The six-month independent review, commissioned by Undersecretary of Defense Anthony Tata in December, was originally set to be performed by the Institute for Defense Analyses, a Washington, D.C.-area nonprofit that administers three research centers supported by federal funding. The effectiveness study, according to a Pentagon official, was set to kick off with the 10-year anniversary of Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s lifting of the ban on women in ground combat roles at the end of 2015.

This review, the official told Military Times on Monday, is “in line with standard [Department of War] practice for evaluating the effects of significant policy changes.”

But a reevaluation of study requirements has led to a reassignment of the work, the official said.

“The Department has since recognized the need to incorporate combat-relevant field tests, based on established tasks, conditions, and standards, into the independent review to produce the comprehensive data required for this effort,” the official said. “DoW has engaged the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to assume responsibility for the study from IDA, effective April 2026. JHU/APL, a University Affiliated Research Center, has the capability to examine existing personnel and operational data, as well as conduct the field tests, ensuring a unified effort that will further posture our warfighters to meet mission objectives.”

JHU/APL will now complete work over the next 12 months to inform what’s now being called the “Performance, Readiness, and Integrated Mission Effectiveness Assessment,” according to the Pentagon. The assessment will use established analytical techniques “to identify the dominant drivers of combat performance variance in ground combat units and provide evidence-based findings to inform force design, training, physical standards, and readiness decisions,” the official said.

A request for information to JHU/APL for more details on the study and data collection milestones did not receive an immediate response.

Pentagon officials emphasized the long tradition of conducting reviews of policy changes, citing specifically an internal assessment of the 2010 Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal that was conducted in 2021, and reviews by the Pentagon-connected Rand Corporation of the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 and the Blended Retirement System of 2015.

Historically, these analyses have been used to evaluate major changes and their impacts, but have not carried with them the possibility of reopening the matter for potential reversal. It’s not clear that the same considerations are in play here.

In a December memo first reported on by NPR, Tata described the review as gauging “the operational effectiveness of ground combat” elements and the impact of permitting women to enter the roles.

Leaders of the Army and Marine Corps were asked to provide the Institute for Defense Analyses with a broad slate of data ranging from training performance to command climate; and metrics showing individual service members’ readiness to deploy.

An email from Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson at the time also appeared to open the door to changes based on the review, saying the Pentagon “will not compromise standards to satisfy quotas or an ideological agenda — this is common sense.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth expressed opposition to women serving in combat roles in his 2024 book “The War on Warriors,” saying they couldn’t meet the physical requirement and adding, “We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”

His Senate confirmation hearing in 2025 softened the stance. He said then that women would continue to have access to ground combat roles, “given the standards remain high.”

In September, he announced that ground combat jobs would be reserved for those who meet “the highest male standard.”

The Pentagon official said the pending combat effectiveness review, now to be carried out by JHU/APL, showcased the military’s commitment to “continuous learning and improvement.”

“These types of studies enable the Department to maximize our efforts in support of peace through strength,” the Pentagon official said Monday. “The ‘Performance, Readiness, and Integrated Mission Effectiveness Assessment’ is expected to further this tradition, increasing the lethality and readiness of the force.”

In a letter responding to queries from a coalition of lawmakers, Anthony Tata, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for personnel and readiness said that “hazing and bullying have no place in the U.S. military,” despite comments from Hegseth that appeared to blur the lines on acceptable training.

“The definition of toxic has been turned upside down, and we’re correcting that. That’s why today, at my direction we’re undertaking a full review of the department’s definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing, to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing,” Hegseth said in his remarks.

“Of course, you can’t do, like, nasty bullying and hazing. We’re talking about words like bullying and hazing and toxic. They’ve been weaponized and bastardized inside our formations, undercutting commanders and NCOs. No more. Setting, achieving and maintaining high standards is what you all do. And if that makes me toxic, then so be it.”

Drill instructors, Hegseth said, would be empowered “to instill healthy fear in new recruits.”

“Yes, they can shark attack, they can toss bunks, they can swear, and yes, they can put their hands on recruits,” he said. “This does not mean they can be reckless or violate the law, but they can use tried and true methods to motivate new recruits, to make them the warriors they need to be.”

In his response letter, Tata put guardrails around the use of physical contact with military recruits, saying it would be used to ensure the safety of personnel.

“Drill instructors have the difficult task of shaping civilians into soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardians, and Marines,” he wrote. “Basic training involves real world scenarios and weapons. When the safety of the recruit or others is jeopardized, drill instructors may take appropriate actions to ensure the safety of the recruits.”

The response letter did not define the scope of “appropriate actions” or what would determine whether a drill instructor’s physical response to a recruit was justified. But Tata did stress that Hegseth’s effort to reevaluate definitions of terms including “bullying” and “hazing” would, he said, make it easier to identify and respond to truly objectionable behavior.

“What the department is trying to get after is the unduly burdensome complaints system in the military that undermines leaders’ effectiveness,” he wrote. “By providing definitions that focus on the egregious misconduct described in your letter, leaders will be empowered to more easily address inappropriate conduct that does not constitute hazing or bullying while focusing resources on preventing and addressing incidents of hazing and bullying.”

