As such, the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Soldier Center’s Combat Feeding Division in Natick, Massachusetts, has turned to advanced technology to address both issues.

In particular, the division is working now to drastically improve the quality of fruits and vegetables in the Meals Ready-to-Eat, more commonly referred to as MREs.

The division has set its sights on a new technique called “vacuum microwave drying” to turn the produce contained in MREs into crunchy snacks rather than vacuum-sealed preservatives.

The Combat Feeding Division has not, as of yet, specified which fruits and vegetables will be included in the process, however.

Julie Edwards, a senior food technologist with the Combat Feeding Division told Military Times, “These components may provide an opportunity increase the number of fresh like fruits and vegetables (meaning that the fruits and veggies retain a bright color and similar shape but are just crunchy) within the MRE if found to be acceptable by Warfighters during an Initial Operational Test and Evaluation.”

Working with a company called BranchOut foods on the technology, the Combat Feeding Division hopes to include these upgraded fruits and vegetables in the close combat assault ration, which is typically used for short, high-intensity deployments.

A public affairs officer for Combat Capabilities Development Command noted, “[Combat Feeding Division] is conducting storage tests of these items to determine if they meet military ration requirements and is leveraging direct feedback from Soldier Center’s in-house Human Research Volunteer soldiers through sensory evaluations to help down select the vegetables to incorporate into ration items that are more appealing to warfighters.”

The main goal is to preserve not only the nutrition of the produce but also its taste. In addition, the division is experimenting with enhancing flavors with spices and seasonings.

“The flavor is retained post processing and there was an opportunity to add additional flavors after the drying step, so the Soldiers taste tested pineapple with chili lime seasoning as well as vegetables with either ranch or buffalo seasoning,” according to another food technologist, Danielle Anderson. “The VMD process changes the texture from soft to crunchy but does not affect flavor significantly.”

However, these greens haven’t yet entered official testing. As a result, soldiers have not weighed on the flavor, texture or overall impression of the food.

“CFD has not conducted the initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E) on these items yet so there are no comments currently available,” Anderson said.

The timeline for fielding these foods in MREs is, as of this writing, not officially set.

It’s not surprising, then, that the First World War instilled an entire generation with a brand of patriotism that could prompt risking everything to preserve the American dream. That exact experience is currently showcased in the National World War I Museum’s exhibit “The Little War,” an exploration of childhood between 1914 and 1918.

The exhibit’s items, according to Specialist Curator Natalie Walker, incited questions for museum staff about war’s impact on children, both during World War I and throughout subsequent conflicts.

“[It was] the literature that was being produced for children at the time, the toys, the games they were playing — Allies versus the Central Powers,” Walker told Military Times. “It made it that much easier to embrace the Second World War just 20 to 25 years later.”

Those who produced children’s literature, toys and costumes of the time presented the war in a way that would remove fear factors. In doing so, the lens through which World War I was viewed by children was one of adventure, where morally superior participants always emerged victorious.

It was natural, then, for young Americans raised in such an environment to not only be willing to serve if called upon, but do so excitedly — even subconsciously — as they deployed like the heroes they once read about.

“[The literature] beat it in in terms of good versus evil … to instill these ideas of patriotism, being a good citizen, and fighting for your country,” Walker noted. “But these kinds of things also trivialized violence and war. [Children are] playing from the safety of their backyards and all of this literature talks about a Boy Scout who goes overseas, and he escapes every battle and conflict unscathed. … They didn’t want to scare children. … At the same time, they’re not really telling the truth.”

Some of the most prominent items in the exhibit’s collection include illustrated literature, children’s soldier and nurse costumes, ration books and nighttime prayer missals. Much of the media at the time, meanwhile, dehumanized the enemy in the eyes of children.

“One of my favorite pieces is called ‘Nursery Rhymes for Fighting Times,’” Walker said. “It’s a book that was published in 1914 in Great Britain, and it takes popular nursery rhymes of the time and reworks them as a form of propaganda that really demonizes and dehumanizes Germany.

“There were no holds barred when they were creating this stuff. … If you’re a little kid, and you’re reading about the Kaiser, who’s going to come and bomb your town and hurt people you love, that’s a scary thing,” she added. “If you’re in middle school, maybe you’re reading this and getting angry. If you’re in high school, you’re probably ready to go enlist.”

The double-edge sword, however, is that many children were vital to the efforts of their countries during both world wars. Even simply by contributing to work around the house, Walker said, many were being molded for duty.

