In its updated accounting method, the Defense Casualty Analysis System’s category labeled “Overseas Operations (OO) Casualty Summary” lists U.S. casualties suffered in the conflict since July 7 — effectively removing the totals from those associated with Operation Epic Fury.

The new page comes in the wake of criticism that the Pentagon had dropped the number of U.S. troops killed and wounded in the war with Iran.

On July 17 three U.S. service members were killed when an Iranian missile hit their sleeping barracks at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. The fourth death occurred two days later in a separate incident in Erbil, Iraq, during a controlled detonation of an attack drone.

The Pentagon initially updated its system to 18 killed before lowering that number to 14 once again.

On July 23, Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, refuted a New York Times article on the lowering of the KIA number, writing on X that “Our Pentagon Press Office gave the New York Times a courtesy off-the-record phone call explaining in detail that the site errors on the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) were due to a temporary data disruption. Our team explained we are working on it being resolved in coordination with the Military Services.”

Under the “overseas operations” system, the Pentagon reports that 207 U.S. service members have been wounded in action. It lists 417 wounded during Operation Epic Fury. Combined, the two categories account for 624 wounded service members. The total number listed as killed is 18.

The post-July 7 tally comes one day prior to the collapse of the tenuous June ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran, resulting in U.S. Central Command delivering 13 continuous nightly strikes against the Middle East nation.

The collapse of the ceasefire, the Trump administration argued, restarted the 60-day clock that allows the president to use military force without congressional approval.

The new accounting system is in line with President Donald Trump’s assertion that the latest escalation between the U.S. and Iran is part of a new conflict with the Islamic Republic, not a continuation of the one that began in February.

On July 10, the president formally notified Congress that hostilities with Iran had resumed, a position that administration officials contend allows them to bypass the War Powers Resolution and restart the clock again on the war.

In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth controversially claimed that the ceasefire with Iran meant that Trump did not yet have to seek congressional consent to extend the war.

Hegseth argued that the pause in hostilities froze the ticking clock that would otherwise require the president either to get agreement from lawmakers or to end military operations after 60 days.

“We are in a ceasefire right now, which [in] our understanding means the 60-day clock pauses, or stops,” Hegseth told Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

“I do not believe the statute would support that,” Kaine said, adding that he has “serious constitutional concerns and we don’t want to layer those with additional statutory concerns.”

Congress has not technically declared war since World War II, and yet more than 100,000 service members have died in conflicts spanning the globe since 1945.

Admiral, who currently serves as the commander of III Corps and Fort Hood, Texas, could take over the top job from Gen. Christopher Donahue, who unexpectedly relinquished command earlier this month after only 18 months in the role. Since Donahue’s exit, Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie has been serving as acting commander.

If confirmed, Admiral would also serve as commander of NATO’s Allied Land Command, coordinating with 104 countries in USAREUR-AF’s area of responsibility. He would remain a three-star, despite the role previously being a four-star position.

Prior to leading III Corps and Fort Hood, Admiral served as the commanding general for the 1st Cavalry Division out of Fort Hood, Texas, and in Poland, and director of force management in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3/5/7, according to his official Army bio.

Donahue’s early July departure came amid the Pentagon’s broad senior leadership changes under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who in April asked U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George to step down and retire ahead of the typical four-year term.

Since taking office, Hegseth has removed more than a dozen senior military leaders, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown and former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti.

Eve Sampson contributed to this report.

The Defense Department on Tuesday identified Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, of Ozone Park, New York, as the third soldier killed during an enemy attack at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, Jordan.

In the wake of the assault, U.S. Central Command confirmed the deaths of U.S. Army Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, and 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, from Ewa Beach, Hawaii, who died July 17 and July 18, respectively, according to a DoD release.

CENTCOM originally noted that a third U.S. service member was missing, however, the command announced on July 19 that, “After a thorough search, U.S. military personnel found unidentified remains at the location earlier today. An examination process to verify the remains is ongoing.”

The missing third service member appears to be Rampersad.

The Pentagon noted that the incident is under investigation, with the soldier status updated from “missing” to “believed to be deceased.”

According to the release, Rampersad enlisted in the Army in 2019 and was assigned to 1st Battalion, 57th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 52nd Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 10th Army Air & Missile Defense Command, Ansbach, Germany.

