Free Republic

The American Forces Network is ending its eight-channel satellite television service for U.S. military personnel living off base across Europe and Asia. The long-running service known as “direct-to-home” is screening its final programming before going dark March 22, said Kimberly Antos, director of AFN’s Broadcast Center. The network is replacing the satellite broadcast with its AFN Now application, which has drawn 57,000 registered users since it launched in 2022, she told Stars and Stripes in a Jan. 30 email. “This transition is absolutely a cost-saving measure,” Antos said, adding she doesn’t have information about how much money the broadcaster will...

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has ordered Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to remove Col. Dave Butler from his current job serving as chief of Army Public Affairs and chief advisor to Driscoll, who is currently in Geneva serving on the negotiating team to end the Ukraine war, Fox News has learned. Butler served as the head of public affairs for the Joint Chiefs when Gen. Mark Milley was chairman, and was slated to receive his first star. His name appeared for two years in a row on an Army list of 34 officers selected for promotion.

A former Army Colonel from Florida was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday for trying to woo a woman he met online by sending her secret classified battle plans. Retired combat vet Kevin Charles Luke, 62, was working as a high-level civilian contractor with “top secret” clearance at US military headquarters in Tampa in October 2024, when he texted a photo of plans for a Middle East attack to his new fling, according to court documents. “Sent to my boss earlier,” he wrote in the text, which included a photo of an email on his work computer at Central...

Internal orders issued by China’s top military authority have met widespread resistance at the grassroots level following the purge of two of the country’s most senior generals, according to multiple sources close to the People’s Liberation Army who spoke to The Epoch Times. After Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia and chief of the Joint Staff Department Liu Zhenli were placed under investigation on Jan. 24, at least two directives issued by the CMC General Office to theater commands and group armies were ignored or only passively acknowledged. Sources said the grassroots troops within the military are expressing...

The Belgian troopship SS Léopoldville had just slipped beneath the English Channel after being hit by a torpedo. Gerald Howard went down with the ship. The 23-year-old rifleman nearly drowned under the frigid water like hundreds of his comrades. He fought his way back to the surface. "I was on the ship until it went down," Howard recalled decades later. "It pulled me down, and when I came up I saw a life raft. They said 'You can't get on.' I said, 'Like hell I can't.'" Howard woke up around midnight in a hospital in Cherbourg, France. He was among...

The European Union should raise a continental army of 100,000 soldiers and create a “European Security Council” because the “Pax Americana” is over and it would build “European Independence”, a top commissioner has said.The European Union wants to create a parallel defence structure replicating many of the roles presently carried by the NATO alliance, so said the bloc’s Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius at a Swiss military conference. While focussing on the Ukraine war and the perceived threat of Russia, the Commissioner also listed other threats or geopolitical changes that he said made it “even more clear that we need to...

Dear ARMY Veterans,My first attempt at create a table of military service for those who served in the ARMY was saddled with an incorrect thread title. I still want to complete a table of honor for the ARMY.If you are willing to be added to the table, have a look at the format I've created and repy on this thread to have your name added. Once I get the names, I can post the completed table in a comment at the bottom of this thread, which you can link for later reference.place holder for usernameU.S. ARMY1972 - 1978, optional details...

Arab bus driver, Fakhri Khatib, plows into ultra Orthodox Jews haredim protesting draft. killing teenager Yosef Eisenthal and injuring several others.Bus driver rams into ultra-Orthodox protesters in Jerusalem, 14-year-old killed.Thousands of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) protesters gathered in Israel's capital on Tuesday evening • Driver arrested after killing one, injuring three others • Shas: "Haredi blood is not cheap."By Miriam Sela-eitam, Tobias Holcman. JPost, January 6, 2026.Yosef Eisenthal, a 14-year-old boy, was killed, and three were injured after a bus driver ran over ultra-Orthodox Jews during a haredi draft protest in Jerusalem on Tuesday."We responded to a severe collision involving a bus...

Criminals never cease to amaze. A Florida man who was a bell ringer for the Salvation Army for the Christmas season was arrested this past week for allegedly trying to impale the store manager of a grocery store with the tripod to the donation kettle, according to law enforcement. Steven Pavlik, 63, was found at his home and arrested. He was charged with resisting arrest and aggravated assault. The alleged victim was the store manager at Publix in Stuart, Florida. Fox News reported: A Florida man working as a Salvation Army bell ringer for the holidays was arrested Christmas week...