Rep. Judy Chu, the California congresswoman who led the group of 28 Democratic lawmakers in requesting responses from Hegseth regarding his plans to change recruit training and hazing definitions, has a personal connection to the issue: Her nephew, Lance Cpl. Harry Lew, died by suicide in Afghanistan in 2011 after a night of physical hazing and abuse by fellow Marines in punishment for falling asleep on post.

“We want a strong military where people feel that they’re unified in their desire to protect this country,” Chu told Military Times in a November interview. “Not where they are torturing one another to the point where certain people feel like they have to kill themselves.”

The most recently compiled report on military hazing, from 2024, shows that about one in five hazing and bullying complaints is substantiated, and that reporting numbers, while on a recent upswing, are relatively low, with 138 hazing complaints for that year. The Marine Corps has accounted for a disproportionately high share of hazing allegations since congressionally mandated reporting began in 2020.

Tata maintained in the letter that a “clearer definition” of hazing and bullying following the Hegseth-ordered review of definitions would increase the percentage of substantiated complaints. He also cited a new database under development by the Pentagon, thanks to funding provided in 2025 to collect and compile hazing complaints more effectively.

“Historically, these data were collected manually, and some details of the complaints were not reported to the department,” he wrote.

Pentagon officials did not officially have an update on the definitions review, which was initially expected to take 30 days, but was affected by the October government shutdown.

In a statement to Military Times following the Pentagon’s response letter, Chu was cautious.

“I am pleased that the Department of Defense has responded to our letter but remain concerned about its decision to change the definition of hazing and processes to handle hazing, bullying and harassment complaints,” she said. ”I will continue to lead my congressional colleagues in ensuring the dignity and safety of all service members and recruits and that the department accurately fulfills its annual reporting requirements to Congress. No one should have to endure abuse and hazing while honorably serving our country.”

The V-22 Osprey, which the Navy uses for aircraft carrier onboard delivery missions, is overdue for a midlife upgrade, spending far too much on unscheduled maintenance and contending with undertrained maintainers — all of which spell increased risk for a platform that has faced intense scrutiny since its earliest days in the air. The 33-page review recommends the establishment of a readiness and safety steering board to report annually to top officials on the Osprey’s status; initiation of the overdue midlife upgrade; and changes to establish a “proactive safety system” to identify and address mechanical issues before mishaps occur.

“When the V-22 Enterprise does not actively manage risks with the potential for catastrophic outcomes, the risks compound, increasing the likelihood of a catastrophic event that, if left unaddressed, will ultimately occur,” the investigation concluded.

The Navy’s review — and a simultaneously released Government Accountability Office report — follow a November 2023 crash of an Air Force CV-22 Osprey that killed eight troops, ultimately attributed to a gear box failure. In the dozen mishaps since 2022 involving Marine Corps and Air Force personnel, four Ospreys have been destroyed and 20 personnel have been killed.

The review determined that the Osprey is “accumulating safety risk” due to lagging timelines to fix identified problems; failure to follow airworthiness and flight safety procedures; missing airworthiness standards for some risks; and challenges related to differing safety standards and priorities between the three services that fly the Osprey. It also found the Osprey has suffered in readiness due to a failure to implement best practices across the services, persistent “reliability issues” and challenges in managing and delivering aircraft and parts inventory.

While defenders of the V-22 have accurately pointed out that the aircraft, at least in the Marine Corps, has a lower mishap rate than fleet averages, the report highlights other concerning ways that the Osprey is an outlier. The V-22, it found, has the second-highest number of “catastrophic” risks of any naval aviation platform, meaning components at risk of failure with catastrophic outcomes. Parts at risk are also 70% older on the Osprey than on other Navy planes, it found.

“As the first and only military tiltrotor aircraft, it remains the most aero-mechanically complex aircraft in service and continues to face unresolved legacy material, safety, and technical challenges,” the investigation notes.

In maintenance concerns, the Osprey is again at odds with other platforms, requiring 100% more unscheduled maintenance than the Navy average and requiring about 22 maintenance man-hours per flight hour, compared with about 12 for other aircraft.

“Despite numerous initiatives aimed at improving procedural compliance, most efforts to date have not led to significant improvements in safety outcomes,” investigators found. “A critical gap remains in the form of specific, measurable, and enforceable action plans, complete with clear timelines and accountable owners, to address the root causes of non-compliance, improve procedural adherence, or mitigate the effects of non-compliance at the enterprise-level.”

Among recommendations already being implemented are a retrofit of prop-rotor gear boxes to address identified risks; the development of risk mitigation plans; and a midlife upgrade, which is listed as “in-work,” with no estimated completion date. Establishment of new proficiency standards for maintainers is also underway across services. Other recommendations, like the establishment of a readiness and safety steering board, have yet to be started.

Anthony Krockel, a retired Marine Corps colonel who flew the Osprey from 2010 to 2018 and came to its defense earlier this year, saying its record “was not a safety outlier,” told Military Times he saw additional problems contributing to the aircraft’s woes.

While he noted that the aircraft was full of sensors and that issues could arise from crews’ failure to address the equivalent of “check engine lights” on degrading parts, he also said the Osprey had a track record of parts that failed well before their anticipated service lives were up.

“If something was supposed to last, you know, 10,000 hours before it is being replaced, it’s lasting, like, 2,000 hours,” Krockel said. “And so that’s what’s driving these really high unscheduled maintenance rates.”

