected for duty with the 1st Force Reconnaissance Company.

In 1965, he volunteered for duty in Vietnam with the newly formed 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company and was placed in charge of an all-white platoon of 20 men. Walter J. Doroski, who served as Capers’ point man in Vietnam, recalled the day he met his new platoon sergeant.

“He stood with confidence and an ominous charisma,” Doroski said in a statement. “In a deep, clear, but not loud voice, he said, ‘Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. I am Staff Sgt. Capers, and we will be the absolute best platoon in this company, which will make us the best platoon of Marines in the world.’ … For the next 18 months, I never knew of anyone who questioned his authority or leadership.”

From August 1966 to early April 1967, Capers led dozens of long-range reconnaissance patrols deep behind enemy lines.

In his first missions in Vietnam, Capers led combat diver teams in shark-infested waters, searching the hull of the USS Boxer for enemy mines and saboteurs while it was docked at ports in Nha Trang and Qui Nhon.

In August and September, Capers and his men endured intense combat during Operations Deckhouse III and IV. When an infantry unit was trapped and isolated by the enemy, Capers led a rescue mission to get the Marines out of the kill zone under fire. He also assumed command of another reconnaissance platoon after its commander was killed in action.

“I wasn’t afraid because I had a job to do, and my job was to lead and to look out for my guys,” Capers said later of the Deckhouse operations.

Then, in late November 1966, Capers and his team were tasked with locating and assessing the wreckage of a downed aircraft. After they gathered critical intelligence from the crash site of the B-57 Canberra bomber, torrential rains prevented the team’s helicopter extraction, leaving the lightly armed patrol isolated with limited food and ammunition. When extraction proved impossible, Capers gathered his men.

“We can’t stay here,” he told them. “If we do, we’ll die. … Saddle up. We’re walking off of this damn mountain.”

As the downpour continued for several days, Capers led his Marines on a grueling 9-kilometer hike through rugged mountains, flooded rivers, triple-canopy jungle, and two minefields, consistently outmaneuvering enemy forces to make it safely back to friendly lines.

Capers was still exhausted from the mission when he learned he would no longer be the platoon sergeant. On Nov. 30, 1966, he received a battlefield commission — a rare honor given to only 63 enlisted men in Vietnam — and was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant.

Still, Capers understood that any failure could reinforce racist beliefs about whether Black Marines should become officers.

“Had I drowned on a dive mission, or had I made the wrong decision, then it would have given the naysayers fodder for saying, ‘We knew we shouldn’t commission those guys.’ So I couldn’t fail,” Capers said. “I had to succeed. … I had to make sure I kept my troops alive.”

Capers earned a Bronze Star with “V” for his actions in January 1967 while serving as assistant patrol leader for a top-secret mission to locate and liberate prisoners of war from a Viet Cong prison camp more than 20 miles behind enemy lines.

After completing that mission, he was sent to Khe Sanh, where he and his Marines patrolled the jungle around the combat outpost, moving like ghosts and killing dozens of enemy soldiers in a near-constant rotation of patrols that Capers coordinated, oversaw, and frequently led.

On one mission, Capers and his team — named Team Broadminded for their tactical efficiency — killed around 15 enemy soldiers. On the chopper back to Khe Sanh, the team was subdued.

“There was no backslapping,” Capers recalled. “For us, death and killing had become business as usual.”

It was just one of many patrols through the jungle that ended in savage close combat.

“You play God,” Capers said in 2009. “And you cover it up by saying, ‘In the interest of national defense — kill him before he kills me.’”

The last patrol

By March 1967, the Marines of 3rd Force Recon in Vietnam had likely killed or wounded hundreds of enemy soldiers, but many of the 39 Marines who originally deployed in April 1966 had become casualties themselves. The survivors were battle-fatigued, short-handed, and waiting to be relieved by another force reconnaissance unit when Capers was given orders to locate a suspected North Vietnamese regimental base camp near Phu Loc.

He gathered Broadminded’s core members — Ron Yerman, Capers’ trusted assistant team leader and first radio operator; Sgt. Richard Crepeau, another seasoned sergeant and the team’s second radio operator; and Billy Ray “Doc” Smith, the team’s medical corpsman.

