For the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the unveiling is a chance to highlight the Army’s history and connect the service with its veterans and current soldiers.

Army Times talked with the leader of the team at the West Point history department who spearheads selecting which unit the school will honor, teaming with the athletic department and Nike, which creates the uniforms.

Lt. Col. John Zdeb first enlisted in the Army in 1997 from his hometown of Schaumburg, Illinois but within a few years decided to go the officer route. That led to his acceptance at West Point, where he graduated in the Class of 2004.

The armor officer served tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, eastern Europe and Kuwait. He got to return to his alma mater as a teacher in 2013 before heading back out to big Army.

Zdeb came back to West Point to teach military history in 2020 and quickly volunteered to help with the history department’s uniform team.

“It’s so humbling to be honest,” he said. “There’s certain things you get to do in life, things you never expected to have input and be involved with.”

The lieutenant colonel said there’s much more to selecting the uniform and various features than people might think. It’s actually a two-year process from inception to unveiling.

Though don’t expect any sneak peeks at next year’s uniform in this article, participants are sworn to secrecy and must sign a non-disclosure agreement to work on the team.

“There’s so much anticipation,” he said. “Knowing the reveal is coming, anticipating how it’s going to be received. It took on added importance for me this year, being a division I served with.”

Units honored with past Army uniforms:

• 2016: 82nd Airborne Division
• 2017: 10th Mountain Division
• 2018: 1st Infantry Division
• 2019: 1st Cavalry Division
• 2020: 25th Infantry Division
• 2021: U.S. Army Special Forces Command
• 2022: 1st Armored Division
• 2023: 3rd Infantry Division

Source: U.S. Military Academy at West Point

The four-officer team, which Zdeb currently leads, looks at past uniform selections and seeks out units in the Army, usually divisions that have a significant story to tell. This year’s uniform honors the 3rd Infantry Division, one of multiple units that Zdeb served with during his career.

The 3rd ID has a storied history. Activated in 1917 for service in World War I, the unit earned its nickname, “Rock of the Marne” after its performance in the Aisne-Marne Offensive, protecting Paris by stationing itself on the banks of the Marne River.

One of its battalions rushed to the riverbanks as French troops retreated and held off the advance of the German attack. Though surrounded during a subsequent battle, 3rd ID took the bulk of what would prove to be the final German offensive of the war.

The division continued showing its mettle in World War II, being among the first U.S. units to see ground operations in Europe. Honors continued to pile up as the division saw distinguished service in the Korean War and Vietnam War.

Elements of that history are sprinkled through this year’s uniform, “Rock of the Marne” adorns the back of the players’ helmets, the division’s bulldog mascot “Rocky” perches on the side of the dome. Stenciled numbers are reminiscent of common vehicle stenciling on Army equipment.

But the desert-tan color is a nod to more recent service, the division’s “Thunder Run” during the 2003 invasion that kicked off the Iraq War. The run struck deep into enemy territory and put soldiers into Baghdad far sooner than the enemy anticipated, helping bring invasion operations to a quick close.

Zdeb and his team of two majors and a captain got a brief respite to enjoy the uniform unveiling, which happened just prior to the Thanksgiving holiday at an academy formation.

They also compile historical information for West Point and Army websites related to the uniform and occasionally the experts are invited on camera to explain the significance of various uniform aspects.

Soon after last year’s game, the team was drumming up the next unit to honor in 2024 and present for approval to the academy’s athletic department this past spring. Once that unit and recommended elements are approved, Zdeb and his team switched back to concluding final items on this year’s uniform.

After this year’s game concludes they’ll be rolling along to submit a candidate for 2025 as Nike designers finalize the 2024 uniform. It’s an ever-rotating cycle, he said.

Mike Buddie, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point Director of Athletics, made the announcement on Oct. 25.

“I am excited to start the next chapter of Army football. In today’s evolving collegiate athletics landscape, it is great to partner with established, respected programs to secure the future success of Army football,” Buddie said.

He cited new collegiate athletic rules, the growth of the College Football Playoff invitational tournament, and other impacts to college sports as part of the decision to join the conference.

The move will give Army a clearer path to a potential conference championship, which opens up opportunities for more post-season bowl games and television coverage, Buddie added.