That, in turn, he said, had a “cascading effect” on maintenance backlogs.

“So now you have to spend time that wasn’t scheduled on the backs of these Marines to fix the plane and, oh, by the way, because these components are breaking more often, you’re depleting the spares inventory much faster than was originally anticipated,” he said. “And so now you don’t have any spares on the shelf because they’re being used systemically, higher than originally budgeted for.”

Krockel said he’d still like to see a thorough review take place of the top 10 “degraders to readiness” involving the V-22, including the parts that most frequently failed.

“Some of them are technically challenging to fix. Some of them are logistics challenges,” he said. “So there’s larger challenges, but if you get those top 10 degraders fixed and get the aircraft to higher mission capable rates, then everybody wins.”

Lt. Col. William “Skate” Parks, who commanded the 480th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron out of Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, until earlier this year, received the Silver Star at the Pentagon on Wednesday in recognition of a high-risk flight on March 27 that helped save the lives of his wingmen as well as his own from the urgent threat of running out of fuel, in addition to incoming enemy missiles.

The 480th EFS was designated in 2010 with one of the Air Force’s rarer and more risky missions: Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, or SEAD. As the only squadron in Air Forces Europe and Africa performing SEAD, it destroys, spoofs and subverts enemy ground-based air defenses, such as surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns.

While Air Force releases and Parks’ award citation do not specify where the squadron was operating in the Middle East at the time, the timeframe aligns with Operation Rough Rider, a series of strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who had been targeting merchant ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023. Operation Rough Rider began March 15 and continued through April. Operation Prosperity Guardian, a coalition-led response to the Houthis, was also ongoing and continued through May.

Parks, according to the award citation obtained by Military Times, had been serving as mission commander for a 21-plane force package of strike aircraft on March 27 while also leading four F-16 Fighting Falcons conducting SEAD operations.

“During this mission, Colonel Parks intentionally placed himself in threat range of a complex air defense zone protecting the enemy’s capital,” his citation reads. “Colonel Parks’ heroic decision ensured mission success in crippling enemy ballistic missile production facilities.”

However, this choice also left the aircraft vulnerable to enemy attack and dangerously short on fuel. Fighters on the ground loosed “a barrage of precisely targeted enemy air defense missiles and anti-aircraft artillery” at the four F-16s. Facing death from below, Parks had to resort to high-stress flight maneuvers typically reserved for dogfighting.

“For fifteen agonizing minutes, with enemy missiles detonating mere feet from his aircraft, Colonel Parks stoically led his flight through a series of high-G maneuvers and countermeasure employment,” the citation reads. “Below minimum fuel and still within enemy territory, Colonel Parks immediately coordinated for an emergency rendezvous with two separate tankers, ensuring his [flight’s] access to critical fuel and preventing the probable loss of two aircraft due to fuel starvation.”

It’s rare for pilots to receive the Silver Star, an award just below the service crosses and the Medal of Honor. It’s rarer still for the award to go to a squadron commander. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach noted in Parks’ medal presentation ceremony that fewer than 100 Silver Stars had been presented within the Air Force since it became a service in 1947.

“After hearing Skate’s story, his leadership, decisive action, and skill in the face of danger, I absolutely believe he deserves this honor,” Wilsbach said, according to a service release. ”Recognizing valor in combat matters, and it is a privilege to serve alongside warfighters like him.”

The release noted that Parks had led his squadron to numerous other combat achievements during the deployment, including 108 shoot-downs of enemy drones and land attack cruise missiles — a record — and the first successful combat employment of an AIM-9M Sidewinder missile in three decades. Parks’ “innovative employment standards” in using the AIM-9M instead of the newer AIM-9X; and his use of relatively inexpensive AGR-20F Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System rockets, designed for air-to-ground combat, in an air-to-air role, also helped save the Air Force $25 million, the service said.

Six of the 108 aerial victories the squadron notched helped protect the USS Harry S. Truman, deployed to the region with more than 5,000 sailors onboard, and another five of the shoot-downs were missiles targeting his own aircraft, according to releases.

At the ceremony, Parks described cycling through peaceful and panicked feelings during his high-stakes mission.

“That loneliness settles in, even though it seems like it’s all happening fast, you just feel that moment where ‘I’m feeling very alone out here tonight,’” Parks said, according to releases. “And then that transitioned very quickly to elation. As I got a little bit closer, the [command and control] agencies and the Air Force team started picking me up, and my requests of ‘Hey, I need help! We’re out of gas. I need tankers moved.’”

He added that his family history in Air Force aviation, which includes his dad, an Air Force test pilot, and a grandfather who flew C-47 transport planes in Vietnam, added to the significance of the award. His brother and cousin are also pilots, the Air Force said.

“It is incredible, and this means a lot,” Parks said. “The amount of aviation and everything that we have in our family, that’s what shaped me and helped mold me.”

Recent combat operations involving enemy drones and missiles have resulted in the minting of new Air Force flying aces — a title given to those with five or more air-to-air shoot-downs — for the first time in more than half a century. While it’s not clear whether Parks himself has earned the title of ace, his award sheds light on an emerging era of aerial combat featuring a mix of manned and unmanned systems.

