The vulnerability to such “prompt injection attacks” exists because large language models, the backbone of chatbots that digest hordes of user text to generate responses, cannot distinguish between malicious and trusted user instructions.

“The AI is not smart enough to understand that it has an injection inside, so it carries out something it’s not supposed to do,” Liav Caspi, a former member of the Israel Defense Forces cyberwarfare unit, told Defense News.

In effect, “an enemy has been able to turn somebody from the inside to do what they want,” such as deleting records or biasing decisions, according to Caspi, who co-founded Legit Security, which recently spotted one such security hole in Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot.

“It’s like having a spy in your ranks,” he said.

Former military officials say that, with greater reliance on chatbots and hackers backed by China, Russia and other nations already instructing Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Copilot to create malware and fake personas, a prompt injection that orders the bots themselves to copy files or spread lies looms near.

Microsoft’s annual digital defense report, released last month, for the first time said, “AI systems themselves have become high-value targets, with adversaries amping up use of methods like prompt injection.”

What’s more, the problem of prompt injection has no easy solution, OpenAI and security researchers say.

An attack simply involves hiding malicious instructions — sometimes in white or tiny text — in a chatbot or content that the chatbot reads, such as a blog post or PDF.

For example, a security researcher demonstrated a prompt injection attack against OpenAI’s new AI-based browser, ChatGPT Atlas, in which the chatbot responded, “Trust No AI,” when a user asked for an analysis of a Google Docs file about horses that concealed malicious commands. Also, last month, a researcher tipped Microsoft off to a prompt injection vulnerability in Copilot that may have allowed attackers to trick the chatbot into stealing sensitive data, including emails.

In an emailed statement, Microsoft said its security team continuously tries hacking Copilot to find any prompt injection vulnerabilities, blocks users who try to exploit any found and monitors for abnormal chatbot behavior, among other tactics.

“Microsoft ensures its generative AI systems remain resilient against evolving threats for all our customers, including defense and national security,” the statement said.

Responding publicly to criticism on X, Dane Stuckey, OpenAI’s chief information security officer, wrote that “prompt injection remains a frontier, unsolved security problem, and our adversaries will spend significant time and resources to find ways to make ChatGPT agent fall for these attacks.”

Along the same lines, Caspi said, “You cannot prevent the prompt injection [fully], but you need to limit the impact.” He advised that organizations limit an AI assistant’s access to sensitive data and limit the user’s access to other organizational data.

For instance, the Army has awarded contracts worth at least $11 million to deploy Ask Sage, a tool that lets users restrict which Army data Microsoft Azure OpenAI, Gemini and other AI models can access to run queries and tasks. Ask Sage also isolates Army data from user prompts and external data sources.

Caspi, who is not an Army contractor, likened a prompt injection attack against an organization running Ask Sage to a lockdown situation where “you’ve got this insider, but it’s sitting in one room, and it can’t leave the room or carry out sensitive information.”

Andre Slonopas, a Virginia Army National Guard member and former Army cyber and information operations officer, uses Ask Sage and voiced confidence in the Army’s defensive AI tools, if not those of nuclear power plants or manufacturing entities, largely in rural, poorer areas.

The Virginia National Guard joined with essential services, such as power utilities, to help defend their networks against AI-powered cyberattacks, as part of a September simulation, given that service disruptions can jeopardize military preparations.

Typically, an adversary encrypts its network traffic to evade detection, but, for the sake of an experiment, organizers did not encrypt the AI offender’s traffic because “we wanted the blue team [of humans] to see exactly what the AI was doing,” Slonopas said.

“The blue team was absolutely defeated,” despite being able to watch the AI scanning its networks, creating fake usernames to gain unauthorized access and executing instructions to defeat the team’s systems.

“Whether the AI is doing prompt injection, spoofing or maybe even some sort of a brute force attack, the speed of AI is so unbelievably immense that simply human beings cannot counter it,” and, therefore, “you have to make cybersecurity AI more accessible and more affordable,” Slonopas said.

“If a water utility has to pay, say, $30,000 for a defensive AI license, well, it will amplify one person to be like 40″ or dozens of personnel, he said.

In response to questions, Army Cyber Command spokesperson Kyle Alvarez said in an emailed statement, “Due to the current lapse in appropriations, ARCYBER was unable to accept or respond to any media engagements or requests.”

