Human performance optimization, or HPO, is intended to improve health and readiness force-wide. Operator Syndrome, meanwhile, is a clinical construct that describes the cumulative health effects experienced by special operations personnel.

Comprehensive assessments of the two will require Pentagon leadership and the advisory council to establish a standardized, evidence-informed framework to assess special operations and other combat-focused jobs susceptible to cumulative operational injuries within the military health system.

The advisory council’s success will depend on both the recommendations it produces and its ability to develop a coherent, scalable framework for service members with suspected Operator Syndrome across the MHS.

Along the way, the council has a unique chance to shift the MHS from a fragmented, symptom-based approach to one that addresses cumulative effects of operational service through holistic, multidisciplinary care.

The value of this approach has been demonstrated by existing human performance and operator health programs such as the U.S. Special Operations Command’s Preservation of the Force and Family (POTFF) and the Army’s Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F) program.

Right now, the advisory council has an opportunity to leverage decades’ worth of lessons learned from these programs to establish evidence-based clinical standards for continuous evaluation and refinement.

As the science of Operator Syndrome evolves, this framework should function as a learning health system, with new evidence informing ongoing updates that improve health, function, and operational readiness.

Dr. Chris Frueh’s foundational work first introduced Operator Syndrome in 2020 as a multisystem effect resulting from allostatic load and cumulative operational exposure. This work has driven multidisciplinary research to develop standardized methods for its characterization and assessment.

One example of this ongoing work is the collaborative development and preliminary validation of a standardized self-report instrument to assess Operator Syndrome-related symptom patterns.

The Operator Syndrome Symptom Scale–Self Report, or OSSS-SR, is guided by existing scientific literature, multidisciplinary clinical expertise and principles of patient-reported outcomes. This multisystem screening tool is designed to identify common symptom patterns affecting the mind and body and to support occupational performance and overall health among operators.

Currently advancing to its next phase of development, the OSSS-SR includes items for the empirical evaluation of multiple symptom domains across physical, mental, physiological and other performance health systems.

As the advisory council establishes its agenda, it should actively encourage and leverage similar collaborations. The future of military medicine depends not only on government-led initiatives but also on strategic partnerships that unite operational experience and clinical expertise.

Ongoing research efforts, meanwhile, also reinforce an important implementation challenge.

A validated clinical framework should guide these new screening initiatives. Recognizing Operator Syndrome as a military health priority is an important first step, but sustainability will depend on the Pentagon’s ability to build the scientific infrastructure that supports evidence-based decision-making. The Pentagon should treat investment in measurement science as a foundational priority.

Implementing screening before establishing a validated clinical framework introduces avoidable risks. Without standardized assessment methods and evidence-based referral criteria, identification of Operator Syndrome will likely vary across providers and military treatment facilities, leading to inconsistent clinical decision-making, unnecessary referrals and missed opportunities to identify service members who would benefit from comprehensive multidisciplinary care.

These challenges are not unique to Operator Syndrome. Similar concerns have been raised by certain organizations — such as the Endocrine Society — about broad population-based testosterone screening.

The Endocrine Society supports targeted testing for individuals with specific symptoms and risk factors, emphasizing that no single symptom or biomarker should serve as the basis for identifying cumulative operational injury, and that laboratory findings should be interpreted in an appropriate clinical context to avoid unnecessary intervention.

While expanded screening may facilitate earlier identification of health concerns, testosterone testing should serve as the starting point — not the endpoint — of clinical evaluation.

Combining testosterone results with a comprehensive medical history, a validated assessment tool such as the OSSS-SR and additional laboratory testing provides a more complete picture of physiological dysfunction and supports more targeted, multidisciplinary care.

A holistic screening framework supports treatment of the impacts of occupational performance. This is essential for military readiness and retention and can improve screening and continuity of care during and after service.

Addressing Operator Syndrome through a single symptom or isolated laboratory value, such as relying on testosterone testing alone, or by evaluating the broader physiological systems increases the likelihood that the underlying condition will remain inadequately addressed.

Council members must understand military healthcare, its operational systems and clinical outcomes, and how to optimize health and wellness to enhance lethality.

Extensive research on Operator Syndrome and the development of a self-report instrument have emphasized the need for multidisciplinary expertise to enhance holistic assessments of special operations personnel.