That’s according to a Defense Department report published in June and obtained by Military Times. The congressionally mandated report, which tracks the reporting and adjudication of hazing and bullying within the armed forces but does not include reports from boot camp and entry-level training, shows that while overall numbers remain small, the Marine Corps continues to be the greatest source of complaints among the services. It also shows that data collection on accountability actions for those found to have perpetrated hazing behaviors is inconsistent. 

In fiscal 2024, the last year for which data is available, troops submitted 138 complaints of hazing, of which 31, or 22%, were substantiated. That’s up from 121 complaints and 29 substantiations the previous year. They also made 1,058 reports of bullying, of which 227, or 21%, were substantiated. That’s up from 932 bullying reports and 175 substantiations in fiscal 2023.

While hazing reports saw an upswing in 2024 after three years of steady decline, bullying complaints, both total and substantiated, have been steadily increasing since 2020.

Perhaps the most notable data point is the uneven spread of complaints across the services. In 2020, the first year for which reporting is available, the Marine Corps made up 82% of hazing reports. In 2024, its smallest percentage across the four-year spread, the Corps — the smallest DOD service, except for the Space Force — accounted for 47% of reports.

Bullying reports are more evenly spread across the services. In 2024, the Navy had the most bullying complaints with 381, or 36% of the total, followed by the Air Force at 271 and the Marine Corps at 223. Notably, the Army, the largest service by far, has consistently had among the fewest reports of both hazing and bullying.

What happens following reports of hazing and bullying is not as clear. In 2024, disposition of 44 out of 138 hazing complaints was listed as “unknown,” including 30 of the 66 complaints submitted within the Marine Corps. The same was true for 123 bullying complaints. No hazing or bullying complaints were withdrawn by the complainants themselves during the report time frame. And while some data was provided regarding disciplinary actions for substantiated incidents, it was incomplete. In the Marine Corps, for example, half of the perpetrators of substantiated hazing received nonjudicial punishment, and actions regarding the other half were listed as “other.”

As provided in the recent report, the military definitions of hazing and bullying are somewhat broad. Hazing, according to the report, can be conducted in person or electronically, via social media and other means. It can involve physical actions such as striking another person; pressing or piercing an object into someone else’s skin; “branding, handcuffing, duct taping, tattooing, shaving, greasing, or painting another person;” and subjecting a person to forcible consumption of food, water, alcohol, drugs or any other substance. It can also include oral or written scolding and humiliation; “playing abusive or malicious tricks;” or “encouraging another person to engage in illegal, harmful, demeaning, or dangerous acts.”

Bullying, as defined, is even broader, including “degrading or damaging another’s property or reputation” and “intimidating, teasing, or taunting another person” in addition to the activities listed under hazing. 

Yet, as U.S. Rep. Judy Chu emphasizes, the consequences of hazing and even bullying can be deadly. Chu, a Democrat representing California’s 28th Congressional District, authored the legislative language requiring the military’s annual reports to Congress on hazing. The issue became personal to her in April 2011, when her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Harry Lew, took his own life in Afghanistan after a night of “merciless” physical and hazing and scolding meant to punish him for falling asleep at his post, according to an investigation into the event.

Following Hegseth’s address to the generals and an accompanying memo calling for a review of current military definitions of hazing and bullying, Chu sent a letter of concern, signed by 27 other congressional Democrats, to his office.

The letter included five detailed questions regarding the intent and potential impact of narrowing the definition of hazing, setting a Nov. 7 deadline for response.

“We strongly urge DOD to retain the existing definitions and take steps to strengthen hazing prevention and reporting policies, rather than roll back these critical protections,” the authors wrote. “All service members and recruits must be treated with dignity and respect. Weakening these protections will only worsen the existing problem of military hazing and endanger more lives.”

In an interview with Military Times, Chu said Hegseth had not responded by the set deadline, though she’d followed up and still hoped for an answer.

Chu cited other high-profile examples of military hazing with deadly results in the last 15 years, including Raheel Siddiqui, a Muslim Marine recruit who jumped off a roof at boot camp in 2016 following treatment by a drill instructor involving being forced into an industrial clothes dryer, and Army Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar, who died in 2017 of asphyxiation after an apparent hazing incident gone wrong at the hands of Marine Raiders and Navy SEALs.

“This does not serve our military,” Chu said. “We want a strong military where people feel that they’re unified in their desire to protect this country, not where they are torturing one another to the point where certain people feel like they have to kill themselves.”

It’s not yet clear how Hegseth’s memo and exhortation will affect the military. 

“Of course, you can’t do, like, nasty bullying and hazing. We’re talking about words like bullying and hazing and toxic. They’ve been weaponized and bastardized inside our formations, undercutting commanders and NCOs,” Hegseth said during his Quantico speech. “No more. Setting, achieving and maintaining high standards is what you all do. And if that makes me toxic, then so be it.”

He specifically addressed entry-level training too, saying that drill instructors and drill sergeants would once again be able to “put their hands on recruits” and “swear.”

A Sept. 30 memo coinciding with Hegseth’s speech ordered a 30-day review of definitions, saying policy defining hazing, bullying and harassment was “overly broad, jeopardizing combat readiness, mission accomplishment, and trust in the organization.”

“When commanders face undue administrative burdens, it distracts from their core mission,” the memo signed by Hegseth stated. “This review aims to strike a balance, ensuring leaders have the tools necessary to foster a warrior ethos rooted in mutual respect and accountability, while also maintaining a lethal and ready Force.”