Army contractors, too, are under attack from state-affiliated AI.

“China is using offensive AI like nobody else,” said Nicolas Chaillan, the founder of Ask Sage and a former U.S. Air Force and Space Force chief software officer.

“We see so many attacks coming after us,” all of which the company has stopped, Chaillan added.

A military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the geopolitical sensitivity of the matter, said that China does “appear” to be the most skilled in offensive AI. However, the official added, AI spoofing and translation allow the United States, China, Iran, other countries, hacktivists and financial cybercriminals to masquerade as one another.

For example, the official said, “Right now, with ChatGPT, I can program in Chinese. I don’t speak Chinese, but because of the ChatGPT capabilities that I have, I can do that.”

Aliya Sternstein, J.D., is an investigative journalist who has covered technology, cognition, and national security since Napster shut down, working for various outlets including Atlantic Media, Christian Science Monitor, Daily Beast, Forbes Magazine and Just Security. She is also a research analyst at Georgetown Law.

Taking cover from insurgents, his fireteam had just assembled in the dark in front of a house in Fallujah, Iraq, when the Marines were overwhelmed by the percussive blast of an explosion. About 40 yards in front of them was a mass of flames — the fiery remains of an Iraqi vehicle. Just behind them was the smoking barrel of the 120mm cannon from an M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank.

In the wee hours of Nov. 8, 2004, the Iraq War became very real for Bender, who was embedded with India Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Division. With a camera in one hand and a 9mm M9 Beretta pistol in the other, the then-20-year-old combat correspondent was momentarily deafened and disoriented by the roar of the near-simultaneous explosions.

“I had never been on the business end of an Abrams before that close,” he recalled in an interview with Military Times. “We worked with tanks for weeks and weeks after that and came to be kind of numb to it. Just being a few feet behind the barrel is much different than being a few feet in front of it as far as the overpressure and blast go.”

That’s the kind of gritty realism on display in the documentary “The Last 600 Meters: The Battles of Najaf and Fallujah,” airing on PBS on Monday, the day before Veterans Day and the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Marine Corps. The film by Michael Pack tells the story of these deadly engagements through the words and emotions of the U.S. troops who survived them.

The film gets its name from a comment made by Master Sgt. Karl R. Erickson, a U.S. Army Special Forces sniper who equates his mission with looking through his scope at a target: “Foreign policy? I don’t make it. I just deliver the last 600 meters of it.”

The rest of the documentary details what that means for the troops on the ground and in the air over these deadly battlefields, chronicling their courage, commitment and camaraderie through a bloody ordeal.

“We conducted the interviews three years after the battles when memories were fresh,” Pack said in an interview. “But it was hard time to get it on the air then. Everyone had their opinions about the war and it was clouded in politics. We strove to tell these stories without politics from the point of view of the people who were there. Maybe now is a good time to look back and remember what happened.”

What happened was some of the heaviest urban combat by the U.S. military since the 1968 Battle of Hue in Vietnam. Engaging scores of insurgent groups in an uprising similar to the Tet Offensive, U.S. forces fought from house-to-house, alley-to-alley and even face-to-face to retake the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Najaf.

In the film, Jeff Stevenson, then a Marine major, refers to the deadly close-quarters combat as a “three-block war.” Marines and soldiers had to clear each area in succession so enemy fighters would not be able to get behind them.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military quickly defeated the armies of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. However, the fighting was not over. Insurgents flooded into the country to resist the U.S. takeover. In “The Last 600 Meters,” journalist Thomas E. Ricks described how surprised he was by the situation on the ground:

“Iraq was a much more troubled place than we realized. I remember thinking, ‘I thought this was bad. I hadn’t thought it was going to be this bad.’”

By 2004, insurgents had taken over the two cities. American troops were given the mission of recapturing them. In early August, Army and Marine units pushed into Najaf amid heavy combat. The fiercest fighting took place at the massive Wadi al-Salam cemetery, which features a series of underground tunnels and aboveground monuments — ideal hiding places for ambushes. American forces often resorted to close-quarter combat to clear the seven-square-mile graveyard.

