He was expected to resume his full duties Friday evening, Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement.

“It was an evolving situation, and taking privacy into account,” Ryder told Military Times of the decision not to disclose Austin’s health status when he was first hospitalized.

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks has been filling in where necessary, Ryder said.

“The deputy has conducted some routine business for department on his behalf,” he said.

That includes a Jan. 4 strike in Iraq on a militia group tied to recent attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.

The intentional lack of public disclosure comes in stark contrast to another senior leader’s recent hospitalization, when Marine Commandant Gen. Eric Smith suffered a heart attack in October.

In that case, the Marine Corps announced the event in an email to reporters the following day.

The Pentagon, citing privacy, did not disclose the elective surgical procedure that led to Austin’s complications.

Last fall, as four of the five Defense Department services and the Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared to welcome new leaders, a Republican senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, was six months into his hold on senior military confirmations in protest of a Pentagon policy that allows paid leave and covers travel for reproductive health care access for service members.

It took until Nov. 2 for all four services and the Joint Chiefs to have new leadership confirmed, all of whom have been vice chiefs performing the role of two four-stars for weeks to months.

For the Army, Gen. Randy George was confirmed as the service’s chief of staff.

“The Army is doing a great job meeting all of our requirements globally,” George told Military Times in September. “I want us to continually look at how we get better at managing home station training, [operational tempo], and transformation so units have the appropriate time to meet their requirements and get the time they need to rest, refit, and stay connected with their families.”

On the Navy side, Adm. Lisa Franchetti’s confirmation made her the first woman to serve as chief of naval operations.

“The work of our Navy continues undisrupted and unabated,” she wrote in a message to the fleet as she awaited confirmation. “During this leadership transition, our core identity as sailors remains unchanged. We are forged by the sea and connected to each other through our core values of honor, courage, and commitment.”

Air Force Gen. David Allvin, meanwhile, took over the service’s chief of staff post from Gen. CQ Brown, who was named the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“My wife, Gina, and I are humbled by this opportunity, and we are eager to continue to serve our Air Force, our airmen and their families,” Allvin said in a statement after his promotion.

Marine Corps Gen. Eric Smith spent more than two months as his service’s acting commandant, receiving his official promotion in late September. Another month would elapse before his vice commandant was confirmed, a time during which Smith suffered a heart attack.

“Nobody should feel bad for me,” he told reporters Sept. 6. “I make plenty of money, and nobody usually yells at me, so that’s good. But it is not a sustainable thing when the last thing you do is flip your computer off at 11:30 at night and you’re getting up at 5 o’clock in the morning.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in June extended the mission through September 2024, opting to continue sending troops to support the surveillance of border crossings.

“Active duty military personnel will continue to support CBP personnel by providing administrative and logistical duties, including warehousing support and additional detection and monitoring support efforts,” U.S. Northern Command spokeswoman Capt. Mayrem Morales told Military Times.

The current NORTHCOM commander has said repeatedly that CBP needs to be adequately funded so that the Homeland Security Department does not have to continue to rely on the Pentagon for support.

“I think, long term, this is not an enduring mission of the Department of Defense,” Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last year. “We need to fully fund and resource DHS to do their mission, and the DoD should be used in extremis times for the support on the border mission.”

Customs and Border Protection has repeatedly declined to respond to Military Times queries on plans to adequately staff the agency to levels that make military support unnecessary.

Just over 50% of Americans would encourage a family member or friend to enlist, according to the results of the latest Reagan National Defense Survey, an annual report from the Ronald Reagan Institute designed to take Americans’ temperature on national security issues.

This year’s survey found that while 51% of respondents would encourage military service, 31% would actively discourage it.

The data reflects several narratives that have circulated in recent years, including that the diminishing percentage of the U.S. population who are veterans means fewer people are encouraging the youth in their lives to serve. Elsewhere, many conservative voices have argued that the military’s initiatives supporting diversity and inclusion are turning off their younger peers.

In general, Americans’ esteem for the military has taken a tumble in recent years.

The survey began asking in 2018 about public confidence in the military as an institution, finding that 70% of respondents were highly confident that year. That number steadily fell to 63% in 2019, and 56% in early 2021. Support that year bottomed out at 45% following multiple controversies between President Donald Trump and the military during his administration, and a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in summer 2021 after President Joe Biden took office.

Sentiments have virtually plateaued across the last two surveys, data shows, with 48% high confidence last year and 46% in the latest results.