It is imperative, therefore, that physical and psychological assessments and treatments be evidence-based and include continuous, cumulative diagnostics throughout a military member’s entire career.

The Pentagon must prioritize selecting a multidisciplinary group of health and policy specialists when evaluating the proposed advisory council’s nominated members. Relying on a single viewpoint for an entire advisory panel is as ineffective as isolating a single symptom in a comprehensive diagnosis.

Ultimately, ensuring warfighters can respond to conflict at a moment’s notice requires a fully functioning mind-body connection that supports both health and readiness.

Mackenzie Witt, Pepper Phillips, MPH, and KayleighBealer, MS, are with A-G Associates, which partners with federal agencies, public health systems, and mission-driven organizations to turn strategies into results across behavioral health, military and veteran wellbeing, and systems transformation.

Jennifer Byrne, OTD, and Kelli Cabrera, OTD, are with 5by5 Performance Therapy, an organization committed to contributing to blast-injury and operator-centric research and academia to improve knowledge and understanding of the Special Operator family’s strengths and challenges.

National security officials in Washington widely view Baker, who also served as a national security adviser to Vice President JD Vance, as a low-key but influential figure inside the White House.

A former State Department official, academic and Vance adviser when the vice president was in the Senate, Baker had historically advocated for a more restrained American foreign policy that questioned the wisdom of long-term foreign conflicts.

He was also among the figures who helped craft Vance’s speech to the Munich Security Conference last year, during which the vice president warned European leaders that alleged censorship and democratic backsliding posed risks as severe to the continent as external threats, like those posed by China and Russia.

“I’m proud of everything we’ve achieved and, of course, am incredibly grateful to the President, Vice President and Secretary Rubio,” Baker wrote in a statement provided to Reuters. “I’ll never be far away.”

In separate statements, Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised the outgoing deputy national security adviser, whose departure was first reported by Axios.

Staff Changes

Baker, who has a young family, stayed on at the White House months longer than originally planned to help with some key staff transitions, according to a person close to him.

Mike Needham, a high-ranking State Department official close to Rubio, joined the White House in late May as another deputy national security adviser alongside Baker, the person noted. Cliff Sims, a White House and intelligence official during Trump’s first term, succeeded Baker as national security adviser to Vance at around the same time.

There have been additional staff departures at lower levels of the White House’s national security team in recent months. The top officials on the National Security Council overseeing Europe and Latin America both departed in June.

The broader significance of the turnover is unclear. While Baker was present at some high-level talks and was considered far more influential than some of his peers, the Trump administration has often dealt with its biggest foreign policy challenges at the principal level, delegating relatively little responsibility even to its highest-level staff.

Outside the national security space, the White House has in recent days announced the impending departure of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and White House counsel David Warrington.

Melissa Farris was charged with depredation against property of the United States and destruction of veterans’ memorials, Pirro said on social media, adding that the charges carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison.

The World War II Memorial on the National Mall was vandalized with bubbly soap and graffiti on Thursday, prompting vows from the U.S. government to find the perpetrator. The fountain bubbled over with suds and the words “Clean hands Dirty $” were painted on one surface, splattering the area with red and green paint.

Along with her statement on X, Pirro posted photos of a woman who appears to be holding a can close to the red paint on the memorial.

Pirro did not provide more details of the woman in custody or provide the source of the images, which Reuters was not immediately able to verify.

Pirro has recently drawn President Donald Trump’s anger for dropping charges against four people for allegedly vandalizing the Reflecting Pool after Trump oversaw renovations of the pool.

The pool’s condition soon deteriorated, with a peeling liner and algae blooms. Pirro blamed that deterioration on faulty installation in dropping the vandalism charges.

Trump said in response that Pirro had “folded like an umbrella.”

Trump appeared to link the Reflecting Pool damage to the World War Two memorial in a post on social media on Friday, calling it an insult to Americans who had died in the conflict.

“First the Reflecting Pool, now this,” he wrote. “We are on their trail! Where do these animals come from???”

Pirro’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Farris could not be immediately reached for comment.

Task Force Falcon Strike will utilize one-way attack drones composed of unmanned systems from above, on and below the sea, managed by U.S. military support staff and regional partners, according to a Thursday release.

The move to launch this unit follows CENTCOM’s establishment of Task Force Scorpion Strike in December 2025, a Middle East-based task force equipped with one-way attack drones as the military strived to integrate drone technology across the services.