The battle for Najaf ground on throughout the month with heavy losses on both sides. At the center of the city was the Imam Ali Shrine, where enemy fighters had taken refuge. While U.S. Air Force gunships and jets attacked the area around the holy site, Marines and soldiers participated in hand-to-hand fighting to close the gauntlet.

One of the Marines interviewed in the documentary, Lt. Seth Moulton, now a U.S. representative from Massachusetts, was leading a platoon of Marines in the basement of a building when the patrol next to him encountered insurgents. It happened so fast that the Marine on point only had time to react.

“It was so dark and the Marine was clearing this room,” Moulton said in an interview with Military Times. “This guy tried to tackle him and the Marine couldn’t get his gun on him. They got into a ground fight, so the Marine pulled out his bayonet and killed the guy.”

As commandos of the Iraqi security forces prepared to storm the shrine, a negotiated settlement brought an end to the fighting in Najaf. A few months later, U.S. forces moved into Fallujah. In April, a ceasefire was declared, though tensions remained high. On Nov. 7, the attack began anew with American troops pushing the insurgents south through the built-up city to more open terrain.

Bender accompanied India Company into what he called “a sea of violence.” Fallujah was the scene of intense house-to-house fighting against a well-armed and determined enemy.

“There were a number of firefights in open streets, engagements where the asphalt is popcorning around you,” he recalled. “You have absolutely no cover and you are running wide open, trying to return fire. It’s a humbling experience. If you don’t have a relationship with your maker before you get into a situation like that, you will during it.”

One of the most intense moments in “The Last 600 Meters” takes place at “Hell House” in Fallujah. Marines had entered the structure and were shot by insurgents from the second floor. Teams attempted to rescue the men, each in turn being pinned down by machine gun fire and grenades. Trapped, there seemed to be no way to get the wounded Marines out of the kill zone.

Finally, two Marines, 1st Lt. Jesse Grapes and Pfc. Justin Boswood, broke through a barred window of the house into another part of the room. They trained their rifles on the second floor and began blasting away.

“We start unloading on these guys upstairs and these two selfless Marines run across this kill zone — not once, not twice, but four times to pull Marines out,” Grapes said in the film. “We had some Marines who were in pretty bad shape.”

Though 11 seriously wounded were rescued and a dead Marine recovered, the two insurgents remained on the second floor. A satchel charge was used to destroy the building. As Marines inspected the rubble, they found half buried what they thought was a dead insurgent. He was still alive and threw a grenade. The team scrambled for cover, then finished off the resolute enemy fighter.

“In Fallujah, I can honestly say, wow, we certainly don’t agree with their political ideology or their religious ideology,” Grapes says on camera. “We respected the fact that they stood there and faced us and fought us.”

Fighting in Fallujah lasted until Dec. 23 in what became the bloodiest battle for U.S. forces since the Vietnam War. Though traumatic, their experiences served to link them emotionally with their brothers in arms in a way few civilians understand.

“Nothing bonds like shared suffering and sacrifice for a common cause or a higher purpose,” Bender said. “Fallujah was that for us, for those of us in the fight. Those bonds definitely endure.”

He added, “That fireteam, that squad, that battalion — they are my family from the Corps.”

“The Last 600 Meters: The Battles of Najaf and Fallujah” airs Nov. 10 on many PBS stations. It can also be viewed on the PBS app and will later be shown on Prime Video and other streaming services.

Green’s likeness and story are the inspiration behind a new Call of Duty operator bundle launching Friday, making her the first female combat veteran to be featured as a playable Call of Duty character. The bundle launches alongside the new game Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

The character, called 50/50, is outfitted with a bionic arm based on Green’s real-life prosthetic, the Hero RGD, developed by the prosthetics company Open Bionics and supported by the Call of Duty Endowment.

The Hero RGD, short for “rugged,” debuted publicly at the Call of Duty Endowment Bowl in Las Vegas in September. It’s the world’s most advanced bionic arm built for strength and durability, but for Green, it represents much more than technology.

“I love my bionic arm. It gives me balance, it makes me feel whole,” Green said in an interview with Military Times. “As a combat veteran wearing this arm in public, I know it’s about more than just me. Little girls who have lost a limb see someone like them moving forward with confidence.”

Green lost her left arm in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on May 25, 2004. Being left-handed, she had to relearn everything, from writing to daily tasks.