The memo was signed just before the 43-day government shutdown, which paused or delayed operations across the federal enterprise.

A Pentagon official told Military Times this week there was nothing yet to announce about the review’s progress or findings.

A subset of the general population, veterans are most easily reached en masse through Department of Veterans Affairs rolls. But that leaves approximately half of all veterans out, according to the Pentagon-linked Rand Corporation think tank.

Alongside research organization NORC at the University of Chicago, Rand on Tuesday rolled out the Veterans Insight Panel, a survey cohort intended to allow for high-fidelity and rapid survey research on a veteran population representative of all ages, geographic areas and demographics.

The initial population, built by collecting data from Rand’s American Life survey panel and NORC’s AmeriSpeak cohort, has about 3,000 members, Robert Bozick, a RAND senior demographer and director of RAND Survey Panels, told Military Times. He expects that to grow as the organizations continue to recruit.

“It is a moving target,” he said. “We wanted to make sure that we could at least field a survey and get about 1,000 responses before we launched, because that’s typically the size of surveys that our researchers and external researchers need.”

The effort to launch a new survey panel followed “an increasing need for more sophisticated, more nuanced data on veterans than what is typically being collected,” Bozick said.

National organizations collecting data on Americans, from the U.S. Census to the Centers for Disease Control, typically include a question asking survey respondents to identify their status, he said, but data collected on veterans using these methods is incidental and limited in depth.

“You can compare veterans who have asthma to the general population, but you can’t dig down deeper and beyond that, because the purpose is not to survey veterans; it’s to survey the general population,” Bozick said. “So, for example, the next logical question [would be], ‘Were you in combat? Were you in a combat zone where there may have been a burn pit?’ Things like that. You can’t get those from national data sources.”

An upcoming project for 2026 that’s sponsored by the Pittsburgh-based Heinz Endowments, for example, will focus on veteran underemployment and employment trajectories, Bozick said.

While veteran employment data is included in monthly U.S. Department of Labor reports, veteran underemployment — meaning employment that doesn’t fully utilize and recognize a veteran’s skills and experience — has been much harder to quantify.

In the last two years, the National Veterans’ Training Institute has reported that one-third of veteran job seekers are underemployed; the Journal of Veterans Studies has found 10% of post-9/11 veterans report underemployment; and the Raymond A. Mason School of Business has cited veteran underemployment as high as 60%.

“This is something our researchers are struggling with. When they try to go collect data, they get small samples,” Bozick said. “You either get a pool with a lot of Vietnam vets, not a lot of younger veterans or vice versa. All of those samples have challenges, given the diversity of the military experience.”

Notably, the Veterans Insight Panel is not exclusively for academic research. Groups and organizations will be able to pay to survey the cohort on topics of interest at a rate on the order of $2,000 per question, Bozick said.

The intent, he said, is to make the panel available to entities seeking to advance the wellbeing of veterans.

“We’re really trying to keep it in that sort of community framework, as opposed to an academic data set where PhD scientists are analyzing data and publishing in journals,” he said. “Not that we frown upon that, but that’s secondary to what we’re trying to do here.”

Also planned for early 2026, he said, is an omnibus survey containing questions from a variety of sources on issues relevant to the veteran community.

This is Lumena Mindgym, a flashy new curriculum-based therapeutic tool that’s taking the Air Force by storm. More than two dozens Mindgyms have been installed at base fitness centers and support facilities for about $100,000 apiece; Mindgym just marked its first installations outside the continental United States, in Kuwait and Turkey, earlier this year.

As the number of Mindgym advocates across the Air Force grows, other services are also entering talks to purchase the technology. It’s a lot of flash and glitz to deliver relaxation to stressed-out service members. But the number of passionate advocates for Mindgym in the military is growing, and some argue the attention it’s getting from troops who might otherwise avoid meditation and de-stressing techniques might make it worth every penny.

The technology itself was created by an entrepreneur with a finance background, rather than a scientist; company executives make clear they are not the clinical experts.

“We don’t have anybody in-house that’s a neuroscientist or Ph.D.,” Brandon Murphy, head of growth for Lumena, told Military Times in an interview, adding that they did maintain an advisory board of doctors and researchers.

Nor was Mindgym designed with the military specifically in mind. Founders were shopping the technology at a Colorado-based sporting tradeshow in 2019, Murphy said, when they encountered Adam Strang, Biotechnology Product Line Lead at the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Strang was intrigued by the tech and connected the team with veteran Air Force pilot and human performance expert Jannell MacAulay, who’d become a vocal advocate for Mindgym and help develop the curriculum to be used by airmen.

“It’s like a flight simulator for your mind,” MacAulay posted on Facebook in April during a visit to one of the Air Force’s facilities.

By 2022, a seed fund grant had enabled the installation of the first Mindgym at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, complete with a clinically validated curriculum and wearable components that measured brain activity and heart rate.

The first users were explosive ordnance disposal technicians from Hill’s 775th Civil Engineering Squadron. And that initial group of 55 airmen gave Mindgym its best evidence for effectiveness.

Over 219 20-minute training sessions, according to Lumena Labs, the group self-reported an average 30% improvement in mood. The biodata receptors documented a 16.2% reduction in stress indicators, while 61% of users said their stress management capabilities improved. Sleep quality also improved for 15% of users.