“Today, we mourn the loss of Sgt. Angel Rampersad,” Brig. Gen. Glenn Henke, commanding general of the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, said in a statement. “We extend our deepest, most heartfelt condolences to her family and all those who are navigating this unimaginable loss. The 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command is grieving, and we will continue to support one another as we process this tragedy.”

Rampersad’s awards include the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal with two Oak Leaf Clusters, the Army Good Conduct Medal, the National Defense Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon.

The latest casualties bring the toll of American troops killed in the war with Iran to 18. More than 400 U.S. troops have been wounded in the campaign, which began Feb. 28.

J.D. Simkins and Christina Stassis contributed to this report.

Born in Breslau, Germany (present day Wrocław, Poland), the Jewish-born Cohn and his family found refuge in the United States in 1938. Cohn was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943, just one month after his 18th birthday.

Sworn in as an American citizen during basic training, Cohn was originally assigned to the 87th Infantry Division before receiving orders as an infantry replacement and was sent to England, France and then all the way to the front line in Belgium.

While stationed near Bastogne, despite trying to distance himself from his native tongue, Army officials learned German was Cohn’s first language. He was subsequently plucked from the infantry ranks and sent to Le Vesinet near Paris. Unlike the Ritchie Boys — U.S. Army recruits who possessed German, Italian and Japanese language skills and immigrants who had fled Europe and Asia for the U.S. — who received a minimum of eight weeks of training, Cohn was slated for a two-week course which was then cut down even further.

“I had one week of training, and I became a full-fledged intelligence agent, well-trained,” quipped Cohn.

“The first night was the scariest night of my life,” Cohn recalled in a conversation with the Friends of the National WWII Memorial. “Not because we were bombarded or anything. Or shot at. It was all the rumors that were coming in.”

Speaking to an audience during a Nov. 13, 2024, conversation with historian and author Alex Kershaw, Cohn recalled, “I was given a rifle and a flashlight and told to go to a small dirt access road and make sure to not let any Germans come in. So, I get in the middle of road, and I stand there and a vehicle comes and I halt, and the driver asks, ‘What the heck you doing there?’ I say, ‘I’m making sure you’re not a German.’ He said, ‘if I was a German, you’d be dead.’

“I thought that was a good point. I go into a ditch in the road. The next vehicle comes. They don’t hear me. They go right by. I’m not doing my job. Now, what am I supposed to do? I’m up. I’m down. I don’t know what to do. Thank goodness around midnight they called me back in.”

For Cohn, the Bulge would hardly be his last time in combat. He saw action during the Rhineland campaign and was among the U.S. soldiers who met the Soviets at the river Elbe in Magdeburg, Germany.

Post-war, Cohn joined the Army Reserve and commissioned as a second lieutenant, deploying to Korea and Vietnam before retiring as a colonel in 1978.

Cohn’s celebration of life will take place on July 15 at the Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C.

The USS Constitution, named by George Washington and built with copper bolts forged by Paul Revere, was launched in 1797. The three-masted heavy frigate earned is famous nickname — “Old Ironsides” — during the War of 1812 after an astonished American sailor reportedly watched British cannonballs bounce harmlessly off the ship’s exceptionally thick oak hull and shouted, “Huzzah, her sides are made of iron!” according to the National Park Service.

While the wooden ship remains a symbol of durability and strength, its longevity would not be possible without a special 40 acres of land set aside for the care and maintenance of the ship from Naval Support Activity Crane.

According to National Geographic, NSA Crane dates back to the Franklin D. Roosevelt New Deal-era, when the U.S. government, in the depths of the Great Depression, purchased unfarmable land across the U.S. and reforested them for the purpose of creating jobs. NSA Crane was among the plots of land purchased by the FDR administration, and its 40,000 acres of hills was soon swarming with workers planting a wide variety of oak, hickory, poplar, maple and ash trees across the acres of Crane.

The onset of the war in 1939 prompted the U.S. Navy — whose weapons and munitions at the time were housed in Delaware — to seek a location that a potential enemy could not strike by sea.

Central Indiana was the ticket and so the government purchased another 30,000 acres surrounding NSA Crane.

The first administrative buildings on the base, according to Nat Geo, were dedicated in December 1941 — just a few days before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

But it wasn’t until the nation’s bicentennial in 1976 that NSA Crane reentered the Navy’s consciousness.

With attention returning to the storied, yet aging USS Constitution, NSA Crane’s concentration of high-quality white oak caught the Navy’s eye.