“He asked us if we would volunteer to go on our last combat patrol into an almost impossible situation,” Crepeau recalled. “He said, ‘I’ve been ordered to go, but you don’t have to.’”

The sergeants and the corpsman looked at each other. There was no question.

“Where you go, we go,” Crepeau said.

Over the four days the patrol lasted, Broadminded got into several firefights. During one engagement, Capers called for fire on an enemy position, which stopped an attack on the unit they were supporting — M Company, 3rd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment.

The team found four booby-trapped trails — likely ambush sites — which Capers reported to the M Company commander, who then ordered Capers to take his team back through the sites. Capers and his men knew the commander was essentially using their reconnaissance team as bait to flush out the enemy forces so the regular infantry could swoop in for the kind of large battle the big-brass strategy demanded at the time.

On the last day of the patrol, April 3, Capers and his nine-man team maneuvered slowly and carefully, identifying and withdrawing from three ambush sites. As the team was about to withdraw from a fourth, the team’s war dog, King, alerted. Then the claymore mines detonated.

A massive, nightmarish explosion swallowed the team in a shockwave of steel balls that punched through limbs and torsos. More than a dozen North Vietnamese soldiers opened fire from two directions with rifles, machine guns, and grenades, wounding every member of the team. The initial blast killed King and knocked Capers against a tree, leaving his body punctured in 14 places and right leg broken.

As the whole team fought for their lives, Yerman, one of the only Marines with relatively minor wounds, crawled over to Capers.

“We’re all down, sir!” Yerman yelled. “But we can still fight!”

Capers ordered Yerman to redistribute the team’s ammo and pull the injured men into a tight perimeter. Smith, bleeding from his neck and face, sprinted from man to man, treating and dressing their wounds. Capers kept firing his rifle and throwing grenades as he shouted orders.

Smith gave Capers a shot of morphine and then darted away to treat the other Marines. As Yerman called for help from the grunts and worked on getting medical evacuation helicopters inbound, Capers ordered Crepeau to call in mortars dangerously close to the Marines’ position — a risky gamble that silenced the enemy guns.

“We’re not going to die on this trail,” Capers told his men. “We’re going home, and we’re going home like Marines.”

With help from the line grunts, Team Broadminded hobbled down a winding, rain-swept trail toward the helicopter landing zone. Capers used his rifle like a cane and limped along, blood sloshing in his jungle boots. At the landing zone, with bullets whipping and cracking around them, Capers — barely clinging to consciousness — refused to board the helicopter until every last man, and his dog’s body, was aboard. When the aircraft struggled to take off under the weight of its load, Capers yelled to the crew chief, “It’s no good,” and tried to sacrifice himself by exiting the aircraft so it could get into the air. The crew chief pulled him back inside — twice — before the pilot managed to gain some speed and lift off.

As the Marines lay recovering in the field hospital later, 3rd Marine Division Commander Maj. Gen. Bruno Hochmuth visited Capers and his men. Hochmuth knelt down beside Capers’ bed and patted his head.

“You did a good job, son,” Capers remembered him saying. “You guys did a real good job out there, and you’ll be hearing from us.” Seven months later, Hochmuth was killed in a helicopter crash.

In the dozens of combat patrols Capers had led, he’d never been caught in an ambush. His record was a point of pride. Perfection was the standard.

“After Phu Loc, the thought never occurred to me that I might deserve a medal, because I felt like I had failed,” Capers said.

A hero’s odyssey

In 2007, the administrative staff at 2nd Marine Division began a years-long process of gathering witness statements, officer endorsements, and other official documents before sending medal recommendations to the Marine Corps Awards Branch on behalf of Capers and several other “lost detachment” Marines.

Lt. Col. Gary Wilder, Capers’ battalion commander in Vietnam until February 1967, recommended Capers for the Medal of Honor for his actions during the last patrol at Phu Loc between March 31 and April 3.

The Marine Corps kicked back the award recommendation in March 2008, citing procedural errors, including the fact that Wilder and Capt. Ken Jordan, who served as Capers’ detachment commander until three days before the Phu Loc patrol, were technically ineligible to initiate the recommendation for Capers’ medal. The four-day timeframe also overlapped with the Bronze Star with “V” that Capers received as an “end of tour” award covering his entire Vietnam deployment — though that award summary did not capture most of the details of the Phu Loc patrol.