“Many in the group reported stronger focus during the Weighted Airmen Performance Systems (WAPS) testing — the program that determines promotions for Staff Sergeant (E-5) and Technical Sergeant (E-6),” Lumena stated in study analysis. “They also cited decreased incidents of road rage and across-the-board improvements in their marital relations, gym workouts, and even their golf scores.”

While follow-up studies have not been conducted, the feedback appears to demonstrate how even a small amount of therapeutic attention to the brain and the mental resilience of service members under stress can make a significant difference.

Strang, at the Air Force Research Lab, told Military Times in an interview that Mindgym compared favorably to the sensory deprivation float tanks popular for promoting relaxation and stress reduction.

“Float tanks are messy and maintenance is challenging,” Strang said, adding that it was never clear to him if the atmosphere of the tank or the opportunity to take a nap in it made the most difference to his mental state.

“I hopped into Mindgym, and it didn’t feel like a waterless float tank to me at all,” he said. “It felt like a psychedelic experience.”

AFRL has plans to study the efficacy of Mindgym in comparison with other mindfulness and relaxation technologies, though those are predicated on future funding awards.

Strang emphasized that Mindgym is not a panacea for mental health or resilience but said boosting cognition and reducing stress, particularly in a “next frontier” warfare environment where troops are joining a real fight from their desks as drone pilots or Space Force satellite operators, was worth the dedicated investment.

“They’re $100,000 cubes, I think, the last time I checked,” Strang said. “Let’s say they facilitate relaxation and recovery across 100 people by 10%; what’s the operational impact of that? I don’t know. But what happens if one person who is flying an F-35 sits in that cockpit and, because of these interventions, prevents a mishap of a $60 million aircraft? Would that be worth it? Probably.”

As the Air Force continues to install Mindgyms, the company has recently had more conversations with Navy officials, even demonstrating the Mindgym at the Sea Air Space naval trade show earlier this year. Murphy said he saw value for the technology particularly in the submarine community, where stress and operational tempo were high.

There are now 32 different sessions a service member can select in Mindgym; a grant last year enabled the recent development and deployment of a stroboscopic light therapy protocol that is supposed to promote higher theta brain wave state, enabling reduced stress in high-intensity situations.

“I’d honestly love to have [a Mindgym] on every military base on the globe,” Murphy said, “so that there’s not a service member that doesn’t have access to something like this.”

The new plan will also see the Air Force bring in an additional 370 recruiters.

As of Oct. 1, Air Force Recruiting Service is beginning a merger with Air University’s Jeanne M. Holm Center, which manages the service’s Reserve Officer Training Corps and officer and warrant officer training programs, to form a single entity: the Air Force Accessions Center.

The change had been in the works for nearly a year, driven by a desire to remove silos and build organizational consistency, Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein, the head of Air Force recruiting, told Air Force Times in an exclusive interview.

“You have a little bit of a bifurcated process, where you have us in Air Force Recruiting Service recruiting for [Officer Training School], but when you do the handoff, it goes to a completely different organization,” Amrhein said. “What we aim to be is more effective and agile, and be able to have it all under one command.”

One practical reason for a merged approach came to the fore during the recently concluded recruiting year, when the Air Force’s ROTC recruiting program came up short by 127 allocations, Amrhein said.

Ultimately, the service was able to convene an extra officer recruiting board and supplement the missing ROTC accessions with conventional officer recruitment, but the process was more rushed and ad-hoc than it could have been, he said.

“If we could have seen it earlier, we probably could have designed it differently,” Amrhein said.

The merger will take place in stages, with the full transition to the new structure set to be complete by October 2025.

The new Air Force Accessions Center will continue to fall under Air Education and Training Command, which is also set to be rebranded at a future date as Airman Development Command, according to officials.

The move will not force a redistribution of troops in the Air Force recruiting enterprise, although some in-place realignments may eventually take place, officials said. While it’s clear that recruiting leaders, including Amrhein, are still developing their picture of what the fully realized Air Force Accessions Center will look like, he indicated it will help planners see recruiting opportunities and needs that might have been missed in the past.

“We actually have one year to build out the most effective and efficient and agile overall organization,” Amrhein said. “We’ve got some, I’ll call them red-teaming experts, to make sure we don’t miss blind spots. But how we look right now is probably not how we’re going to look in October, and that’s why we have this year to really see where there are opportunities, or if there are gaps and seams, to close those down for the final organizational structure.”

If unity and greater efficiency do translate to more accessions, the change will come at a critical time. While the Air Force barely managed to meet its goal of recruiting 27,100 new enlisted recruits in fiscal 2024, it faces a steep increase this year, with a target of 32,500 enlisted accessions. It also follows the launch of the Air Force Warrant Officer Training School, at the Holm Center out of Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, in July.

The first 80 of 370 planned additional recruiters went to schoolhouse training in August, Amrhein said. And while that recruiting plus-up is expected to help the service meet its larger recruiting target, Amrhein acknowledged it comes with challenges too.

“You’ve got to be careful that you don’t over-saturate a recruiting office,” he said.

To avoid doing that, he said, the Air Force is creating “agile recruiting cells” with three recruiters each that can travel temporarily to cities or regions to host events or develop leads.

