Free Republic

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office say a body found during a search for a missing toddler has been identified as a U.S. Navy sailor missing since 2003. The Florida Times-Union reports the body of Yaroslav Victorovich Iventyev was found inside a car in a pond as authorities searched for missing 21-month-old Lonzie Barton.

D-DAY veterans promised France's highest bravery honour are still waiting for their medals due to red tape.The French announced last year on the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings that surviving UK veterans would get the Legion d'Honneur. But fewer than 250 of the 2,800 who applied via the Ministry of Defence have received their awards. The medal can not be awarded posthumously, meaning the families of those who die waiting will not get them. The delay has been blamed on bureaucracy. An MoD spokesman said: "We are fast-tracking the process where we are aware of health issues such as...

The Islamic State has told Muslims to target and murder members of the U.S. military in their homes. “(U//FOUO) FBI Alert: Middle-Eastern Males Approaching Family Members of US Military Personnel,” Public Intelligence, August 3, 2015 (thanks to Pamela Geller): “ The following alert related to “Middle-Eastern males” approaching military family members was obtained from the website of a veterans advocacy organization. A force protection advisory that was released by the Washington National Guard & Military Department days later describes a similar incident that occurred in Washington. Middle-Eastern Males Approaching Family Members of US Military Personnel at their Homes In Colorado...

Last month, Gen. Ray Odierno, outgoing Army chief of staff, and Gen. Mark Milley, his successor, testified to the difficulties faced by the Army. I’d like to make the same points by telling a story. **********snip************ The Obama administration just announced a 40,000 reduction in the Army’s ranks. But the numbers don’t begin to tell the tale. Soldiers stay in the Army because they love to go into the field and train; Defense Secretary Ash Carter recently said that the Army will not have enough money for most soldiers to train above the squad level this year. Soldiers need to...

While performing a stunt at the Aviamix air show on Sunday, a helicopter belonging to the Berkuty (Golden Eagles) aerobatic team suddenly banked on one side and started to lose height. “The helicopter went into flat-attitude spin and crash-landed,”

Someone found in an attic old 16 mm home movies from the 1930s -- labeled Kodachrome experiment. "Yeah, I was intrigued. So I took the projector, I took the films and I started to watch," Bill said. "And I loved what I saw. I saw scenes of our community and they were in color!" -snip He found out the photographer, a guy named Bob Kramer, went to work for Kodak labs right out of high school -- and that girl was his high school sweetheart, Leona Sharp. She would be 96 years old if she were alive. He found an...

As the sun went down after the 1862 Battle of Shiloh during the Civil War, some soldiers noticed that their wounds were glowing a faint blue. Many men waited on the rainy, muddy Tennessee battlefield for two days that April, until medics could treat them. Once they were taken to field hospitals, the troops with glowing wounds were more likely to survive their injuries — and to get better faster. Thus the mysterious blue light was dubbed “Angel’s Glow.” In 2001, 17-year-old Civil War buff Bill Martin visited the Shiloh battlefield with his family and heard the legend of Angel’s...

The Eagle was built by the Nazis and fought for Hitler in World War Two - so how did a tall ship that once flew the swastika end up as a training vessel for new US Coast Guard cadets? Driving home along the coast of Connecticut one winter's evening, Tido Holtkamp saw a ghost. There she was - moored in the harbour, her three towering masts, draped with those familiar sails he had rigged back in the German Navy in World War Two. Her body had been repainted in the red, white and blue of the US, but her curves...

The controversy surrounding the F-35 is fundamentally an extension of the debate over what a future fighter should be. Recently the aircraft made news when it was officially announced that the airframe couldn’t dogfight worth a damn. The standard riposte is that dogfighting as a form of aerial combat, stopped being relevant a long time ago. Perhaps the best advocate for dogfighting-is-dead point of view isn’t a paper for the F-35 but a paper which argues that air combat is fundamentally changing. Perhaps the F-35 is not the best tool for coming era, but neither is the super-dogfighter many in...

MEXICO CITY – A complaint lodged with the Pentagon has prompted the U.S. Navy to look into the possible presence of anything that may cause cancer in a section of the base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a military spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Marines at Camp Pendleton served their community in a different way Saturday by granting the Make-A-Wish of a Poway teenager battling cancer. James Gallant, who is on the verge of turning 16, was just diagnosed with brain cancer. His wish? To be a Marine for the day. “James has loved the military since he was two years old and always wanted to be a part of it,” James’ mother, Sarah Silverstein, told Marines at Camp Pendleton. During his two years of junior ROTC in high school, James became especially interested in Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD). So to make his wish...

Marine Corps leaders have made the long-awaited proposal to adopt the M4 carbine as the standard Marine infantry rifle. The recommendation wouldn’t completely phase out the currently-standard M16, but it would push the archetypal rifle into a support role. This follows in the Army’s footsteps, which began the transition to M4s more than 20 years ago. The M4 is in use with the Marines for select roles and is issued to officers as well.

Here is a moving tribute to the veterans of the USS Arizona that I didn't know about.

The military and a private organization have brought home the remains of 36 Marines killed in one of World War II's bloodiest battles. A group called History Flight recovered the remains from the remote Pacific atoll of Tarawa, the U.S. Marine Corps said. A ceremony was held Sunday in Pearl Harbor to mark their return.

Benjamin Bederson turned past the page in the diary from long ago, the page he had burned a hole through, and mentioned things he had done since that summer of 1945. “Was an experimental atomic physicist,” he said. “Worked as a professor at New York University, taught almost every course in physics, was editor in chief of the American Physical Society and helped usher physics journals into the electronic age.” He left out the part about helping to usher in the atomic age — the part about testing the ignition switches for the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki...

The safety of pilots, crew members and passengers has been put at risk repeatedly by people shining laser beams into the cockpit. I don't know very much at all about aviation, probably less than the average person. I do know that I have always been impressed by the Blue Angels as they fly in formation during their annual visit to San Francisco. Considering how well known, and documented this hazard is, and how vulnerable the pilots are, I'm surprised there has been no resolution to the problem. We may as well face it, there will always be goofballs, anarchists, and...

Here’s what warfare may be like in 2025 DAVID NYE JULY 23, 2015 With the technology of war rapidly changing, military leaders will have to rewrite the books on tactics and strategy. Here’s WATM’s take on what an infantry assault will look like in 2025, considering that by then we’ll have cyborg insects, powered body armor, and steerable sniper rounds. The mission TALOS Iron man suit A rifle platoon is tasked with assaulting a compound consisting of four buildings using only their own manpower plus a sniper team. They will be wearing TALOS armor, an “Iron Man”-like suit which covers...

During a July 23 interview on the Lars Larson Show, Senator Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) said that in June he “submitted an amendment” to the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) “to give military base commanders the authority to allow service members to carry personal firearms.” That was weeks before the heinous attack on Chattanooga, but he says the amendment went nowhere because Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “didn’t want the amendment as part of the bill and wouldn’t accept it.” On July 21–just 5 days after the heinous attack in Chattanooga–Senator Heller re-introduced his amendment...