The team at 2nd Marine Division regrouped and revised their recommendation, tracking down the correct officers from Capers’ chain of command, obtaining their signed recommendations for Capers’ actions at Phu Loc, and addressing other discrepancies.

As Capers endured a whirlwind of intense scrutiny during that time, he was forced to confront painful memories and long-dormant demons.

“I was stripped down, and all my scars were measured. I answered many questions from investigators,” Capers said. “[They] asked me about the battle of Phu Loc and all the various missions I was involved in.”

“I resented those guys questioning my integrity or my battlefield competence when they had never shed blood as I had.”

When he got fed up with what he perceived as a callous approach by the doctors and investigators, Capers thought about two things. The first was his men. He focused on the effort to get them medals and upgrades for their actions in Vietnam.

The other thing that kept Capers going was his wife, Dottie.

“Dottie was the only woman I ever loved from the time I was 15 years old,” he says. “She was my rock.”

But in June 2009, in the midst of the whole ordeal, Capers lost his rock. A week after their 50th wedding anniversary, he said goodbye to Dottie in a hospital room in North Carolina after a battle with cancer. He slipped her wedding ring gently off her finger and whispered through tears, “I kept my word.”

Dottie was buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to Capers and Dottie’s only son, Gary, who was born blind and mentally handicapped and died at 44 in 2003. With his family gone, Capers was lost in grief, and his friends and loved ones could see it.

“I loved her so much. … I was the luckiest man in the world,” Capers said in November 2009. “But now I’m a widower. And my life, as I knew it, has ended, basically. ”

After Dottie passed, Williams, who served with Capers in the 1970s and remains close to him, connected Capers with a manager in Los Angeles and urged him to publish his memoir and pursue a documentary or feature film about his extraordinary life. The general had been inspired to join the Marine Corps, in part, after seeing Capers on a recruiting poster in his dress blues with a chest full of medals. So Capers, still deep in grief and in need of a new focus, left the small military town of Jacksonville, North Carolina, and settled in Santa Monica, California. It was practically the other side of the universe for him.

As he met with producers and writers, nearly everyone placed this measurement on Capers’ life story: With the Medal of Honor approved, Capers was Hollywood gold. Without it, he was unmarketable.

In 2010, Capers said he received a letter from the Pentagon telling him he would be awarded the Silver Star Medal — a downgrade of two levels for which no explanation was given. The processes that led to that decision remain a mystery.

“We may never be able to piece together how that decision was made,” Dwight Mears, a historian who has spent decades investigating and writing about Medal of Honor standards, told The War Horse. “It’s a system that’s very mercurial. It’s not very transparent. You’re basically asking an organization to be transparent about something that may not make it look good.”

Capers was awarded the Silver Star on Oct. 27, 2010, during a ceremony at the officer’s club on MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. Yerman, Crepeau, Smith, and John Moran, the dog handler on the Phu Loc patrol, also received the Bronze Star that day for their valor during the ambush.

“In the description for the Medal of Honor, it says that your deed has to be so significant that you don’t consider your own life,” Yerman, who accompanied Capers on more patrols in Vietnam than any other man, said in 2010. “He didn’t ever consider his own life when he was out there. … His whole life was dedicated to Marines.”

At the ceremony, Maj. Gen. Paul E. Lefebvre, then commander of Marine Forces Special Operations Command, called Capers “the spiritual founder of Marine Corps special operations.”

Hours before the Silver Star ceremony, Navy Adm. Eric Olson, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, inducted Capers into SOCOM’s Commando Hall of Honor, enshrining Capers’ legacy as a leader, innovator, and hero in the Marine special operations community.

Capers accepted the Silver Star with grace and humility. But when he returned to Los Angeles, he struggled. His health began to fail. After a long stay in the hospital, Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Bailey, a close friend and commanding general of 1st Marine Division, had Capers moved to Oceanside, where he slowly got better.

He moved into an apartment and reconnected with James Dixon III, the corporal who worked obsessively for more than a year helping to prepare awards packages for Capers and his men. Dixon moved in with Capers and helped him with his memoir while trying to reignite the effort to award him the Medal of Honor. But Dixon died tragically in 2012. Alone and reeling from another loss, Capers moved back to Jacksonville.