“So that gives us a little bit more flexibility, and that increase gives us some sustainability,” Amrhein said.

Finding ways to get a better conversion rate out of Air Force ROTC and Junior ROTC programs may be a big benefit to the restructuring, Amrhein said. For example, he plans to explore the possibility of bringing back a two-year ROTC program, in addition to the existing four-year program, to allow more students to get on an Air Force recruitment track.

“Sometimes people get inspired or interested or attracted to the military or our Air Force and Space Force at different points in time,” he said. “And do we have an agile enough system that we can now partner or utilize [Officer Training School] maybe differently than just the four- or three-year program that is ROTC today.”

In another example of finding efficiencies, Amrhein referred to the 40 or so newly commissioned second lieutenants – known as “gold bars” – who are tasked with working with recruiting squadrons to find likely candidates for ROTC programs. Under the new construct, he said, these young officers might be able to serve recruitment goals more broadly, looking holistically at the Air Force’s needs.

Ultimately, he said, the move should have all elements of Air Force recruiting working more collaboratively toward their common goals.

“I think what we’re going to see is that when we start talking at the higher echelon with staff and commands, that the integration will happen earlier and it will happen more frequently,” Amrhein said. “That is an aim of mine, as the commander of the accession center: to inspire the crosstalk, and have the authorities to be the most effective operation from the entire cradle-to-grave spectrum.”

Using open-source analysis and commentary, a team of volunteers led by a retired lieutenant colonel got to work answering this question.

Two documents emerged out of this informal Marine effort.

One was a detailed 126-page handbook that described a series of scenarios and explained how existing Marine doctrine would apply to such a fight.

The handbook covered everything from how a company leader should write an order — one page, handwritten, no imagery — to drone use, and how each drone would support one unit, with leaders tasking drones in the company order.

It also candidly acknowledged gaps in official Marine Corps guidance on how to hide from enemy drones, how to use anti-tank missiles alongside drones to hunt and destroy the enemy and how to move under artillery fire.

The second document was a brief summary of 10 “lessons for leaders” about fighting on a battlefield like Ukraine.

That five-pager specified what Marine ground forces would need to win in these conditions: drones in every unit and echelon, anti-drone electronic warfare jammers, and, counter to the Corps’ recent decisions on the future shape of the force, a reliance on tanks.

“The tank is not dead, as many have predicted,” the authors wrote, citing Ukraine’s employment of armored vehicles and its desire for more to stand off Russia’s mechanized units.

These documents were combined and published in June on 2ndBn5thMar.com, a website that takes its name from a Camp Pendleton, California, infantry unit, but is unaffiliated with the Corps.

It’s run by Brendan McBreen, who retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2011 and is now a faculty member at Marine Corps Intelligence Schools in Dam Neck, Va.

The site dates to 1998, when McBreen, then attached to 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, was tasked with distributing standard operating procedures being developed to fight and train. When a sergeant suggested posting the document to the “World Wide Web,” McBreen took it upon himself to create a place to host it.

“I didn’t do anything for a couple of years,” McBreen said. “And my wife said, ‘Hey, we’re still paying $9.95 a month to this web hosting company. And so I got on – you know, once every six months, I would look and see how it’s doing. And there were thousands of downloads.”

For those concerned about operational security, McBreen said all material discussed on his site is based on open-source information and doesn’t cover anything classified.

As McBreen’s career progressed, the site traveled with him. From time to time, fellow infantry Marine officers would reach out to share their own best practices for specific tasks, such as 81mm mortar employment.

While official Marine Corps doctrine provided general guidance, McBreen said he noticed a lack of unit-level practices and procedures, creating space for this crowd-sourced infantry network to fill in the gaps.

“Some of it was good,” McBreen said of the informal input he received. “Some of it was average, but all of it was shareable.”

The emergence of drones as a battlefield factor in recent years has created new demand for guidance on how to integrate the technology into the fight and defend against it. In 2020, Marine Capt. Walker Mills co-authored a paper on how units could camouflage themselves to evade aerial surveillance and published it on McBreen’s website.

Now a drone officer, Mills contributed to portions of the new Ukraine documents dealing with drone warfare that were published on 2ndBn5thMar.com.

“The doctrine always lags somewhat,” Mills told Marine Corps Times. “Our standard infantry company and platoon publications are several years old, maybe even a decade old. So, they don’t talk a ton about small tactical [drones].”

McBreen said he’s occasionally noticed spikes in the site’s popularity over the years, notably around 2005 when he published “Night Warrior,” a training guide for nighttime combat. Most of the time, he said, he can’t tell what’s driving a new surge in traffic.

“The tracking stuff would show jiggle, jiggle, jiggle, jiggle, and then a big spike,” he said, “And you could also tell, although I never knew the origin, that some instructor said at some school, ‘Hey, students, you ought to look at this document.’”

Maj. Zachary Schwartz, who recently served as the operations officer for 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines out of Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California, and is now enrolled in Marine Corps Command and Staff college, said he’s used the site for guidance as an infantry leader at various levels.

While a 1st lieutenant serving as a team leader, Schwartz recalled benefitting from an article about condensing traditional Marine Corps five-paragraph orders into concise verbal instructions.

