Since August, the crew has discovered the long lost sunken remains of the USS Juneau, the USS Lexington and the USS Indianapolis.

The cruiser Juneau was struck by Japanese torpedoes during the Battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942. A total of 687 men died in the attack, including all five Sullivan brothers, who insisted that they serve aboard the same ship.

The aircraft carrier Lexington, along with its aircraft, was struck by multiple Japanese torpedoes and bombs on May 8, 1942, during the Battle of the Coral Sea. More than 200 Lexington sailors were killed in the fight.

And in August, the crew found the wreck of the Indianapolis, which remains the Navy’s single worst loss at sea, about 5,500 meters below the surface.

Allen and his team’s incredible discoveries, all made in some of the deepest depths of the ocean, shine a spotlight on some of the Navy’s most important history — and ensure that the sailors who gave their lives for this nation are truly never forgotten.

The retroactive date allows the families of Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson, Sgt. La David Johnson and Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright to collect an additional $225 a month for the time the soldiers were assigned there.

The four soldiers were killed in an October ambush in Niger that is still the subject of an ongoing investigation.

While this is welcome news, the Pentagon should have approved this pay a long time ago.

U.S. troops have quietly been operating in these countries, and in many parts of Africa, for many months. And it wasn’t until the four soldiers were killed in the deadly ambush in Niger that Congress and the public became aware of the true extent of U.S. involvement in the region.

When troops are called upon to serve in harm’s way, they should be taken care of properly.

It shouldn’t take a tragedy like the one in Niger to prompt DoD to act.

Marines seeking to do that will require a medical chit to prove and explain why they can’t run. But it will allow fit and hard-working Marines to still earn a top score on their fitness test without risking unnecessary injury.

It comes at a time when the entire military is wrestling with issues of standards and fitness. The Pentagon wants to crack down on one in 10 service members who are “non-deployable” for one reason or another. And the Pentagon is working to put together a new force-wide policy on fitness and body fat standards.

It’s heartening to see the Marines push ahead with common-sense change that maintain high standards while also considering the unique needs of individual service members who might be contributing to the Corps readiness in non-traditional ways. Other services – and Pentagon bureaucrats – should take note.

Pico Rivera, California, high school teacher and city councilman Gregory Salcido is currently on administrative leave after a recording of him berating a student wearing a Marine Corps sweatshirt was posted to social media.

“Don’t you ever freaking bring the freaking military into this classroom,” Salcido can be heard saying. “I don’t understand why we let the freaking military guys come over here and recruit you at school. We don’t have pimps come into school.”

While we have a few colorful words we could share, we’ll let retired Marine general and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly speak for us.

“Well, I think the guy ought to go to hell,” Kelly told Fox News Radio on Wednesday. “I just hope he enjoys the liberties and the lifestyles that we fought for,” the Washington Post quotes him as saying.

One Army veteran challenged Salcido to “make the short trips to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego or to Camp Pendleton to meet some of the ‘dumb sh*ts’ who are training to go fight overseas for his life and his freedom.“

Salcido, what say you?

In a shocking development, surely unique to the 99th Force Support Squadron, Tech. Sgt. Geraldine Lovely endured subordinate attitude problems. Tragic. It may be the first documented case of attitude problems in military history.

Instead of confronting what she perceived as contempt for leadership head on, she sought the therapeutic comfort of her cell phone and a Facebook audience.

“It pisses me the [expletive] off that they [black female airmen] have no [expletive] respect and constantly having an attitude,” Lovely said. “What the [expletive] is up with that? … Why is it that every time I encounter, you know, my subordinates that are black females, they have a giant [expletive] attitude?”

Powerful.

Only one day earlier, a high school teacher in Pico Rivera, California, went on a recorded tirade in his classroom when he saw one of his students wearing a Marine Corps sweatshirt. So incensed by mere cotton fabric, Gregory Salcido decried military members as “dumb shits” and “the freaking lowest of our low.”

Tech Sgt. Lovely partaking in online ignorance was bad enough, but in doing so, she also declared not only herself, but her uniform and the country it represents to be the exact embodiment of Mr. Salcido’s proclamations.

God Bless Command Sgt. Maj. John Wayne Troxell for these motivating words.

Troxell, the top enlisted adviser for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, directed these words to ISIS scum. To his credit, he gave them the option of surrendering. But that seems unlikely, and there are plenty of troops more than happy to go with Plan B.