The oak forest is one of the few in the United States that contains centuries-old oak long and thick enough to provide the necessary lumber for the hull of the hulking Constitution.

Mature trees anywhere from 110 to 125 years old and 120 to 130 feet tall are needed for the ship that requires near constant maintenance. Its two most recent dry dock restorations — concluding in 2017 — required the felling of 114 white oaks.

Today, 40 acres of the park have been dedicated to keeping the warship afloat, where much of the timber is harvested, and it remains the only forest in the U.S. that is owned and managed by the Navy to support its fleet of old wooden ships.

According to U.S. Southern Command, the interim government of Venezuela formally requested U.S. support following the twin 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes. American forces are providing “specialized mobility services and support to U.S. government personnel, search and rescue teams, and U.S. interagency partners as they assess damage, locate the injured, and deliver critical, life-saving assistance.”

On Wednesday, a 7.2 magnitude quake hit north-central Venezuela near Yumare. Just 39 seconds later, a larger 7.5 magnitude quake struck in nearly the same location, along the fault that marks the boundary between the Caribbean and South American plates. The earthquakes have left entire neighborhoods in ruins.

As of Friday morning, the death toll has risen to 589 and thousands more are injured, according to Acting President Delcy Rodríguez.

Rodríguez noted that she welcomed the arrival of rescue crews from all over the world, as the death toll is expected to continue to rise.

“We are going to rescue the people who are trapped,” she said during a state televised update. “We are working tirelessly on this task.”

In addition to the warships heading to the South American nation, C-17 Globemaster and C-130 Hercules transport aircraft as well as fixed and rotary wing aircraft are en route to assist search and rescue teams, according to U.S. SOUTHCOM.

Fort Lauderdale and Billings have been assigned to Operation Southern Spear as part of the Pentagon’s campaign to combat what it has labeled as narcoterrorist operations to push illicit drugs into the United States.

Late Thursday evening, Maj. Gen. Kevin J. Jarrard arrived on the ground in Caracas to coordinate SOUTHCOM’s response and direct humanitarian assistance to the affected areas.

Jarrard will serve as the senior U.S. Southern Command official in Venezuela, overseeing the aid and rescue efforts that have at times been reduced to shovels, hammers and basic tools to assist rescue efforts as the nation’s emergency resources became stretched thin.

In a press conference on Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressed the importance of the next 48 hours and the critical aid the U.S. military can provide following the destabilizing earthquakes.

“The most immediate need, the one they need right now, is search and rescue,” said Rubio. “That’s the one they need immediately, because you’ve got to get people out of that rubble within 48 hours or they won’t survive. And so that’s the first thing we’re going to respond to.”

The first episode of the two-hour event premieres on Wednesday, June 24, at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on the Discovery Channel.

On Sept. 21, 1944, the Hōfuku Maru, alongside 10 other ships forming Convoy MATA-27, was transporting more than 1,000 Allied Dutch and British service members when it was sunk by American planes.

Among combatants on both sides, the Japanese alone refused to guarantee the safety of POWs at sea or mark their prisoner transports. Friendly fire accounted for a staggering 93% of the POW deaths on these ships, according to Gregory Michno, author of Death on the Hellships.

According to historian David Aquila, to add to the sheer terror of the experience, by 1944 these hell ships were carrying prisoners in numbers six times greater than what the Japanese had deemed acceptable at the beginning of the war. This practice, called chomansai, or super-full capacity, gave each man less than one square yard of space for voyages that lasted up to 70 days. The crowded, disease-ridden conditions, says historian Gavin Daws, were comparable to those on the slave ships of the 18th century.

One of the few survivors of the Hōfuku Maru sinking, Capt. Nigel Evans, later testified in British war crimes trials held in Singapore shortly after war’s end.

“Conditions on board became terrible,” Evans said. “It was a common sight to see prisoners of war eating their meals within six feet of a corpse being prepared for burial. On the day before we sailed, over a third of officers and men were unable to walk unassisted and there were a number of mental cases.”

Evans survived the sinking by boarding another Japanese ship and was taken to a POW camp in Taiwan.

By the end of the war, conservative estimates suggest that 50,000 Allied POWs boarded hell ships, and 21,000 of those men did not survive. That tally accounts for more deaths, according to Michno, than were sustained in combat by the U.S. Marines during the entire Pacific campaign.