He’s also employed the practical guidance within the camouflage manual to teach signature management and deception: simple things like habitually using leaves and brush to hide the shape of a helmet. Schwartz was also a contributor to the recently published Ukraine document.

It’s hard to know the exact reach of McBreen’s website, which has typically been shared via word of mouth.

“I would say the infantry community embraces what Brendan McBreen has done,” Schwartz said. “The real pros in our community all know this website. They all know the resources on it, and they all pass it around.”

Though the documents contain candid analysis that sometimes challenges conventional Marine Corps perspectives — such as calling for tanks even as the Corps has divested itself of them to fight lighter — the site’s supporters feel that such informal discussions are what leaders want of their Marines.

“I feel like you hear a lot of leaders say, hey, professional discussion is part of being in the Marine Corps,” Mills said. “You know, leave things better than you found them.”

When McBreen published the Ukraine handbook in June, he got an immediate indicator that the document was popular when a notice from the website hosting service warned that downloads had exceeded the site’s capacity and 2ndBn5thMar.com was in danger of crashing.

“OK,” McBreen recalled saying. “I’ll give you four more dollars a month, or whatever you need.”

The 16-member commission, which has spent the last year hiring staff and getting organized, has an historically unique tasking: it aims to produce an accessible and cohesive “after-action review” of the 20-year war that includes perspectives ranging from the U.S. State Department to international governmental partners and possibly even the Taliban.

And as they begin their information-gathering in earnest, the commission’s leaders want to show that the perspectives of the U.S. service members who fought in the war are not merely an aspect of that story, but at the heart of the entire project.

The “Veterans” tab on the commission’s website leads to a form that invites Afghanistan veterans to share their experiences and questions with the commission. “What did you view as your mission during the war?” the form asks, and “To what extent do you believe that mission was accomplished?”

“The veterans community is kind of the wind in our sails, if you will,” commission co-chair Shamila Chaudhary told Military Times during an interview at the commission’s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

Chaudhary, a former State Department and National Security Council official with expertise in U.S.-Pakistan relations, said it quickly became evident to her as she began her new role that veterans were continuing to discuss and evaluate the outcome and meaning of Afghanistan in a way unparalleled by other stakeholder groups.

“The most vibrant conversations were actually happening in the veteran community, and they were very open,” she said.

Colin Jackson, the commission’s other co-chair, is himself a veteran of the war who served multiple deployments as an Army officer and later served as the senior Defense Department representative to the U.S.-Taliban peace talks. He also chairs Strategic and Operational Research at the U.S. Naval War College. Jackson, who has a son and a daughter serving in and entering the military, hopes the commission’s report will in part formalize the kind of conversations and insights shared while “standing in the driveway at Fort [Liberty]” following a deployment.

“I feel viscerally that we owe it to this future generation to be smarter, better,” Jackson said. “If we don’t do that, then we’re not doing our job properly.”

Veteran responses so far have been few but high in quality, said Matthew Gobush, the commission’s strategic communications advisor. Some responses, he said, will prompt follow-on engagement or interviews. Others may help guide the commission in the inquiries it pursues.

The commission’s mandate is broad. The congressional language that created it in 2021 tasked it with studying aspects of the conflict ranging from U.S. decisions immediately prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the initial invasion to peace negotiations and the ultimate military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 that was quickly followed by Taliban takeover. The commission chairs don’t describe their objective as creating an aura of defeat. But in the absence of similar projects compiling broad-ranging multi-agency analysis of past U.S. wars, they are informed by another analysis of catastrophe: the 9/11 Commission Report, published in 2004.

That 585-page volume garnered literary praise, climbed some bestseller lists and even received a National Book Awards nomination. Trying to create an accessible, narrative-driven equivalent that covers a sprawling two-decade war rather than a single-day attack is a mammoth task, and the commissioners know it.

“I mean, we get a lot of unbelievable stares when we talk about the work, because it’s very ambitious. And we could have easily interpreted it in a less ambitious way,” Chaudhary said. “And we decided not to do that, because doing the hard thing at this moment is the right thing to do.”

As the committee has begun to engage with veterans from various eras of the war, using the networks of congressionally chartered veteran service organizations like The American Legion and the VFW, the passion they hear encourages them in their approach.

“The fact that we have the veteran community so interested in our work directly challenges the notion that nobody cares about Afghanistan,” Chaudhary said.

The commission will deliver its final report in 2026, with an interim report charting the way ahead and work already completed set to come out in August. Leaders hope that veterans who read the report will be able to find themselves in the narrative in the context of the whole war, Jackson said.

“This report ideally allows an individual who, say, served once, twice, three, four times in Afghanistan to say, ‘Ah, now I understand how my piece of the action at various points in time related to the larger whole,’” he said. “So while we cannot conceivably cover the entire waterfront, on the technical aspects of the war, hopefully we give an architecture that allows individuals to say, ‘Okay, now I understand how I fit in, in 2005 in Farah province, to a larger project that spanned two decades.’”

Active-duty military leaders, they said, may find a new depth of analysis and application for future conflicts as well.

“They’re going to process current and future events through this Afghanistan lens, whether we like it or not,” Chaudhary said. “And so we will be doing them a service by providing them some depth that doesn’t exist right now. And the report will be just as much about Afghanistan as it will be about future scenarios, future intervention. It has to be; otherwise, it’s just history.”