Her prosthetic is the first of its kind, combining titanium joints and high-strength nylon with a fully wireless muscle-sensor system that allows her to move the hand with speed and precision, according to Open Bionics. The Hero RGD can lift up to 77 pounds and is twice as fast as any other bionic limb available.

The custom version she wears features personalized details, including the date of her injury engraved on the arm, the coordinates of Mount Kilimanjaro, which she recently climbed, and a purple wedding band on the in-game operator, inspired by the one her team recovered from the battlefield after her injury.

Samantha Payne, Open Bionics co-founder and CEO, said she had followed Green’s story for years through her work with the Wounded Warrior Project and immediately knew she was the right person to represent the company’s latest design.

“She exudes strength and a vibrant, live-your-best-life energy,” Payne said. “She is all about living with confidence and helping others overcome. What a wonderful person to align with.”

Payne explained that the Hero RGD was developed over four years at a cost of approximately $2 million. Engineers aimed to make it the strongest, fastest and most reliable prosthetic ever produced.

“Our users are makers, parents, veterans, and builders. They are busy and active. We wanted to build something that could keep up with them,” Payne said. “The RGD is built like a Toyota Camry and runs like a Ferrari. You can’t destroy it.”

Open Bionics continues to expand access to its devices through partnerships with the Department of Veterans Affairs. The company confirmed that the VA funds the Hero RGD for eligible veterans and encourages those interested to reach out directly to begin the process.

“We are actively fitting veterans right now,” Payne said. “If you need a prosthetic, contact us. We can help you get one of these through the VA.”

Green’s collaboration with Call of Duty began when the Endowment and Open Bionics partnered to showcase a real veteran’s story through gaming.

“When the Endowment reached out, we saw an opportunity to celebrate a true hero,” Payne said. “This technology was designed to keep up with how veterans live and work, and Danielle embodies that perfectly.”

For Green, the project is also a way to connect with other veterans who are navigating life after service.

“In the military, we never leave anyone behind, and that’s how I see this project,” she said. “This is my way of helping hundreds of thousands of veterans who are looking for a new purpose in life.”

Dan Goldenberg, executive director of the Call of Duty Endowment, said the partnership with Open Bionics and Green represents exactly what the nonprofit strives to highlight.

“It is easy to tell stories of beaten-down veterans or incredible heroics,” Goldenberg said. “But the quiet heroics of pushing through difficulty and going on to do great things are just as important. Veterans are an asset to their communities, and Danielle’s story helps us show that.”

Since 2009, the Call of Duty Endowment has placed over 150,000 veterans in high-quality civilian jobs through its network of top-performing nonprofits. Veterans seeking employment can visit the Endowment’s website for free career support, including résumé help and interview coaching through vetted partner organizations.

Green’s story and her in-game representation now connect two worlds that rarely intersect: veterans’ recovery and mainstream entertainment.

Proceeds from her new operator bundle will support the endowment’s mission to help veterans find meaningful work.

“This isn’t the end of my story,” Green said. “It’s just a new chapter. We are not talking about surviving anymore. We are talking about thriving.”

On Friday, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll first detailed the Army’s hopes to speed up drone production to Reuters during a visit to Picatinny Arsenal. An Army spokesperson has since provided more detailed clarification to Military Times.

Driscoll was referring to the Army’s new pilot program called SkyFoundry, which would see the service forge partnerships with private industry and also kickstart in-house Army manufacturing to churn out drones rapidly for battlefield use.

“SkyFoundry is the Army’s concept for a public-private partnership to help reinvigorate the American industrial base,” an Army spokesperson told Military Times in a statement. “This concept will stimulate the U.S. drone industry, support American manufacturing, increase access to rare earth materials, produce low-cost components and ultimately deliver drones for immediate needs to the Army.

“Everyone benefits: American industry becomes healthier, the country is safer and the Army has the system required to produce and procure millions of drones in the next 2-3 years.”

The spokesperson clarified that the Army is not trying to outdo private industry but to make drone technology more widely accessible to service members, as drone use will certainly dominate future battlefields.

“Some drones will be expendable as if they’re munitions, others will be durable, but not meant to last forever,” the spokesperson said. “Everyone will need to be well-versed in using drones and in counter drone response.”

The SkyFoundry Act was introduced by Congressman Pat Harrigan, R-NC., on Sept. 4 shortly before the government shutdown took effect.