The sinking of the Hōfuku Maru that September day marks one of the largest single-day losses of Allied POW lives.

Struck by an Allied torpedo, the vessel was split in half and went under the water in less than three minutes. More than 1,000 Allied POWs were still trapped in its hold. Due to incorrect U.S. records of the event, searchers were led too far north for decades.

That is until researcher John Duresky of the Hellships Memorial Foundation and historian Tim Beckensall stumbled upon a digitized Japanese after-action report written by officers on board the convoy’s lead ship. It contained a hand-drawn account detailing the location of each ship within the convoy and a note stating that the Hōfuku Maru sunk at 10:35 a.m.

But the revelations didn’t stop there. Hidden in plain sight was an aerial photograph captured by the lead American Curtiss SB2C Helldiver just moments before the attack.

“This is what they refer to in the business, guys, as a smoking gun,” says Gates.

“We were absolutely stunned that Japanese sources had information on where the convoy was attacked and what ships were hit,” says researcher Randy Anderson.

Beckensall shared his archival findings with the British Embassy, then the Dutch and Philippine military attachés.

After the compelling evidence, the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands agreed to fund an initial sonar survey and a preliminary dive mission to the site, which took place this past December and January, CNN reports.

But the dive mission initially hit a snag. Despite divers finding some kind of wreckage that pointed to the Hōfuku Maru, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo and the subsequent flood of volcanic ash threatened to engulf the wreck.

With the help of Calvin Mires, a maritime archaeologist for Marine Imaging Technologies, and Evan Kovacs, an underwater imaging specialist, hundreds of images were taken of the wreck and then turned into a 3D model via a technique known as photogrammetry.

Mires and Gates have dived the wreck several times, reporting that they encountered human remains on the deck. Neither went into the holds.

“This ship is a grave, and now that she’s been identified, the governments of the UK, the Netherlands, and the United States have been notified, and they’ll determine the next course of action,” Gates told CNN.

Using “a combination of navigation analyses and archival, cartographic, and archaeological evidence,” the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands confirmed on June 8 that the vessel is “most likely” the Hōfuku Maru.

“The pieces all fit,” states Beckensall in the release. “The vessel is the right size, in the right place and from the correct period. I am convinced this is the Hōfuku Maru.”

More than 50 years after then-Capt. John Ripley rhythmically chanted that prayer for three hours as he swung back and forth under a North Vietnamese bridge to rig 500 pounds of explosives, the Marine is set to posthumously be awarded the Medal of Honor.

But for the Ripley family, June 18th is more than just the date of the White House ceremony.

“June 18, that’s the day my father’s brother, Mike Ripley, was killed,” Tom Ripley told Military Times.

After three 13-month tours in Vietnam Mike Ripley was back in the U.S. in 1971, when the new AV-8A Harrier jump jet he was test flying crashed into Chesapeake Bay, killing him instantly.

“Service is something that’s been a long tradition in our family,” noted Ripley. “I was a Marine, my brother was a Marine, obviously, my father was a Marine, my uncles, two of my nephews, my son is going into the Navy — he just graduated just a couple weeks ago from the Naval Academy. We love our country. We’re proud and honored to serve our country. It means the world to us to have the opportunity to stand … with of these types of Americans.”

On April 2, 1972, Capt. Ripley, a senior advisor to the 3rd Vietnamese Marine Battalion, found himself on the south bank of the Cua Viet River in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam, as the North Vietnamese launched a three-pronged assault with some 30,000-40,000 North Vietnamese Army regulars streaming southward across the Demilitarized Zone.

The so-called Easter Offense was to be the largest attack of the war and the first major assault since the Tet Offensive in in 1968.

One bridge, the Dong Ha Bridge, was the only crossing in the Quang Tri Province capable of supporting heavy armored vehicles. Elements of the North Vietnamese 308th and 304th Divisions, supported by tanks from the 203rd Tank Regiment, soon amassed across the river. Dong Ha Bridge was the only impediment between the North Vietnamese and rolling south.

The situation grew more dire still when Ripley noticed that the South Vietnamese engineers had not properly set explosives on the bridge.

Then the order came down. “Hold and die.”

Ripley didn’t hesitate.

