Free Republic

After a 19-gun salute wreathed the parade ground at Camp Humphreys in white smoke on June 29, South Korea’s Minister of National Defense, Song Young-moo, and United States Forces Korea (USFK) Commander, General Vincent Brooks, cut the ribbon at the United Nations Command and USFK’s new headquarters. The massive $10.8 billion garrison in Pyeongtaek—America’s largest overseas military base—is in the final stage of a more than decade-long expansion project. About 45 miles south of the joint command’s former headquarters in metropolitan Seoul, it is expected to house nearly 45,000 troops, contractors, and family members by 2022, following the largest peacetime...

Military officials say the U.S. Army will roll out its new and improved fitness test by October 2020. The Army Physical Fitness Test that soldiers have known since the 1980s — 2 minutes of pushups; 2 minutes of situps; the 2-mile run — will be retired before the end of the decade. While the 2-mile run will still conclude the assessment, five other events seen as a better predictor of successfully completing combat tasks have been added. “The Army Combat Fitness Test [ACFT] will ignite a generational, cultural change in Army fitness and become a cornerstone of individual Soldier combat...

WASHINGTON — If and when a new military branch for space gets off the ground, its ranks would be dominated by airmen. But Army soldiers also would have a role by virtue of much they rely on military satellites in peacetime or in war. More than 70 percent of the Army's major weapons and equipment need satellites to function. About 2,220 active-duty soldiers, reservists and civilians make up the "space forces" under the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command headquartered at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. "We are the biggest users of space," said Brig. Gen. Tim Lawson,...

CAMP RED CLOUD, South Korea – Soldiers stood in formation as the garrison’s colors were cased Thursday in a ceremony officials said marked an important step toward closing this Korean War-era base and reducing the U.S. footprint north of Seoul. The inactivation of Camp Red Cloud, which remains home to the 2nd Infantry Division, was a largely administrative move aimed at consolidating resources as the Army steps up much-delayed plans to move most forces to its new hub in the southern half of the country. But Col. Brandon Newton, who served for the past two years as the final garrison...

TOBYHANNA — More than 100 new jobs are coming to the Tobyhanna Army Depot thanks to a $150 million increase in spending during federal fiscal year 2019 on WIN-T work — the development and maintenance of the Army’s most modern communications systems. U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright said Wednesday the move represents a long-term shift from reliance on private defense firms to Tobyhanna. Tobyhanna Army Depot will conduct a job fair Saturday, June 30, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at The Landing, Building 333, General Lemnitzer Street. “As a result of the increase in workload, we are hiring and are...

The West Point graduate, who last year posed in a picture holding a cap that had “Communism will win” written inside, is officially out of the U.S. Army with an other-than-honorable discharge. Spenser Rapone rocked the military community last year after his social media posts were revealed, showing him wearing a Che Guevara shirt underneath his military uniform.

The Army is fast-tracking an emerging program to engineer a longer-range artillery cannon able to out range enemy ground forces by hitting targets at more than twice the distance of existing artillery. The service is now prototyping an Extended Range Cannon Artillery weapons with a larger caliber tube and new grooves to hang weights for gravity adjustments to the weapon – which is a modified M777A2 mobile howitzer. Existing 155m artillery rounds, fired with precision from mobile and self-propelled howitzer platforms, have a maximum range of about 30km; the new ERCA weapon is designed to hit ranges greater than 70km,...

The U.S. Army recently put word out that it wanted submachine guns for conventional forces, and gun-makers were quick to respond. Ten companies are currently vying to supply troops outside the special operations forces realm with subguns for the modern battlefield. Officials said they wanted a weapon with full/semi-automatic selectable variant and a Picatinny rail, among other features, and organizations from Sig Sauer, Inc. to Colt answered the call. “For the first time in a long time, the Army is looking at a subgun for conventional forces,” Todd South of Military Times reported Wednesday. “Special operations forces have carried these...

Austrian troops will carry out exercises preparing the nation’s border defence against a migration influx later this month after Balkans police warned 80,000 third-world migrants are heading towards Western Europe. With up to 1,000 police officers, soldiers, and riot police set to take part in June, the drill will be Austria’s largest ever border patrol exercise, according to Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s best-selling newspaper. The announcement came following a security conference in Slovenia at which police chiefs from countries along the Balkans migration routes warned they had seen a significant upsurge in the number of border crossings. Speaking after the conference,...