Researchers have dug deeper in the past two years, first adding questions about why someone felt varying levels of confidence in the military, then this year asking how those opinions would affect someone’s support of a friend of family member enlisting.

“Overall, we did find that about half of Americans would encourage a loved one to join the military; that number is pretty similar among Democrats and Republicans,” Rachel Hoff, the Ronald Reagan Institute’s policy director, told reporters on Tuesday. “But a full one-third of the American people would discourage their loved one from military service. Again, that number is pretty similar among Democrats and Republicans.”

The reasons behind discouraging service fall more along partisan lines.

“The number one reason to discourage service is simply that the military is too dangerous,” Hoff continued.

That tracks with what young people report as well. The Defense Department surveys 16-to-24-year-olds three times a year, asking about their interest in military service. The most recent results found that 70% were concerned about the risk of injury or death, while 65% were concerned about post-traumatic stress or developing other long-term psychological effects.

“But I do want to point out that numbers two and three on the list here are actually the top reasons when you look at the lists just for Democrats, just for Republicans,” Hoff said.

For Democrats, the biggest reason was an anti-war or pro-peace personal stance. For Republicans, it was the current political climate and a general distrust of politicians and politics.

Those responses dovetailed with questions about why respondents reported varying degrees of confidence in the military.

This year, the survey asked whether respondents felt the Defense Department is doing an adequate job balancing national defense with efforts to make the military an appealing place to work.

At 47%, Democrats were more likely to respond that the military is striking that balance. Among Republican respondents, 38% felt that the military was “too focused on social issues.”

Slightly more people, 51%, said they would encourage joining the military than the 46% who said they had a high level of confidence in the military.

Hoff pointed to the top reason both parties cited for why they would support a friend of family member joining as a possible reason why those numbers don’t perfectly align.

“It’s about patriotism, service and honor,” she said, which 31% of respondents selected. “And those are things that sort of might exist outside or … those values might rise above any particular concerns around the current military or civilian leadership … which is clearly what’s driving the declining trend overall and institutional confidence.”

The Army is projecting the largest shortfall of all, as it did last year, proving to be the bellwether for recruiting crunches across the armed services, at a time when the Defense Department is trying to grow its overall ranks by about 12,000.

The Marine Corps will meet its fiscal 2023 goal of 29,000 new Marines, Assistant Commandant Gen. Eric Smith told the House Armed Services Committee, while Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David Thompson told the panel his service’s recruiting challenges will depend entirely on what happens with the other services. The Space Force depends on the other military branches to transfer experienced officers and enlisted troops to grow as a new service.

“While we’re doing very well in recruiting off the street, as the other services have challenges in their recruiting, it becomes more difficult for them to release folks for interservice transfer,” Thompson said of the Space Force’s goal to bring in 700 personnel from the other branches, in addition to 700 new recruits.

The Army, with roughly five months left to meet its FY23 goal, is projecting to bring in about 55,000 active duty soldiers, well short of its 65,000 target.

“Right now we’re doing better than we were doing,” Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George told lawmakers.

That goal is higher than last year’s, George added, when the service ended up 15,000 short of its 60,000 goal for FY22, sparking a rash of national headlines about the military’s struggle to bring in an ever-shrinking pool of young people.

The Navy expects to fall about 6,000 short of its goals, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti said, which is better than what her service projected earlier this year.

The service met its active duty enlisted recruiting goal last year, draining its delayed entry program to meet the mission, as well as falling short on new officers and reservists.

Now in 2023, those new sailors — who would have been waiting to ship this year — are already in service and can’t be counted toward this year’s 40,000 active duty goal.

“On this path, about 10,000 short,” Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said, though his numbers included the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve.

On the active duty side, he said, they are expecting to be about 3,400 airmen short of their goal of about 27,000.

While the services have pointed to low unemployment and the COVID-19 pandemic as roadblocks to recruiting, some pundits and lawmakers have argued that DoD policies ― including diversity training and efforts to tamp down on violent, domestic extremism ― have deterred many Americans from conservative communities from signing up, while advocates on the left say a lack of progress on those issues impacts recruiting as well.

A Military Times investigation found that many recruiters are having to turn away candidates they otherwise would have brought in because of Military Health System Genesis, a new program that compiles comprehensive medical records.

The services previously relied on prospects to self-report past medical diagnoses or treatment, allowing them to withhold potentially disqualifying information.