“More than 80% of casualties in modern war now come from drones, yet we still have no capacity to build them at scale. That failure is reckless, and it leaves our troops exposed,” Harrigan said in a statement.

“This bill creates the capacity to design, test and build a million drones a year right here in America. It cuts China out of our supply chains, it arms our troops with what they need to dominate, and it makes clear we will never again let our enemies outproduce us in the weapons that decide wars.”

The son of a German immigrant father, Huchthausen was a rising star in the field of architecture. His strong grasp of design principles and enthusiasm for history brought him accolades for his work and professional success. After receiving a Master’s degree from Harvard, he worked in New York and Boston and eventually became an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Minnesota.

Becoming a Monuments Man

Huchthausen’s German heritage was important to him. He studied abroad in Germany on a fellowship for Harvard prior to the war and mastered the language with native proficiency as he worked alongside German museum professionals. His connection with the German language and culture would later become vital to his success as a U.S. Army Monuments Man tasked with preserving valuable historical artifacts.

After World War II broke out, Huchthausen, then age 38, volunteered for military service in 1942, joining the U.S. Army Air Forces. His service in the USAAF would be short-lived, however. Wounded badly by a V-1 “flying bomb” in London in June 1944, he joined the U.S. Army’s European Civil Affairs Division and was selected as a talented candidate for the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives program, whose officers were popularly known as “the Monuments Men.” As the Battle of the Bulge raged in December 1944, Huchthausen joined the Ninth Army as its Monuments officer.

Attaining the rank of captain, he was nicknamed “Hutch” by his comrades, who likely struggled to pronounce his German last name.

Huchthausen communicated well with German POWs and local civilians and thus, within a relatively short timeframe, he was able to locate 30 hidden caches of art stashed away by Nazi officials — salvaging both historical German artifacts and looted objects from occupied countries. He was known for being especially hardworking and was admired by his colleagues for his organizational talents and attention to detail.

In the ruins of a royal city

After working briefly in France, he distinguished himself after arriving in the shattered ruins of Aachen, a city ripped apart both by external and internal strife. Its history as the citadel of Emperor Charlemagne, the first ruler of what would become the Holy Roman Empire, gave it special status — not only to locals but to Adolf Hitler, who saw it as a propaganda symbol.

As the U.S. Army approached, Hitler ordered the city to be defended to the last man and destroyed totally rather than surrendered. Local civilians were at first prevented from evacuating by the Schutzstaffel, better known as the SS, and subsequently forced from their homes as Nazi officials prepared for a deadly siege that began in early September and became one of the war’s bloodiest urban battles.

Treated brutally by the SS, many civilians hid in various locations inside the city and tried to break out to safety later. Photos taken by the U.S. Army during the battle of Aachen note that elderly German residents were fired upon by Nazis with automatic weapons as they tried to flee. American soldiers later rescued several infirm elderly women who were nearly gunned down while trying to escape through the ruins.

Once a magnificent structure with its own treasure chamber, Aachen’s cathedral had already suffered bombing damage throughout the war. In the early war years it had been protected by local German youths who formed a volunteer fire brigade to preserve the church.

However, the cathedral was on its last legs. The ferocious battle that ended on Oct. 21 had seen tanks tear through the city and buildings ripped apart by shellfire. The cathedral was in danger of collapse.

Saving the cathedral

Arriving in January 1945, Huchthausen came to the rescue. Creating his own headquarters in the city’s Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, he set about identifying and collecting the cathedral’s numerous altarpieces and artifacts to preserve them. Huchthausen successfully organized and led local German civilians to locate missing objects and start repairing the site.

He used his architectural expertise to rescue what he could. Under his leadership, civilians repaired the roof, preserved paintings and covered bomb-damaged windows. He successfully reinforced the cathedral’s buttresses to stop them from caving in and strengthened the interior structure — saving it from collapse.

Challenged by a reporter about why he cared about preserving a site in the Third Reich, Huchthausen replied that its history was world heritage. “Aachen Cathedral belongs to the world and if we can prevent it from falling in ruins…we are doing a service to the world,” he said.