It was little more than a year ago that South Korean police descended on the home of Lee Jin-young in Seoul, arrested him and placed him in solitary confinement. Lee is a long-time activist who had already been jailed in the 1980s for promoting democracy, but this time he was thrown in prison for different reasons. His so-called crime was running Labor Books, an online library of information on North Korea. Lee was charged with spreading literature that “benefitted the enemy” and could have faced years in prison until a court eventually quashed the charges against him. Sadly, this is...

"Save my heroes from suicide." Prince Harry has raised serious concerns about the number of British soldiers committing suicide after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Prince confided his fears about a recent surge in suspected suicides in a private letter to a decorated former war hero. His intervention comes as an investigation by The Mail on Sunday reveals veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now taking their own lives at a faster rate than their comrades died on the battlefield. At least 12 veterans are feared to have killed themselves since the start of the year...

The U.S. Army on Saturday identified the American soldier killed in a firefight with al Qaeda-affiliated al Shabaab militants as Staff Sgt. Alexander Conrad.Conrad was killed on Friday, while four other soldiers were wounded in an operation against the militant group. The Army said Conrad was attached to the 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group, Airborne, in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Conrad was a Human Intelligence, noncommissioned officer, according to Reuters. President Trump offered his condolences to Conrad's family on Friday via Twitter. "My thoughts and prayers are with the families of our serviceman who was killed and his fellow...

Spenser Rapone — the Army soldier who became notorious after a picture of him in his West Point uniform holding a “Communism Will Win” sign went viral — was discharged from the Army this month, according to social media postings.

Armed forces of the Turkish state continue their attacks in an effort to intimidate the people of Rojava, northern Syria as Afrin remains under their occupation. Rojava-based Hawar News Agency (ANHA) reported that Turkish troops deployed at the border with Rojava attacked the village of Ali Shar located east of Kobanê. Citing local sources, ANHA said Turkish forces opened fire on the village for 20 minutes, reportedly to cause fear and panic among the local people. Turkish forces had opened fire on the same village before.

French President Emmanuel Macron this year reintroduced national service, also known as conscription, to France in order to “foster patriotism and heal social divisions.”At a time when our nation is the most hyperpolarized it has ever been, when our young generation increasingly questions the very worth of America itself, and our country, particularly new generations is at the worst health in history, it is time to consider whether we should implement national service ourselves. National service is in common use currently across democratic nations in the world as a form of civic duty amidst the freedom one is provided, just...

OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea — A midnight curfew is now in effect for the sole U.S. Army infantry division in South Korea. A 2nd Infantry Division policy memo published Tuesday says soldiers are required to be on base, at a residence or inside a hotel room by the new deadline, instead of the U.S. Forces Korea standard of 1 a.m. followed until Monday. The curfew, which officials called a “readiness recall,” still ends at 5 a.m. 2ID did not identify any specific incident that sparked the change to the policy, but said readiness of the unit’s 12,000 troops was...

As one of the most iconic Korean dishes, army base stew, or budae jjigae, has a colorful history. In the aftermath of the war, American servicemen and troops were stationed in South Korea to prevent invasion. Resourceful Koreans had heard that these bases had a surplus of canned meats that often ended up in the garbage. These meats, like ground beef, Spam, hot dogs, and ham, were picked up and put into a spicy stew. In this episode of K-Town, host Matthew Kang tries an exemplary version of this now-classic stew at Dallas’s Dan Sung Sa. Today, budae jjigae shows...

Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar wants a border wall, and he's ready to order the military to do the job. In an amendment filed on Wednesday to a defense spending bill, Gosar proposed authorizing the Secretary of the Army to carry out President Trump's signature campaign promise of a security wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Gosar's proposal was tucked in the slew of amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act, a massive annual appropriations exercise that determines military spending and policy. The Hill reported Gosar's amendment in a roundup of the most notable of the 554 amendments to the NDAA that...

US Army Chaplain Tim Brown of Sanford is fighting for his husband facing deportation back to Honduras. "I will not stop. I am determined. I am persistent. and I am an advocate for humanity," said Brown. On Thursday, Brown's Husband, Sergio Avila Rodriguez was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Charlotte. Sergio is now being held at a facility in Georgia. "I get a phone call and that's when Sergio says to me, 'I've been detained and they are deporting me,'" Brown said. Sergio escaped Honduras with his family when he was just 6 years old. Brown says...

Ernest L. Medina, the Army captain who was accused of overall responsibility for the March 1968 mass killings of unarmed South Vietnamese men, women and children by troops he commanded in what became known as the My Lai massacre, but was acquitted at a court-martial, died on Tuesday in Peshtigo, Wis. He was 81.