“The idea that I would be able even [to] finish the job before the enemy got me was ludicrous,” Ripley recalled in 2007 in an interview with the U.S. Naval Institute. “When you know you’re not going to make it, a wonderful thing happens: You stop being cluttered by the feeling that you’re going to save your butt.”

Unfettered by emotion, Ripley “put a satchel charge over each shoulder and reached up and grabbed the beam as it approached the south bank,” the Marine told The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property in 2008.

“Then I began kicking my way through the anti-sapper fence.”

The fence that protected the bridge’s undercarriage was laced with steel-tipped razor wire that sliced into Ripley’s legs and backside as he attempted to traverse the barrier.

His uniform, already sodden from perspiration from three days and nights of nonstop fighting, quickly became blood-soaked.

Hanging from the steel girders Ripley began to haul hundreds of pounds of explosives across the bridge, hand rigging them while “.30-caliber messages” were being sent Ripley’s way by the North Vietnamese.

After achingly placing all 500 pounds of explosives along the 600-foot steel structure, Ripley finished the job by attaching the blasting caps.

“He had to bite down on the blasting caps to attach them to the fuses,” retired Marine Col. John Grider Miller, author of The Bridge at Dong Ha, told The New York Times. “If he bit too low on the blasting cap, it could come loose; if he bit too high, it could blow his head apart.”

Ripley bit just right.

For his heroism, the Marine was awarded the Navy Cross, the highest medal for valor behind the Medal of Honor. The famed Marine passed away in 2008, but tomorrow his family will be on hand as President Donald Trump posthumously bestows the nation’s highest award for heroism to Ripley.

“I hope what people will take away is the importance of living a life of honor,” Ripley’s biographer, Norman J. Fulkerson, told Military Times.

“The key phrase in the Marine Corps hymn is ‘keep our honor clean,’ and what you have in Col. Ripley is the man who embodied that. He’s a man who lived a life of honor.”

Following an asset transfer from Korea, maintainers at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, accepted and processed an A-10 Warthog. Soon, staff at the base recognized that they had an opportunity to link past and present.

So began the process of transforming the A-10 into a piece of visual history, tracing its lineage to the famous Flying Tigers squadron of World War II.

“If the original Flying Tigers hadn’t been successful, we wouldn’t be here today carrying that name and history,” Staff Sgt. Tucker Lee, 23d MXS noncommissioned officer in charge corrosion control, said in a release. “The shark teeth that people associate with the A-10 started back with the P-40s, and now they’ve become part of what makes the Warthog iconic. Keeping that heritage paint scheme and the nose art reminds us where we came from and pushes us to continue that legacy of success.”

Formed in 1941 by Capt. Claire L. Chennault, the American Volunteer Group, popularly known as the Flying Tigers, was composed of former U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps pilots hired as mercenaries by China to fight against the Japanese.

Though only in combat for less than seven months, the group became famous at the time for its ability to inflict outsize damage on Japan’s better-equipped and larger aircraft fleet, NPR reported.

The heritage paint job also serves as tribute to Brig. Gen. David “Tex” Hill, who served under Chennault.

“He flew P-40 Warhawks with the 2nd Pursuit Squadron as a flight leader. Tex was credited with 12 and a quarter aerial victory during his time with the American Volunteer Group,” said William Godwin, 23d Wing historian.

While the AVG disbanded on July 4, 1942, in its place came the 23rd Fighter Group under the 14th Air Force — which Hill promptly joined, and shortly thereafter commanded.

The 23rd Fighter Group became part of the 23rd Wing at Moody in 2006, but its WWII lineage continues to live on — this time with the A-10.

“From carefully matching historical details to working long hours as a team, maintainers ensured the aircraft would stand as a faithful tribute, reinforcing a shared connection between generations of Airmen, past and present,” the release states.

WWII-era camouflage sweeps across the Warthog’s shell, which is then offset by the distinctive shark’s mouth paint scheme and the unmistakable Flying Tiger emblem.

“We had to de-mask the plane and track down where every stencil belonged so we could repaint each one correctly. The masking process was different from what we usually do, so there was definitely a learning curve, but seeing it all come together made it worth it,” said Senior Airman Memphis Waller, 23rd MXS aircraft structural maintenance.

The project now complete, the A-10 remains fully mission-capable while also sporting its “new” paint job, carrying “forward a legacy that began with the Flying Tigers, proving that while technology evolves, the spirit of the mission endures,” the release concluded.