Given that these phenomena continue into today’s conflicts, Walker said she hopes the exhibit will spur conversations between children and adults.

“I want people to walk in this exhibit and get the sense that children had an active, vital role, and here’s what they did,” she said.

The “self-defense” strike happened after U.S. forces determined that the unmanned vessels were carrying explosives and posed a threat to ships in the area.

CENTCOM identified the drones in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen before taking them out.

“These actions will protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for U.S. Navy vessels and merchant vessels,” CENTCOM tweeted.

Houthi aggression has ramped up in recent months with attacks in the Red Sea targeting commercial vessels since October, attacks Houthi leaders say are in support of Palestinians as the Israel-Hamas war rages.

In the midst of continued Houthi attacks and counter-strikes, and the bombardment of Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria following a drone attack that killed three U.S. soldiers earlier this month, the Pentagon on Monday characterized the actions as “self-defense” strikes, and not a full-blown war.

“But to be clear, our goal is not to ― okay, game on, let’s just do this and go, you know, full scale war against Iranian proxy groups in Iraq and Syria,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters. “That’s not what we’re there for.”

The report’s findings, which, in essence, rank end-strength against national security threats, paint a picture of an aging and understaffed military.

“The Active Component of the U.S. military is two-thirds the size it should be, operates equipment that is older than it should be, and is burdened by readiness levels that are more problematic than they should be,” the report reads. “To the extent that progress has been made, it has been at the expense of both capacity and modernization.”

To narrow scope and provide accuracy, the report focused specifically on hard power — namely, the military’s dominating influence on the world stage. Overall, the study was designed to illustrate whether or not the military in its capacity in 2024 would be able to defend the country and pursue its strategic goals.

The researchers ultimately settled on three criteria for measuring hard power: Capability, capacity, and readiness. The criteria were then analyzed through a lens of the U.S. military’s ability to sustain itself through two major, ongoing regional conflicts.

“As currently postured, the U.S. military is at significant risk of not being able to defend America’s vital national interests with assurance,” the report said.

The report’s rankings for each military branch and the force in total, meanwhile, spanned five levels: Very strong, strong, marginal, weak, and very weak.

Of the branches, the Marine Corps was found to be the sole service rated as “strong.” Army and Space Force were considered “marginal,” while the Navy and Air Force were rated as “weak” and “very weak,” respectively.

While the Marine Corps was considered to have the best outlook, data may be stilted due to the fact that, unlike the other branches, the service “is measured against a one-war requirement rather than the two-war requirement to which the other services are held,” the report said.

“The 2024 Index concludes that the current U.S. military force is at significant risk of being unable to meet the demands of a single major regional conflict while also attending to various presence and engagement activities,” the report noted. “The force would probably not be able to do more and is certainly ill-equipped to handle two nearly simultaneous MRCs — a situation that is made more difficult by the generally weak condition of key military allies.”

As a result, the report rated the overall end-strength of U.S. forces as “weak.” The report also notes that things have gotten progressively worse over the last two-to-three years, in particular.

“This is the inevitable result of years of sustained use, underfunding, poorly defined priorities, wildly shifting security policies, exceedingly poor discipline in program execution, and a profound lack of seriousness across the national security establishment even as threats to U.S. interests have surged,” the report concluded.

Update: A previous version of this article reflected older branch rankings but has since been updated.

Based on author Damien Lewis’ book of the same name, the movie recounts the origins of British special forces — stood up at the direction of Winston Churchill — as a clandestine military banditi assembled as the Special Operations Executive, or SOE. Using “ungentlemanly” methods, the group’s mission is to turn the tide of the war.

Judging by the trailer, the film resembles a heist movie layered with all the quirks familiar to fans of Guy Ritchie’s films. The irreverent killing of Nazis using unconventional — if not gruesome — tactics also feels somewhat similar to “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” though the choreography of action scenes may not be as elaborate.

The film stars Henry Cavill (”Man of Steel”) as the band’s leader, Gus March-Phillipps. Alan Ritchson (“Reacher”) and Eiza González (“Baby Driver”) co-star, with Jerry Bruckheimer (“Top Gun”) producing.

“The “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” hits theaters on April 19.

While departing on the flight from London Gatwick Airport in England, then-18-year-old Aditya Verma reportedly sent a Snapchat message to a friend that read, “On my way to blow up the plane (I’m a member of the Taliban),” according to the BBC.