ALEXANDRIA, VA—In an effort to root out racism, the Salvation Army announced they will no longer be accepting any donations in the form of bills or coins that have white people on them.“Ever since we learned that racism is everywhere, all the time, ingrained in every aspect of life, we realized most U.S. currency depict the faces of white men who only did evil, racist things in their lives,” said the Commander-in-Chief of the Salvation Army, Clurvis Bellman. “We then decided the best way to feed, clothe, and comfort the poor and needy is to stop accepting money tarnished with...

The U.S. Army is not in “terminal decline” but at a “classical crisis”—a decisive turning point. Critics see an “obsolete” force, but the author points to historical parallels (post-WWI, post-WWII, and the post-Vietnam “Hollow Army”) where the Army successfully renewed itself. Signs of this “metamorphosis,” like the SkyFoundry drone initiative (aiming for 10,000/month by 2026), show the Army is adapting, not collapsing, and will emerge smaller but more lethal.

Canada's top general cries during apology for "systemic racism".................... 0:42 VIDEO AT LINK.............

The retreat from Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Grande Armée in 1812 was a cataclysmic event that marked the beginning of the end for his empire and personal dominance in Europe, with about 300,000 soldiers perishing in a force that originally numbered roughly a half million. A new study involving DNA extracted from the teeth of 13 French soldiers who were buried in a mass grave in Lithuania's capital Vilnius along the route of the retreat is offering a deeper understanding of the misery the Grande Armée experienced, detecting two pathogens not previously documented in this event. "Vilnius...

When the headlines scream about trillion-dollar defense budgets vanishing into black holes, it’s a rare jolt to see the Pentagon back a project that actually delivers firepower without draining the taxpayer’s wallet dry. Enter Castelion, [https://www.castelion.com/], the scrappy California-based defense outfit that’s just locked in contracts to bolt its Blackbeard hypersonic missile onto Army and Navy gear—real platforms, not pie-in-the-sky prototypes. Announced yesterday, this deal is a straight shot at fielding weapons that can outpace threats from Beijing to Moscow, all while keeping costs grounded in reality. Castelion, barely three years old and holed up in Torrance with outposts in...

Mark Bashaw, the only member of the Armed Forces to be court-martialed for refusing to take the COVID shot, has been reinstated to the U.S. Army, promoted as if he'd never been discharged, and awarded back pay. Making the victory sweeter is the fact that he was prosecuted by none other than current Virginia congressman, then Colonel Yevgeny Semyonovich Vindman, the brother of Lieutenant Colonel Aleksandr Semyonovich Vindman, of Trump impeachment fame. Bashaw, a former USAF noncommissioned officer, had been commissioned into the Army's Medical Service Corps and was stationed at Aberdeen Proving Ground. He was charged in February 2022...

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has acted to replace the number-two general in the U.S. Army, little more than halfway through his expected tour. The replacement of Army Vice Chief of Staff James Mingus came as something of a shock, as he was named vice chief of staff in January 2024 and should have served for at least 3 years. His replacement is Lieutenant General Christopher LaNeves, who is serving as Pete Hegseth's senior military assistant. LaNeve is currently a three-star will vault over quite a few senior officers if confirmed by the Senate. This is another case of a...

With a Georgetown University degree and several internships under her belt, Christina Salvadore thought she’d be starting a career in New York City’s fashion or beauty industries around now. The problem: She can’t find a job. The 23-year-old hasn’t been able to land a full-time role despite filling out hundreds of applications and taking dozens of networking calls since graduating in the spring. She’s currently applying to part-time gigs to tide her over financially. “It definitely sucks when people are like, ‘So what are you doing now?,‘” Salvadore, a Florida native, told CNBC. “I’m sitting in my parents’ house on...

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The Department of War will ask President Donald Trump for final approval to execute the Fort Cavazoz shooter, Nidal Hasan, a DOW official told the Daily Caller News Foundation exclusively. The execution, if approved by Trump, would be the first carried out by the military since 1961. Hasan, a former Army Major and psychiatrist turned radical Islamic terrorist, killed 13 people and wounded 32 others during his notorious rampage on the Army base in 2009. “I am 100 percent committed to ensuring the death penalty is carried out for Nidal Hasan,” Hegseth exclusively told the DCNF. “This savage terrorist deserves...

Photogrammetric reconstruction of the submarine USS F-1 on the seafloor west of San Diego, Calif. Credit: Zoe Daheron/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Deep-sea vehicles revealed detailed images of the USS F-1 submarine wreck. The expedition also honored lost sailors and trained future scientists. A recent deep-sea training and engineering mission off the coast of San Diego allowed researchers to capture unprecedented images of the U.S. Navy submarine USS F-1. The vessel sank on December 17, 1917, after a fatal accident that claimed the lives of 19 crew members. Thanks to interagency collaboration and state-of-the-art imaging tools, the century-old submarine’s resting place...