“I’d lost everything important to me,” Capers said of that time. “I guess I bought into the idea that the award was bigger than me because I needed to.”

‘A very subjective award’

For years, supporters tried unsuccessfully to persuade the military to reconsider Capers’ Silver Star. From 2010 to 2019, retired Marine Col. Phil Smith led efforts through the Force Recon Association to reopen the case. None succeeded.

The Pentagon had shown that old valor awards could be reconsidered. In 2014, President Barack Obama presented the Medal of Honor to 24 soldiers from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam whose heroism had been overlooked because of racial discrimination. The award upgrades followed a congressionally mandated review that took 12 years. No Marine medals were upgraded.

“The Medal of Honor is a very subjective award that depends very much on how well we tell the story,” Doug Sterner, an archivist and expert on military valor awards, told me in 2015.

Capers’ story gradually reached a wider audience. In 2015, I published an investigative feature about him in Maxim magazine, and Capers published his memoir, “Faith Through the Storm: Memoirs of Major James Capers Jr.” in 2018. A documentary about Team Broadminded followed later.

In 2021, Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Greg Murphy of North Carolina called for a review of an updated recommendation supported by new witness statements. Both lawmakers represented places closely tied to Capers: Norman’s district includes Bishopville, where Capers was born into a sharecropping family in 1937, and Murphy represented Jacksonville, where Capers lives.

But then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro denied the recommendation, citing regulations that “preclude reconsideration of any previously approved personal decoration for upgrade to the Medal of Honor unless new, substantive, and relevant material evidence is presented.” Norman then introduced legislation in 2022 and again in 2023 that would have authorized the president to award Capers the medal. Neither effort advanced. By then, supporters had concluded that another appeal through normal military channels was unlikely to succeed.

In 2024, retired Marine Lt. Col. David “Bull” Gurfein, who now serves as a senior Defense Department advisor, took over the campaign with board support from his nonprofit United American Patriots. After Gurfein learned of Capers’ story, he offered to lead a new strategic campaign that combined historical research, congressional lobbying, public pressure, and endorsements from senior military leaders.

“Many senior military leaders believed Capers deserved the Medal of Honor, but few believed he would ever receive it,” Gurfein told The War Horse. “We refused to accept that as a rational conclusion.”

Gurfein led a coalition that expanded upon research begun by Williams, gathering original records and examining why earlier efforts had failed. The coalition worked to push Capers’ story into public view. They circulated petitions urging President Trump to award Capers the medal while he was still alive. The major’s heroism was touted in news reports, opinion pieces, podcasts, and on social media. A 2025 interview with Capers on the Shawn Ryan Show garnered more than 1.7 million views on YouTube.

“We were able to finally get this done through a combination of getting the right people in the right place and having the influence to constantly keep Maj. Capers’ name trending,” said Ruben Ayala, co-founder of BLK-OPS Foundation, which supported the campaign. “As people saw all of the injustices throughout the years of not being able to get this right, they joined the fight.”

Another key victory came after retired Marine Sgt. Maj. Bryan Battaglia, a former senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, organized a letter to Trump supporting Capers that was signed by 133 retired senior enlisted leaders. A second letter was sent to the Commandant of the Marine Corps with signatures from four former sergeants major of the Marine Corps.

In February 2025, Norman secured a similar letter to Trump signed by 47 members of Congress, including six senators. Norman then introduced legislation waiving the five-year deadline that ordinarily limits consideration of Medal of Honor recommendations. The bill passed both chambers by unanimous consent.

Williams credited Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina as a key supporter of the legislation who helped push it across the finish line.

“Sen. Graham was absolutely a great supporter and a champion in this process,” Williams said after Graham’s unexpected death on July 11. “He did what he normally does: He strong-armed everybody on Capitol Hill.”

The campaign gained additional support inside the administration. During an August 2025 White House dinner honoring Purple Heart recipients, Capers met Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and spoke with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins. Collins later endorsed the effort in a letter to Hegseth’s senior staff. The effort seemed to reach a critical mass of support after Hegseth presented Capers with Fox Nation’s Salute to Service Award in front of a large national audience in November.