Verma’s actions, which were flagged by U.K. security services, prompted the Spanish air force to scramble F-18 fighter jets to escort the aircraft toward its destination, the Spanish island of Menorca. An extensive search of the plane revealed no explosives.

“A court in Madrid heard it was assumed the message triggered alarm bells after being picked up via Gatwick’s Wi-Fi network,” the BBC report noted.

During a Jan. 22, 2024 court appearance, Verma alleged that the bomb comment was simply an ethnic joke shared between friends.

“Since school, it’s been a joke because of my features,” he said, according to the BBC. “It was just to make people laugh.”

The Telegraph reported that the fine was originally set to repay a sum equal to $103,000 USD to foot the flight costs of the Spanish Defence Ministry’s F-18s. Additionally, the fine included approximately $24,400 in court fees.

In proceedings, Verma’s lawyer backed his client’s claim that it was simply a joke gone awry, according to The Telegraph.

“Aditya didn’t put his message on Facebook or advertise it. What he did was the equivalent of making a joke inside a car with friends,” Verma’s lawyer told prosecutors. “This boy was 18 years old and was beginning a holiday which was a reward for his school excellence. When he and his friends landed in Menorca, they realised they were in a nightmare.”

The court ultimately chose not to pursue a terrorism charge or jail time for Verma.

At just 22 years old, Air Force 2nd Lt. Madison Marsh made military history on Jan. 14 as the first active-duty service member to be crowned Miss America.

An Air Force Academy alumna who has been piloting since she was a teenager, Marsh entered the pageant scene for the first time while in college. She was crowned Miss Colorado before moving on to the Miss America competition.

“As a freshman at the Academy, you might have a hard time finding your identity in a very new and challenging environment,” Marsh said in an Air Force release. “My cousin had competed in pageants for a long time, and one of the big things about it that I love is the community service aspect and the focus on public speaking.”

Instead of twirling a baton or belting out arias on stage throughout her pageant career, Marsh focused on storytelling.

“I’m not conventionally talented — I cannot sing or dance,” she said. “I gave a monologue about my very first solo flight at the age of 16 and how that shaped some of the fundamental leadership characteristics that I got to carry through into USAFA and then into my adult professional life.”

Although she dreamed to one day become an astronaut — and graduated from the academy with a degree in physics and a focus on astronomy — Marsh is now charting a course for a career in public service.

“Marsh is currently pursuing her master’s degree in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School through the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Civilian Institution Program, which falls under Air University,” an Air Force spokesperson told Military Times.

It’s been reported that Tom Cruise will reprise his role as Navy fighter pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell — hopefully he will be promoted beyond captain or finally retiring.

Sequel stars Glen Powell and Miles Teller are also slated to return as Lt. Jake “Hangman” Seresin and Lt. Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, respectively. Producers Jerry Bruckheimer and David Ellison are expected to sign on as well.

The original 1986 “Top Gun” introduced viewers to Cruise’s daring, if not impulsive, “Maverick” as a student attempting to prove his mettle at the Navy’s elite fighter pilot school. In the sequel — decades later — he has to contend with his status as an aging aviator while reconciling the loss of his best friend and co-pilot “Goose” (Anthony Edwards).

“Top Gun: Maverick” was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture last year, and it took home an Oscar for Best Sound. Moreover, its nearly $1.5 billion in box office revenue shows that even after nearly four decades, fans have never lost that loving feeling for the franchise.

Paramount has not yet released information about the third movie or its story. Production and release dates are also unclear.

But if variety is missile fuel and life is hot pot, perhaps bland is better. At least, that’s what members of China’s air force may feel after reportedly cooking meals using missile fuel bricks.

One former People’s Liberation Army member who defected and escaped to the United States claimed that corruption in the leadership ranks led to meals cooked over missile fuel, according to a Radio Free Asia report.

Navy Lt. Col. Yao Cheng, a former staff officer of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force — he fled to the U.S. in 2016 — reportedly witnessed troops burning “missile fuel to make hotpot,” a dish that typically involves a pot of hot soup stock, into which diners dip meats and other vegetables.

“When we would eat hotpot, we would take out the solid fuel in the missiles piece by piece, because there were insufficient supplies,” Yao told the publication. “I would often go along to the armory and ask them for a small round piece of solid fuel when we wanted to have hotpot.”