“Task Force Falcon Strike will expand on Scorpion Strike’s success given the tremendous innovation happening among our regional allies and partners,” Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander, said in the release. “Integrating and deploying our new capabilities together will help us rapidly realize the new possibilities that are on the horizon.”

Scorpion Strike was the first to launch an aerial attack drone from a U.S. Navy warship last December, the month of its announcement. The unit also deployed one-way unmanned aerial systems during Operation Epic Fury and during strikes on Iranian port facilities in July with unmanned attack vessels at sea, the statement highlights.

CENTCOM began consulting with and officially inviting regional partners to join Falcon Strike, aiming to expand attack-drone capabilities across the Middle East into a “unified multi-domain, multinational deterrent.”

“The United States military has a lot of strong partnerships and friends in the region,” Cooper said. “We are collectively stronger when we integrate and deploy new capabilities together.”

The release did not specify which regional partners CENTCOM is working with on the unit.

Personnel from the U.S. Special Operations Command Central, located at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, will lead Falcon Strike’s staff of U.S. and regional representatives after it launched Scorpion Strike, the release states.

The announcement comes as the U.S. continues its war with Iran, which has depleted the U.S. munitions stockpile and caused military leaders to weigh the possibility of developing cheaper anti-drone technology at a faster pace.

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Deontre T. Huey and Warrant Officer Seth L. Olmstead were killed when their aircraft went down around 1:40 p.m. Central Standard Time on Wednesday near Salado, Texas, the Army said.

“Our hearts and deepest condolences are with the families of the Soldiers we lost Wednesday,” Lt. Gen. Kevin D. Admiral, III Armored Corps and Fort Hood commanding general, said in a release. “The Army is a family, and a tragedy like this is felt throughout our formations and our community.”

Huey, 34, joined the Army in February 2014 as a motor transport operator. The Army listed his home of record as Killeen, Texas. Olmstead, 25, joined the Army in January 2023 as a warrant officer candidate. The Army listed his home of record as Belton, Texas.

The Army said a team from the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center in Fort Rucker, Alabama, is leading an investigation into the crash.

In an announcement, Sheehy said the Special Operations Forces Concealed Carry Act would align the status of special operators with active and retired law enforcement officers, who are permitted under federal law to carry concealed weapons across state lines.

“Our elite warfighters never stop serving, and this bill ensures the law reflects the trust they’ve earned through a lifetime of sacrifice,” Sheehy said, adding that “Special Operations Forces spend their careers protecting the American people with unmatched discipline, judgment, and professionalism.”

According to Sheehy’s office, when Congress passed the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act, or LEOSA, in 2004, lawmakers recognized that active and retired officers may need to respond to violent crime or terrorists while off duty. They also recognized that officers face ongoing threats from individuals they previously encountered while on duty.

Sheehy’s office explained that his bill would build on the framework created by LEOSA because individuals in special operations “have completed rigorous selection and possess firearms training that meets or exceeds professional law enforcement standards.”

Congressman Pat Harrigan, a Republican from North Carolina, filed a companion bill in April. In a statement, he said that “it makes no sense that an active or retired SEAL or Green Beret, someone who spent a career mastering firearms under the most demanding conditions in the world, has no equivalent recognition under federal law.”

While the bill would extend concealed carry privileges, it would also require participants to complete annual active-duty-level firearms qualification tests, as well as a Justice Department concealed carry class.

During Sheehy’s bid for a Senate seat in 2024, The Washington Post published an article about an incident in which Sheehy was cited at Glacier National Park for illegally discharging a firearm. According to the report, the park ranger investigating the incident interviewed Sheehy at an emergency room in Kalispell shortly after the shooting in October 2015.

“(Sheehy) stated he was arranging gear in the back of his vehicle, and that the gun (Colt Revolver, .45 long) had slipped down the pile of gear, hit the ground and fired. The round hit him in the right forearm and did not pass through,” the ranger wrote in a narrative with the citation.

The ranger also told The Washington Post that the revolver that Sheehy said had accidentally discharged was loaded except for a single missing bullet.

When confronted with the details, Sheehy told reporters that he lied about accidentally discharging his firearm and that the shooting injury actually occurred during a deployment in Afghanistan. He said he didn’t report it because a teammate’s negligent discharge caused the injury, and he didn’t want to get his teammate in trouble.