President Trump signed Norman’s bill into law on March 26. On June 18, 59 years after his actions at Phu Loc, Capers became the first Black Marine officer to receive the Medal of Honor.

‘Destiny’

On a hot June afternoon in Washington, two Marines helped the 88-year-old warrior rise and navigate a couple steps onto a stage at the White House, where President Trump hooked his right arm around Capers’ left and helped him stand tall. Then a military member spoke the words that Capers, and all who had advocated for him, had waited decades to hear: “The President of the United States, in the name of the Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to 2nd Lt. James Capers Jr., United States Marine Corps.”

After securing the medal around Capers’ neck, the president put his arm around him, pulling him close and smiling to the gathered guests, who erupted in applause and cheers. Capers stood there, beaming along with the president, flooded with the joy and validation of the moment.

“He has always been an unwavering example of strength, courage and grace,” Renee White, Capers’ niece and one of his only living relatives, said in a statement. “While my heart aches that his beloved wife, my Aunt Dottie, and their son, my cousin Gary, are not here to share in this historic day, I know they, along with his parents and siblings, are looking down with immense love and pride.”

After the ceremony, Capers attended a nearby reception. As he rolled into the venue, a huge crowd of friends, family members, and supporters gave him a long overdue hero’s welcome, showering him with love and admiration.

“The award represented the culmination of decades of patience by Capers and years of disciplined research, principled advocacy, and broad-based collaboration by hundreds of individuals committed to ensuring that the historical record was finally set right,” Gurfein said.

The following day — on Juneteenth — Capers was inducted into the Pentagon Hall of Heroes along with Marine Col. John Ripley, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor the day before.

“Your applause reminds me of some dark days — of some brave men who are not here today. So I’ll speak for them,” Capers said at the ceremony. “This is the greatest country in the world. I fought for that flag. I believed in it.”

In 1943, Capers’ family fled the Jim Crow South to Baltimore, Maryland. Four of his seven brothers and sisters died before age 10. When Capers enlisted in the Marines in 1956, his father drove him to the train station and explained that he would always have to perform better than his peers if he wanted to succeed.

“The Marine Corps did not welcome individuals like me,” Capers said. “But the hierarchy thought, ‘If he’s got the skills, at least give [him] the chance to try.’ That’s all I really wanted.”

Capers rolled in his wheelchair alongside close friends and family members down a long Pentagon hallway as hundreds of friends, supporters, and distinguished guests gave a long overdue hero’s reception. As he stared up with a proud smile at a sea of applauding admirers, he reached out to shake hands and expressed his thanks with a sharp salute.

When he reached the Pentagon Hall of Heroes, Capers located his name, newly printed on the wall.

Afterward, Lt. Gen. Melvin “Jerry” Carter expressed how it felt to see Capers awarded with America’s highest honor and what his legacy means.

“There would be no three-star African-American generals in the Marine Corps if it wasn’t for the leadership and contributions from men like [Maj. Capers],” said Carter, who currently serves as an advisor to the director of national intelligence. “I’m standing on the shoulders of giants, and our reconnaissance community certainly wouldn’t be as far as it is today without Maj. Capers. … We’re honored [and] pleased that he’s here today with us.”

Theodore Roosevelt Britton Jr., a 100-year-old Montford Point Marine and former American ambassador to Grenada and Barbados, was elated to witness his good friend’s induction into the Hall of Heroes.

“Maj. Capers epitomizes everything that we [Montford Point Marines] could have aspired to. … To see how far we have come is really wonderful,” Britton said afterward.

For Capers, it was a proud and cathartic experience that was somewhat bittersweet.

“I’m a little bit sad because there are a lot of my troops that are not here, but I’m here because of them,” he said in Washington the day he received the Medal of Honor.

Yerman and Crepeau, who both testified to Capers’ unparalleled combat prowess and leadership in Vietnam, never lived to see their former platoon leader receive the medal they believed he deserved.

“Had they not been along with me, I wouldn’t have made it.”

When I asked Capers what finally receiving the medal means to him, he thought for a second and calmly breathed out one word.

“Destiny,” he said, pausing for a moment. “It took a long time to get here. … It means a lot.”

This War Horse article was edited by Paul Szoldra, fact-checked by June Strange and Paul Szoldra, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.