Genesis “is not the root cause behind the services failing to meet their recruiting mission,” Lisa Lawrence, a Pentagon spokeswoman, told Military Times.

Asked during the hearing whether the services are collecting data on their particular recruiting challenges, each service vice chief nodded.

“That’s underway and will continue,” Allvin said.

Training focused on the M2 Bradley fighting vehicle, a Pentagon spokesman said in a statement.

“Approximately 635 Ukrainians completed the approximately five-week period of instruction, which included basic soldier tasks like marksmanship, along with medical training, squad, platoon and company training, and a battalion force-on-force exercise,” said Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson.

The rotation is part of an ongoing effort, announced late last year, designed to help advance Ukraine’s battlefield abilities as they go into a second year of beating back Russia’s invasion.

A second Bradley training rotation got underway two weeks ago, Ryder said, along with an M109 Paladin field artillery rotation, including another 700 or so Ukrainians.

“A second field artillery battalion and a Stryker battalion ― the first Ukrainian unit to receive instruction on the M1126 Stryker ―will begin training next week, with both battalions, combined, comprising approximately 890 Ukrainians,” he said.

The Pentagon announced in November that it would stand up a new assistance command to oversee training of Ukrainians in Europe, as well as provide billions of dollars in equipment and military aid flowing from the U.S.

Stateside, Ukrainians have trained on the Patriot air defense artillery system at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

The balloon is floating above commercial air traffic and doesn’t present a threat to anything on the ground currently, Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters.

“Instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years,” Ryder said. “Once the balloon was detected, the U.S. government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information.

A senior defense official declined to say how long the government had been tracking the balloon, and declined to elaborate on previous known instances of spy balloons floating over the U.S., saying only that the government is confident the balloon belongs to China and that it has lingered over U.S. air space for a longer period of time than previous balloons.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of Northern Command, advised President Biden on Wednesday not to shoot the balloon down, over concerns that debris could cause casualties on the ground.

“Currently, we assess that this balloon has limited added value from an intelligence collection perspective, but we are taking steps, nevertheless, to protect against foreign intelligence collection of sensitive information,” the official said. “We’re also tracking what abilities that could have in gaining insight and continue to monitor the balloon as it is over the continental United States.”

As the balloon drifted over Montana, it prompted the shutdown of the Billings airport on Wednesday and the alert of Air Force F-22 fighters as part of a possible plan to shoot it down over a more sparsely populated part of the state.

“So, we wanted to make sure we were coordinating with civil authorities to empty out the airspace around that central area but, even with those protective measures taken, it was the judgment of our military commanders that it didn’t drive the risk down low enough, so we didn’t take the shot,” the official said.

Montana is home to one of three U.S. bases operating nuclear fields, but the official said it’s unlikely the balloon could see anything more than orbiting Chinese satellites are already able to see.

“But out of an abundance of caution, we have taken additional mitigation steps that I’m not going to go into … but we know exactly where this balloon is, exactly what it is passing over,” the official said. “We are taking steps to be extra vigilant so that we can mitigate any foreign intelligence risk.”

The U.S. has reached out to Chinese officials through diplomatic channels, the official added.

“We have communicated to them the seriousness with which we take this issue, but beyond that, I’m not going to go into the content of the message, but we have made clear we will do whatever is necessary to protect our people and our homeland,” he said.

The first run of Northern Strike 23, a 10-day National Guard combined arms exercise, wrapped up over the weekend. This marks the sixth year the Guard has put on the event, part of the U.S. military’s push to get ready for military confrontation in the Arctic, where, as ice melts, waterways become more navigable and countries like China and Russia increase their military presence.

“If you look at a map from the North Pole, you see how close all these countries are,” Army Gen. Dan Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau, told Military Times on Thursday. “And you also see the vastness of the Arctic. And as we look at the temperatures increasing and further access to the Arctic, some of these scenarios that almost nobody would operate in because they’re so difficult ― now we’re starting to see countries move into those areas. And there will be competition there.”

In addition to adversaries like Russia and China, there are NATO allies like Norway operating in the Arctic, countries that the U.S. would be obligated to support in the event of a confrontation.

“We’ve got to be able to go wherever that potential fight may be, and we need to provide presence there,” Hokanson added. “You need to be able to go there, and not just go there and survive ― go there, operate and thrive.”