In his message, shared via social media, Troxell succeeded in rousing the troops and boosting morale. His plainspoken prose even evokes the master of quotation, Gen. Jim Mattis.

And just for fun, here’s Troxell’s stunning display from 2016 on WWE.

The Air Force has found something younger ― and a bit larger ― with more horsepower and better sensors, that can fly higher and faster, and carry more ordnance: the MQ-9 Reaper.

The phase-out of the MQ-1 already has started, so it’s an appropriate time to say thank you to the Predator for 20-plus years of selfless service.

The Predator was the original unmanned recon and intel drone, and has helped keep troops safe the past two decades. It wasn’t designed to carry weapons, but it did, and it has quite an impressive hit list.

“The Predator has been a workhorse in Iraq, Afghanistan and the fight against ISIS.” said Lt. Col. Douglas, 361st Expeditionary Attack Squadron commander, in an Air Force press release. “When you see the results everyday on the battlefield, it’s unfathomable at times.”

Though the Air Force will save money using the MQ-9 full-time, we can’t say goodbye without saying thanks to the Predator for paving the way.

“It’s a very humble aircraft, but we’ve brought a lot to the fight with its modest capabilities,” Douglas said. “The aircraft’s mission is tremendous and it has opened the doors to the future.”

Yet lately it looks like the Navy is prioritizing size — the total number of ships and sailors — over maximizing the capability and performance of the fleet it already has.

For example, in December, the Navy announced the extension of up-or-out limits for E-3 sailors to the six-year mark, up from five years. That followed an August announcement of a new two-year increase in high-year tenure for E-4, E-5 and E-6 sailors.

Also in December, the Navy declared nearly 50,000 sailors who failed fitness tests will be given a clean slate, and any pending discharges will be wiped away. Praise Neptune!

“Retention of every capable Sailor is critical to the operational readiness of the Navy,” Vice Adm. Robert P. Burke, the chief of naval personnel wrote in the fitness message.

How do you define “capable”? — some of this looks like lowering the bar for retention.

The Navy wants to grow its fleet to more than 350 ships, yet it has so little confidence in the sailors actually operating them at sea that it’s dedicating an entire readiness unit to ensuring the most basic maritime tasks don’t overwhelm.

One has to ask: What impact will 75 more ships and thousands more sailors have on projecting dominance at sea if the Navy reaches these goals by leaning on sailors who are not in good shape and not getting promoted along with their peers?

The latest U.S. defense spending plan provides money to construct installations in Iceland, Norway and much of Eastern Europe.

That will make it easier for the U.S. Air Force to preposition aircraft — like the high-tech F-22 and F-35 — and aviation support in the renewed effort to deter Russia and reassure NATO allies. The money will also be used for improving airfields, training centers and ranges in Europe.

“We’re back,” is what the U.S. military would like to say about Europe. But the reality is that the U.S. military is coming back by degrees from a low point that in retrospect seems startling.

Four years ago, the U.S. Army rolled its last tanks out of Europe after decades of a strong Cold War presence. And soon afterward, Russia moved to invade Ukraine’s Crimea region and step up aggression in the Black Sea.

Since then, the U.S. has redeployed tanks, airpower and logistical support, and launched heal-to-toe armored brigade deployments to Europe. In December, Army officials said they are looking at larger deployments to Europe, according to Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who retired recently after serving as commander of U.S. Army Europe.

The U.S. needs to “achieve the same strategic effect with 30,000 that we did with 300,000” troops in the Cold War, Hodges claimed.

Much more remains to be done.

He snuck around the cruiser Shiloh, hoarding Pop Tarts and peanut butter. Shipmates said he liked to deliver intriguing boasts, like saying he could blast fireballs from his hands. After he went missing for a week, he was found stinking of excrement.

But there is another sailor in this epic tale who deserves some attention.

Mims disappeared on June 8. Several days later a Shiloh sailor spotted him in the middle of the night.

Now, if you were that sailor, and you just spotted the infamous missing Peter Mims, what would you do? A) Try to apprehend him. B) Don’t engage, but sound an immediate alarm and wake your fellow shipmates. C) Chat it up with Mims for a bit, then go back to sleep for 90 minutes.

If you answered C, you might be “that guy” on the cruiser Shiloh. For his inaction and his failure to end the Mims fiasco early, that sailor gets a MISFIRE.