Killed in action

Tragically, that statement defining his approach to his work was published two days after Huchthausen was killed in action on April 2, 1945. Working closely behind the Ninth Army’s frontlines, Huchthausen and his assistant Lt. Sheldon Keck, formerly a conservator of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, were driving in search of a stolen artifact when they came under fire from a machine gun. Huchthausen was killed instantly, falling on top of his comrade as the vehicle overturned. Keck survived.

Fellow Monuments Man Maj. Walker Hancock wrote a touching tribute to Huchthausen after his death. “The buildings that Hutch hoped, as a young architect, to build will never exist,” he wrote, “but the few people who saw him at his job — friend and enemy — must think more of the human race because of him.”

Huchthausen is buried in the Netherlands American Cemetery in Holland, and was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart with oak leaf cluster.

At at time when drone intrusions into the airspace of NATO nations are becoming an increasing concern, the request from the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office invites private industry to share ideas for flexible laser weapons to create its new Enduring-High Energy Laser, or E-HEL, system.

The new system is expected to kill smaller drones categorized by the Defense Department as falling within three categories called groups one to three, which range from miniature drones about the size of the Air Force’s Wasp III in group one to drones of comparable scale to the Army’s RQ-7B Shadow in group three.

Drones within these groups are commonly used not only for intelligence and surveillance operations, but also for irregular warfare. They are lightweight and capable of carrying high-grade explosives to reach vulnerable targets. Tellingly, the RFI, released Oct. 30, specifically calls for a response to group three one-way attack drones — otherwise known as suicide drones.

The Army hopes to gain the ability to neutralize all three types at once with the E-HEL system, which is ambitious in its scope. Per the RFI, the service intends for the E-HEL to be adaptable for mobile and static defense for troops on the move and also in semi-fixed positions. Plans call for the laser weapon to be “palletized,” or mounted on an Army Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.

Plans for the laser system also call for it to have the ability to track the drones in various aerial conditions and knock them swiftly out of the sky, making “hard kills” on both miniature drones and larger suicide drones. A hard kill refers to zapping the small drones’ ability to fly in midair.

The Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office has been steadily developing prototypes of laser weapons over the past five years, but demands are increasing. The RFI dovetails with the service’s goal of launching a competition for anti-drone laser weapons next year.

Laser weapons systems are becoming sought-after as an efficient defense against potentially diverse arrays of drones.

Australian company Electro Optic Systems has been at the forefront of refining drone tracking and laser weapons, and in September it unveiled a 150-kilowatt High-Energy Laser Weapon called Apollo that it claims can neutralize drone swarms instantaneously.

The change, issued by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll last week, compresses what sometimes can be a slow, inconsistent process for tracking soldiers with unknown whereabouts and involves law enforcement sooner.

Commanders now have 48 hours to determine if a soldier’s disappearance is voluntary or the result of something more serious or sinister. During that window, Army leaders are required to alert local Army law enforcement, enter the soldier’s name into the National Crime Information Center database and issue a “be on the lookout” notice and request help from local civilian police.

If the absent soldier is not found after two days, commanders must determine, by a “preponderance of evidence,” the directive says, whether the soldier’s status will change to AWOL, or Absent Without Authorized Leave, or missing under the casualty code DUSTWUN, known as Duty Status – Whereabouts Unknown.

Commanders are told to report as missing any soldier who “indicates the potential for self-harm and is not located during the initial 48 hours,” according to the new policy.

Before this new policy, commanders had 24 hours to account for a soldier before declaring them AWOL unless there was evidence that the disappearance was not voluntary.

The change follows years of criticism after high-profile cases, like the disappearance of Army Spc. Vanessa Guillén, exposed systemic failures in the Army’s response to missing soldiers. Guillén vanished from a Texas base in 2020 and the Army was initially criticized for perceived lack of urgency around the case.

Her body was discovered months later and the outrage that followed led to an independent committee review, which found that “inaction in critical areas,” had taken root over time, creating what the commission called a “paradigm of benign neglect.”

Natalie Khawam Case, the attorney who represented Guillén and her family, commended the policy update but lamented that it came too late for her client.

“If they had this policy in place at the time Vanessa went missing, the Army would have quickly contacted the police and actually started searching for her themselves,” she told Military Times.

Khawam Case admitted there are no guarantees it would have saved Guillén but she could not help but wonder.

“You never know, it could have prevented her death,” she said.