Free Republic

Coast Guard officials reached out personally to their transgender service members to express support after President Trump’s announcement of a new policy barring transgender people in the military, according to Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft. “The first thing we did is we reached out to all 13 members of the Coast Guard who have come out” as transgender, Zukunft told attendees at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event in Washington. Zukunft said he contacted Lt. Taylor Miller, the Coast Guard’s first openly transitioning officer who was featured in a Washington Post article last week. “If you read that story,...

More than a dozen retired generals and admirals have signed a letter to President Trump thanking him for his announced policy to ban transgender people from the armed forces. “We write today to express our gratitude to you for making the extremely courageous decision to reverse President [Barack] Obama’s transgender social experiment,” the conservative retired flag officers wrote. “There may be an enormous amount of vitriol directed at you for making this policy correction, but please know that overturning this policy may have done more in the long-term to save the culture and war-fighting capacity of the U.S. military than...

The Air Force is accelerating development of a special, high-tech, on-board threat library for the F-35 designed to precisely identify enemy aircraft operating in different high-risk areas around the globe - such as a Chinese J-20 stealth fighter or Russian T-50 PAK FA 5th Gen fighter, service leaders said. Described as the brains of the airplane, the "mission data files" are extensive on-board data systems compiling information on geography, air space and potential threats in areas where the F-35 might be expected to perform combat operations, Air Force officials explained. "Mission data files are the key that unlocks the F-35,"...

Are recruiters, particularly in the Army and Marines, lying to (or at least misleading) young women who they try to recruit into military service? That’s a question which is asked and answered in the LA Times this week by two people who should know. Julie Pulley is a former West Point graduate Army captain and Afghanistan veteran. Rear Adm. Hugh P. Scott was a Navy medical officer and is an expert in medical physical standards. They discuss the current push to drive up the number of women going into combat roles and the unique stresses which the demands of those...

What with all the new missile tests that Kim Jong-un has been conducting, should we be worried that he’s close to having nuclear ICBM capabilities? Some military intelligence experts think that North Korea is still a ways off from having both a reliable missile that could carry a significant payload across the Pacific and the ability to miniaturize their nukes to the point of fitting on such a missile. But one thing that most observers seem to agree on is that if Kim isn’t there yet he’s getting close enough to cause alarm. (Combined with the general perception that...

The US military is on an endless kamikaze run into oblivion, intent on destroying itself and seemingly unconcerned about putting the national security of this nation in peril. Yes, you heard it here. The leaders of the US military are so concerned with political correctness that they don’t give a damn about the defense of this nation. The latest bit of lunatic social engineering was reported by CNN yesterday. A woman will train with other potential officers this summer in hopes of becoming the first female Navy SEAL. The candidate, a midshipman, and another woman have enlisted as the first...

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday initiating a government-wide review of the U.S. defense industry and suggest changes to strengthen it. The review is intended to identify and address potential weak points in the defense manufacturing base including companies that could go out of business and leave gaps in the supply chain for U.S. weapons systems, said Peter Navarro, the White House National Trade Council director. The executive order asked for recommendations on possible legislative, regulatory and policy changes that would improve and support the defense industry, calling it a "significant national priority." "America's defense industrial base...

The second-highest-ranking general in the U.S. military on Tuesday warned lawmakers against equipping the armed forces with autonomous weapons systems that humans could lose control of and advocated for keeping the "ethical rules of war" in place. In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Gen. Paul Selva responded to a question from Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) about a Defense Department directive that requires a human operator to be involved in the decision-making process when it comes to taking lives with autonomous weapons systems. Selva warned lawmakers that the military should keep "the ethical rules of war in place...

A new diplomatic and military policy for Libya that could significantly expand US involvement in the country could be finalized by the Trump administration in the next few weeks, according to two US officials. The policy, if approved, would aim to further the existing US goal of supporting reconciliation between rival factions in eastern and western areas of Libya. The policy could also lead to the eventual re-opening of the US embassy and the establishing of a new intelligence sharing effort led by US special forces, according to the officials.

Female soldiers must give “dignity and respect” to transsexual men who join them in their shared shower rooms, according to training manuals leaked by soldiers in a mandatory class. But this “dignity and respect” is a one-way street, according to the training slides, which were developed by officials working for former President Barack Obama. “Transgender Soldiers are not required or expected to modify or adjust their behavior based on the fact that they do not ‘match’ other Soldiers,” according to the slides, which were first leaked by TheFederalist.com:The insistence that women remain mute when a man enters their shower room...