As part of his visit Thursday, Hokanson took some live-fire practice on the M777 Howitzer, one of the NATO weapons making a difference in beating back Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Field artillery was the exercise’s main focus, with members of the 20th Special Forces Group working with forward observers, along with an engineer platoon that helped build makeshift fire bases and maintain roads.

Also on scene were members of the Latvian special forces, a regular participant in Northern Strike and a country deeply alerted to Russian military expansion.

“They live this day to day, they’ve lived this for generations. And in many cases, that threat is present today,” Hokanson said. “And you see the emergency and their support for Ukraine. But then also the focus ― ‘Hey, we need to be prepared if something happens along our border.’ It’s, in a way, a citizen emergency.”

Northern Strike fits neatly into larger overall plans Hokanson has for the Guard, in terms of becoming more interoperable with the Army.

During a press conference Tuesday, he told reporters that the bureau intends to not only expand its exercise and training rotation lineup, but to modernize its brigade and division structure to more closely mirror the active duty Army.

“I think the biggest thing I took from today is, we say we need to operate in the most complex environments … and I think what we saw today is our Guardsmen realizing that … the Arctic is an important environment,” Hokanson told Military Times. “And we need to take every opportunity to really train [in] environments [that] we may not be exposed [to] all the time — just to remember we can operate [there].”

The Army selected Fort Sill over training ranges in Europe because the Patriot’s school house, which is normally a two-year training pipeline, is located at the Oklahoma post.

“Once fielded the Patriot will contribute to Ukraine’s air defense capabilities and provide another capability to Ukrainian people to defend themselves against Russia’s ongoing aerial assaults,” Ryder said.

The Pentagon announced in late 2022 that it intended to provide a single Patriot system to Ukrainian forces, as well as the required training to operate it.

The 100 troops scheduled for training at Fort Sill are roughly the number that would be assigned to a U.S. Patriot battery.

This first rotation of troops is the only one currently planned, but “we will keep the dialogue open in terms of any potential future training,” Ryder said. “But right now the focus is on training these operators to operate the system.”

The Pentagon did not announce an official timeline for the training, except to say that it will be shortened from the multiyear advanced individual training new U.S. soldiers get on the system.

The Ukrainians selected for training already have an air defense artillery background, Ryder said, and there is an emphasis on returning them to the battlefield.

“We’re not winging it in terms of the training,” Ryder said. “This will be an established curriculum to train the soldiers on the Patriot system, although expedited to ensure that they can get back to Ukraine as quickly as possible.”

Ukrainian troops have trained stateside before, including a group of 10 who learned to operate the Switchblade drone system early last year — as the Russian invasion began — during previously scheduled professional military education.

They returned home April 10.

Asked whether any other U.S.-provided systems would be best suited for training in the U.S., “As of right now, this will be the only one that I’m tracking. But of course, we’ll continue to stay flexible and do what makes the most sense and supportive,” Ryder told Military Times.

This latest group is separate from the recently announced monthly rotation of 500 Ukrainian troops to Germany, where they will receive combined-arms maneuver training. That’s also set to begin next week, Ryder said.

“Combined arms-maneuver training is a logical next step in our ongoing training efforts, which began in 2014, to build the Ukrainian armed forces’ capacity,” Ryder said Dec. 15. “While there’s an understandable focus on the equipment being provided to Ukraine, training is and has been essential to ensuring Ukraine has the skilled forces necessary to better defend themselves.”

The Pentagon announced Dec. 15 that monthly rotations of 500 Ukrainian troops would travel to U.S. Army ranges in Germany for combined arms maneuver training, an effort to reinforce their formations as they enter a second year of fighting back against the Russians.

In Lithuania, the U.S. will upgrade its periodic deployments to a consistent, heel-to-toe rotation schedule, the U.S. embassy announced Dec. 7. Units will include a field artillery battery and an armored element with several hundred soldiers.

“As President Biden has said, we are committed to defending every inch of NATO territory,” U.S. Ambassador Robert Gilchrist said in a release. “These U.S. deployments demonstrate this commitment, and while we continue to adapt our force posture in the region, we are committed to maintaining a persistent, heel-to-toe presence in the region and intensifying training with our Baltic Allies to maintain combat credible capabilities and to enhance our defense and deterrence posture.”

Pentagon officials have said there are no current plans to draw down U.S. military presence in Europe, which numbers roughly 100,00 troops since spring 2022.