“I guess the only thing I’m guilty of is admitting to doing something I never did,” Sheehy told the newspaper. He added: “It was a small price to pay to make sure that a whole team of really great Americans didn’t get dragged through the mud over this.”

Two people are dead after an Apache helicopter crashed outside of Fort Hood, Texas, according to local authorities.

Emergency calls reporting the crash came in around 1:34 p.m. Central Standard Time, said Cliff Coleman, a spokesperson for the Bell County Sheriff’s Office, during a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

The individuals were pronounced dead at 2:30 p.m., he said, directing additional questions about the military statuses of the deceased to the Fort Hood Criminal Investigation Division.

Fort Hood did not immediately respond to an inquiry.

Earlier in the afternoon, Fort Hood announced that an Apache helicopter crashed in Salado, outside of the base, and said that emergency services were involved.

“Our immediate priority is securing the site and supporting the initial response efforts,” said Brig. Gen. Ethan Diven, acting commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division. “Our thoughts are with the crew and their families as we await further information.”

Companies will be able to request range access even if they do not have an ongoing partnership with the government, according to the release. The effort, the Army says, is designed to hasten the development and testing of drones, counter-drone systems, long-range fires and cheap interceptors.

The service said it is launching four ranges in the U.S. and one internationally. The ranges include Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, West Cibola Range in Arizona, Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center in Mississippi, Camp Grayling in Michigan and Africa Multidomain Training and Experimentation Center in Morocco.

“A company with a good idea shouldn’t need a team of lawyers and a program of record just to prove their equipment works,” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said in the release. “So we fixed that. One front door — testrange.army.mil — a real person to walk you in, and on the other side, everything the modern battlefield demands: contested airspace, degraded signals and the space to test at real scale.”

The move comes as the Pentagon implements sweeping changes to speed up drone and counter-drone acquisition. The Defense Department created the Joint Interagency Task Force 401, a unit charged with streamlining counter-drone efforts, which recently launched an online marketplace.

It also follows reports that the U.S. has depleted around two-thirds of the Patriot missile interceptor inventory it had before the country’s war with Iran. Though Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth disputed a CNN report that said military commanders had warned U.S. interceptor stockpiles were critically depleted, the Pentagon is pressing the defense industry to expedite the production of critical weapons.

Companies can request to use the ranges using an online portal, but the service cannot guarantee a specific location or timeline. The website includes range parameters and a list of capabilities that can be tested at each site.

Additionally, the Army announced that Camp Grayling will host an “electromagnetic unreliability test event” for the private sector beginning in September and then likely on a quarterly recurring basis. The event will simulate conditions seen in Ukraine during the country’s ongoing war with Russia.

Dugway Proving Ground, for instance, offers long-range fires testing, while West Cibola Range is currently only available for drone and counter-drone assessments.

The initiative has been led by the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command in collaboration with the Mississippi and Michigan National Guard and U.S. Africa Command, according to the release.

In a notice expected in the Federal Register on Thursday, the Defense Department will launch a three-year pilot in September that will reimburse eligible troops to preserve their gametes before deployment.

The benefit, required under the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, will pay service members up to $500 per year for sperm retrieval and cryopreservation and $10,000 per year for egg preservation services.

Those eligible include active-duty DoD personnel who receive orders qualifying for hazardous duty pay, those who expect to get such orders within 120 days and those geographically separated from a “spouse, domestic partner or dating partner” for 180 days or more.

Military families and family planning advocates have lobbied for more than a decade to increase access to fertility services, to include cryopreservation of sperm and egg cells before combat deployments, in vitro fertilization and other advanced reproduction treatments.

In 2014, the Bob Woodruff Foundation sponsored a one-of-a-kind, two-day conference on intimacy and family issues among the combat injured that highlighted the need among wounded personnel to have broader access to family planning counseling, gamete banking and fertility treatments.

Nearly 2,000 troops received debilitating injuries to their groins or genital regions between 2000 and 2013, and 307,000 service members experienced some type of head injury during the same time frame — injuries that sometimes can affect fertility and sex drive.

In 2016, then Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that the Pentagon would begin covering sperm and egg freezing for service members, but the planned pilot never came to fruition following the election later that year of President Donald Trump.