American financial, humanitarian and military help began in the second half of the 20th century. Throughout America’s generosity in helping other countries, there has been an underlying, unspoken assumption that there would be gratitude on the part of the recipients. And we do, indeed, see gratitude being expressed -- only to vanish in a very short period of time afterwards, sometimes to the point of hostility replacing the gratitude (this phenomenon is not limited to the United States; we see this occurring time and again between countries).

A House Republican has withdrawn, for now, an amendment to repeal President Barack Obama’s lifting of a ban on transgender troops, but warned Defense Secretary James Mattis that he must act to restore the longtime exclusion or face a legislative revolt. The amendment did provide conservatives on the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday night a forum to condemn the former president’s decision on grounds it will drive up medical costs, reduce combat readiness and subject troops to embarrassing encounters. Mr. Mattis faces a Saturday deadline, inherited from former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, to approve the recruitment of transgender people....

Pres. Donald Trump used the Navy’s next-generation aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, as a backdrop to unveil his vision for the next defense budget in March 2017. The moment was meant to symbolize his commitment to rebuilding the military, but it also positioned the president in front of a monument to the Navy’s and defense industry’s ability to justify spending billions in taxypayer dollars on unproven technologies that often deliver worse performance at a higher cost. The Ford program also provides yet another example of the dangers of the Navy’s and industry’s end-running the rigorous combat testing that is...

TIJUANA, MEXICO — Rep. Juan Vargas, a California Democrat whose district runs the length of the state’s border with Mexico, introduced a set of bills last fall aimed at helping U.S. military veterans who were deported after they were convicted of crimes. The bills stalled, casualties of what he called bad timing during the presidential campaign. Vargas reintroduced the bills last week, because now he sees “a real opportunity.” He and six other Democratic members of Congress spent Saturday in this Mexican border town visiting deported veterans to press the issue, thinking that President Trump might be receptive to the...

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The West Point graduate and Iraq War Army veteran President Donald Trump has nominated to be the new Army Secretary has a very good understanding of the Second Amendment, which is predictably driving anti-liberty liberals insane. Tennessee state Sen. Mark Green (R), President Donald Trump's nominee for Army secretary, strongly believes that citizens should be armed -- and not just with any ol' guns. They should be able to possess whatever weapons the military has, because an armed citizenry is the "ultimate checks and balances" against the federal government.

The White House insisted Tuesday that the $1 trillion spending bill includes money for 40 miles of border fencing, as President Trump sought to shore up Republican voters by saying the deal also lays the groundwork for rebuilding the military. The president said there is “enough money to make a down payment on the border wall,” and said a $15 billion boost in defense spending — without having a dollar-for-dollar match in domestic spending — has set a new standard that will benefit Republicans and the Pentagon. “This is what winning looks like,” Mr. Trump said. Republicans bristled after Democrats...

The Syrian city of Raqqa remains occupied by Daesh terrorists since early 2014. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) with the backing of a US-led international coalition is set to storm Raqqa and liberate it next month. It has been reported that US tanks will be used during the battle. A representative of the command of the Syrian Democratic Forces, who wished to remain anonymous, told Sputnik Arabic that the US had recently delivered heavy weapons and tanks to the SDF.“Two days ago, as part of the upcoming battle against Daesh the US sent us tanks and heavy weapons. The armament was delivered to Rojava [Kurdish de facto autonomous...

SIERRA VISTA – At 18 years old, Buena High School senior Adrian Garlant is living his dream. The Buena High School senior recently received an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. Garlant says he’s been dreaming of attending West Point Military Academy since the sixth grade. His mother Elizabeth Clark remembers the day he announced his plan. “They must have had career day or something, because he came in the door and said, ‘Mom, I’m going to West Point when I grow up’,” Clark recalls. “I said, ‘Do you know how hard that is?’” Clark...

Two members of the U.S. military were killed in an operation on an ISIS target in Afghanistan, NBC News reported. Another was wounded. More information on the soldiers, including what service they were in, wasn't immediately available, pending notification of their next of kin, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said in a statement Thursday. Trump Tax Plan Slashes Individual and Corporate Rates The operation took place in the Achin area, where the military dropped a massive, non-nuclear bomb called the "mother of all bombs" on an ISIS target in Afghanistan two weeks ago, the weapon's first-ever use in combat. Another...