West Point has played as an independent football program for nearly all its history, starting in 1890. The lone exception was a seven-season period from 1998 to 2004 when the Academy was a member of Conference USA.

During that period, Army won only 13 games, two of those against its rival, the U.S. Naval Academy.

Don’t worry, the annual Army-Navy Game match up will remain as the final regular season game for the two academies.

In fact, there’s a small chance that the teams could face off twice each season, if they both managed to win a bid to the AAC Conference championship.

That’s because Navy joined the AAC in 2015. Until then, the school, like Army, had operated as an independent for its entire history.

Therefore, if both teams manage to win out during the regular season, they could meet in the conference championship again after their regularly-scheduled second weekend of December date.

“We are honored to welcome Army to the American Athletic Conference. Army’s football program has an iconic national brand with a legacy of success that spans more than a century and is a perfect fit with our conference,” Mike Aresco, AAC commissioner said in an Oct. 25 statement.

Army will continue its TV partnership with the CBS Sports Network through 2028, according to a West Point release. The agreement covers all Army home games.

The academy will continue to play the Air Force Academy, which keeps the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy competition alive. The trophy is awarded to winner of the three-team competition.

Historically, the Navy-Air Force game is played on the first Saturday in October. The Army-Air Force game takes place on the first Saturday in November and the Army-Navy Game is played on the second weekend in December. The Coast Guard Academy is not included in the competition.

If there is a tie, the previous winner retains ownership of the trophy.

The AAC members as of 2023 include the following schools:

• University of Alabama at Birmingham
• University of North Carolina Charlotte
• East Carolina University
• Florida Atlantic University
• University of Memphis
• United States Naval Academy
• University of North Texas
• Rice University
• University of South Florida
• Southern Methodist University
• Temple University
• University of Texas at San Antonio
• Tulane University
• University of Tulsa

Source: American Athletic Conference

This year’s Army-Navy Game will be played at the Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. The game will be broadcast on CBS and begins at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday, Dec. 9.

National Counterterrorism Center Director Christine Abizaid, speaking Wednesday at the Global SOF Foundation’s SOF Week here, said the most likely type of attack isn’t a large-scale al-Qaida-style coordinated one.

Instead, what’s more likely are is strikes from small “leaderless” cells or lone actors. That’s partly because of the decades spent by U.S. intelligence and military forces dismantling large terrorist networks, she said.

Smaller cells and lone actors are harder to track, and they leverage technology to mask their work and support each other in disparate locations.

Al-Qaida and its affiliates extend from south Asia to both east and west Africa, she said, while the Islamic State continues to proliferate in parts of Africa and its affiliates also continue to operate in Afghanistan.

The bulk of those organizations are “more diffuse and diverse than what we’ve seen in decades,” Abizaid said.

This challenge threatens the work of countering peer adversaries such as Russia and China, experts said. Anne Patterson, former assistant secretary for near eastern and north African affairs at the U.S. State Department, said during the same panel event the U.S. must “keep a focus on terrorism.”

“Nothing would be a bigger distraction to great power competition than a terrorist attack,” added Patterson, who is now a senior fellow at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University.

Patterson said the key to staving off terrorist attacks is special operations.

“What can SOF do to make these countries more resilient and able to protect themselves against terrorist attacks?” she said.

Retired Lt. Gen. Kenneth Tovo, former head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, noted terrorist groups and crises are often used by peer adversaries as part of their approach to competing against the United States.

“We are likely to see an increase in crises that require some level of attention,” Tovo said.

There are more than 70,000 special operations individuals operating in more than 80 countries, but Tovo said they shouldn’t handle it all. Crisis response is vital, but that response, “doesn’t necessarily need to be us.”

The hard part is the “investment in advance” that it takes to build partner forces, he added.

SOCOM commander Bryan Fenton said during his Tuesday keynote address here that the U.S. training support provided to Ukraine in 2014 may have led to some of the recent battlefield successes against Russia, but that support began even earlier.

Fenton said, that all started in 1994 when special operations troops went to Ukraine and started partnering with Ukrainian forces.

“First, it was just being there,” he said.

Then it was staying there and returning to work with the same Ukrainian teammates over the years. And lastly, he said, it was “plowing in the lessons we have learned in places like Iraq and Afghanistan” to the Ukrainian forces, now being used against Russia.