Military families have often spent their own money on cryopreservation as a safeguard, and in extreme cases, have paid to extract sperm from dying loved ones to ensure the possibility of advanced reproductive services.

In 2019, the parents of West Point Cadet Peter Zhu extracted their son’s sperm after he was fatally injured in a skiing accident. They argued in court that Zhu had expressed wanting to have a family someday, and they wanted to preserve his sperm to provide future options.

In Israel, since the start of the Gaza conflict, the military has started offering the option to retrieve the sperm of deceased service members when delivering casualty notifications, according to The New York Times.

Since at least 2022, organizations such as the Military Family Building Coalition, Resolve: The National Infertility Association and others have provided free cryopreservation services to some service members, but until now, no government assistance has been available for deploying troops.

How the program works

Under the pilot, service members can elect to obtain preservation services at a military treatment facility that offers reproductive programs or through a civilian clinic of their choice.

Commanders must validate eligibility, as the Defense Health Agency does not have access to orders. To receive reimbursement, eligible troops must have written affirmation from their commands.

Reimbursement must be requested within 120 days after covered services began — usually the date of retrieval, prescription or lab procedure. Troops must submit itemized invoices and DHA Form 459.

Service members could be eligible for the program more than once within the three-year pilot. Any decisions regarding continued storage, disposition or later use following participation “are solely the responsibility of the covered member and outside the scope of the program,” according to the announcement.

Throughout the pilot, the DoD plans to study the program’s popularity, its cost, continued feasibility and impact on readiness, according to the announcement.

More information on the benefit will be available in the Aug. 13 edition of the Federal Register.

The grant, which covers four years, was awarded to Rosalind Franklin University in Illinois and Old Dominion University in Virginia. According to a release from Rosalind Franklin, bone-stress injuries affect up to 8% of military recruits across the services and cost the Department of Defense about $100 million per year in medical expenses alone.

“Because suspected stress fractures often require serial clinical visits, radiographs, MRI and bone scans, there is a strong operational and economic incentive to improve early diagnosis and risk stratification,” school staff said in the release.

The objective of the grant is to develop a “clinically actionable” test that flags biomarkers in urine, creating a non-invasive way to detect bone-stress injuries in the legs before they lead to fractures and other more severe, sidelining conditions.

“[Bone stress injuries] are a major challenge to military readiness,” Shawn Flanagan, director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Rosalind Franklin’s Center for Lower Extremity Ambulatory Research (CLEAR), said in a statement. “By combining cutting-edge proteomic methods with access to large, well-characterized military cohorts, we aim to create a biomarker panel that safeguards recruits and enhances operational performance.”

Founded in 2004, CLEAR is a leading center for research to make “measurable improvements in the health and function of the lower extremities,” according to its website, with specialties in diabetic complications and biomechanics.

The team of researchers, which, according to releases, will include military professionals and experts in proteins, musculoskeletal physiology, bone imaging and military health, will study cohorts of military recruits over time to validate testing panels, and include gender-specific analyses to evaluate any differences between male and female recruits.

The release does not say where the research will be conducted or what services will be involved.

The new research grant comes on the heels of military research that expands what’s known about military stress fractures and who’s most at risk. A Uniformed Services University study published in the Journal of Military Medicine in June assessed 446 patients at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center who sustained a total of 537 stress fractures over three years.

It found that recruits were more likely than longer-serving service members to sustain leg and pelvis fractures, but less likely to sustain foot fractures. New recruits were also significantly more likely than other groups to sustain multiple stress fractures.

“Providers may consider having a lower threshold for imaging new recruits with hip pain as this could identify a stress reaction before it becomes a stress fracture,” the study concluded.

The prospect of a non-invasive test that flags biomarkers for stress fractures is all the more appealing because they can be difficult to confirm with conventional approaches.

“[Bone stress injuries], particularly hips, can be tricky to diagnose as the pain level doesn’t always equal the severity level, and X-ray imaging doesn’t always show early BSI,” Army Maj. Gary Helton, assistant chief of the Fort Jackson Department of Sports Medicine, said in a 2025 release. “Tibial BSIs, and hip BSIs, particularly the femoral neck, can lead to a complete fracture needing surgery if not addressed in a timely manner.”

An ongoing Army study aims to identify trends and risk factors for BSIs, giving providers more opportunities to prevent severe injuries through better evaluation techniques.