Cheng attributed the act to corruption and the misallocation of funds.

“Some military departments have no money, and if they need money, their chief has to allocate some from the equipment budget,” Yao said. “The equipment budget would have been sufficient, but not after being misappropriated.”

While this is simply one former officer’s personal account, Bloomberg also recently reported that U.S. intelligence confirmed that corruption within the military has prompted Chinese President Xi Jinping to carry out a “military purge.” The publication added that an unnamed source confirmed that these circumstances may ultimately prevent the Chinese military from engaging in widespread conflict.

Reuters also reported on Dec. 30 that the purge included removing nine top military officials, almost entirely from the PLA’s Rocket Force, which handles nuclear missiles.

Last year may have unveiled a handful of military-centric films, such as “Guy Ritchie’s: The Covenant” and “Kandahar,” but there are even more action-packed thrillers around the corner in 2024.

Films that troops should have on their radar this year — even just as a means of escaping the barracks for a few hours — span fantasy to history and feature phenomenal casts, writers, directors, and, of course, special effects.

Here’s a look at nine movies to get excited about in the months ahead.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

The post-apocalyptic Australian Wasteland is back with a prequel chronicling the origin story of young Imperator Furiosa. The story traces back to her childhood and follows her journey before meeting Max Rockatansky. Anya Taylor-Joy (”The Menu”) takes on the role of the gritty Furiosa, with Chris Hemsworth co-starring. “Furiosa” is set for a May 24 release.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

Nearly 200 years before the Fellowship set out to defeat Sauron and destroy the one ring, there was “The War of the Rohirrim.” This animated adaptation is expected to fill in some story gaps between Amazon’s “Rings of Power” series and Peter Jackson’s beloved trilogy — particularly the fall of the kings of Rohan and the origins of Helm’s Deep. The film stars Brian Cox (”Succession”) as the voice of King Helm Hammerhand and is slated for a December debut.

The Old Guard 2

A sequel to 2020′s “The Old Guard,” this film is expected to pick up right after the first film’s shocking end that left fans clamoring for more. The first movie centered on a group of mercenaries whose secret powers of immortality are exposed. The betrayal is explained, but the ending was left open for a follow-up, which began filming in 2022. Original cast members Charlize Theron, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and KiKi Layne reprise their roles.

Civil War

An all-too-relevant topic, considering today’s political discourse, civil war has broken out in the United States in this film by Alex Garland (”Ex Machina”). A team of journalists covers the fracturing factions across America amid tense scenes of militarized conflict. Jesse Plemons (”Killers of the Flower Moon”), Kirsten Dunst (”Fargo”), and Nick Offerman (”The Last of Us”) star, with the film expected to arrive in theaters on April 26.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

This Guy Ritchie-directed World War II movie tells the origin story of British special forces, stood up at the direction of Winston Churchill. The film, starring Henry Cavill (“Man of Steel”) and Eiza González (“Baby Driver”), is based on the Special Operations Executive, or SOE, which was sanctioned to use “ungentlemanly” tactics to fight the Nazis. The exact release date is still up in the air.

Escape from Germany

Arriving in theaters on April 11, “Escape from Germany” tells the true story of 85 American missionaries from the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who narrowly escaped Nazi captors as World War II begins. The film is based on first-hand accounts from diaries belonging to the missionaries.

Land of Bad

Due out Feb. 16, this action thriller directed by William Eubank (“House of the Rising Sun”) boasts a big cast, including Russell Crowe, Milo Ventimiglia, and Liam and Luke Hemsworth. The plot centers on a JTAC mission in the Philippines involving a CIA asset extraction gone wrong. The trailer features tense firefights and some serious hand-to-hand combat, to boot. Even the MQ-9 Reaper plays a pivotal role.

Six Triple Eight

Directed by Tyler Perry and starring Kerry Washington (”Scandal”), “Six Triple Eight” chronicles the impact of the U.S. Army’s 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-female, predominantly Black unit deployed during World War II. The women face racial discrimination, but ultimately prove to be a force for diversification of the U.S. military.

Undying Love

Based on a graphic novel, “Undying Love” centers on a former soldier named John Sargent and his love for a woman who happens to be a vampire held captive by her creator. It’s Sargent’s mission to kill her captor and set her free. Though details are scant and the cast hasn’t been announced, David Leitch (”John Wick” and ”Hobbs & Shaw”) is set to direct. To that, we say “Bring on the gun-fu.”