That’s according to data shared by Leslie Babich, director of the special operations forces nonprofit SOFWERX. The entity serves as a public-private partnership that also has its own small-scale laboratory and “foundry” for manufacturing, based out of Ybor City, Florida.

Babich, alongside Glen Cullen, program manager at SOF Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, shared the figures and other details during a session at Global SOF Foundation’s SOF Week here. The session was aimed at teaching industry, and especially small businesses, how to work with the organization to get their ideas to operators and units in need.

Since its creation in 2015, the SOFWERX program has contracted $116.1 million in 749 purchase orders and business-to-business agreements, according to SOCOM,

The nonprofit has used the small business innovation research program, which extends to research and development across all federal agencies, to fuel some of this outreach, Babich said.

Until 2020, the average annual proposals from small businesses received by SOCOM through SOFWERX numbered fewer than 20. That number doubled the following year and remained at that level since.

But the number isn’t necessarily the focus, it’s the accelerated timeline that draws attention.

The average lifespan of a proposal to prototype ran 40 months. That’s been cut by nearly half to slightly more than 22 months, Babich said.

“We’re faster; we can award agreements within three to four weeks versus three to four months,” she said.

And SOFWERX is seeing more proposals from nontraditional vendors within industry, many who’d never previously sought out defense contracts.

A likely helpful change was when Lisa Sanders, director of science and technology at SOCOM, got approval from Congress to spend up to 10% of her office’s annual $20 million budget for small businesses through SOFWERX, Babich said.

That’s only $2 million, but those dollars can make a substantial impact on smaller companies, she said. And the figure has grown.

During an earlier presentation Bill Innes, deputy director for acquisitions at U.S. Special Operations Command, noted about one-third, or $1.38 billion of SOCOM’s annual acquisition budget for fiscal 2022, was spent on small business contract awards.

Babich also said efforts aimed at explaining to industry how to work with the SOCOM and establishing a regular one-on-one pitch session for innovative ideas helped accelerate the process.

Those efforts translated into a small business boot camp, both in-person and online, which walks new small business staff through the contracting process.

In May 2020, SOFWERX launched “Tech Tuesday,” which serves as a forum for individuals to present technologies to SOCOM and other government agencies in an online call.

Industry participants get 15 minutes to pitch followed by 10 minutes of questions. Beyond defense programs, the calls often include agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, Babich said.

But it’s not a guarantee, she cautioned.

“Tech Tuesday is not like ‘Shark Tank;’ nobody gets funding at the end of the day,” she said. “However, it might spark some ideas for those government stakeholders.”

The Integrated Visual Augmentation System is a melding of night vision and a host of tools including navigation, communication, training rehearsals and recording features for instant replay to review a soldier’s performance.

The service approved a task order for the technology company Microsoft in December that allowed for continued development of the 1.2 version of the goggle. The Army is using the base technology of the company’s civilian market HoloLens headset to build the platform.

The Army already purchased 5,000 sets each of the 1.0 and 1.1 versions last year as part of what is expected to be at least a $22 billion program.

The standing budget request to Congress asks for $165 million in fiscal 2024. That’s split between $76 million for developing 1.2 and $89 million for procurement, according to budget documents released in March.

Those earlier models are slated for delivery in early fiscal 2024 to training and deploying units. Developers are pushing ahead with 1.2 work while which will include two phases and a series of soldier feedback sessions.

The 1.2 Phase 1 development will undergo a series of soldier assessments before an operational test scheduled for fiscal 2025. Phase 2, which involves device development is also scheduled to end in late fiscal 2025 for operational testing and fielding by the end of fiscal 2025.

PEO Soldier staff showed a demonstration model of the still-developing 1.2 version to Army Times along with new elements available in the 1.1 version that have been added since previously demonstrated soldier touch points.

The device previously featured a chest-mounted combined controller and computer. But the 1.2 variant has the controller separate from the computer. The controller can be moved anywhere on the upper torso while the computer is now mounted on the rear of the helmet.

That’s helpful to counterbalance the front weight of the device and reduce neck strain, also now helmet-mounted in version 1.2, said Lt. Col. Denny Dresch, IVAS product manager.

Early total goggle variants weighed about 3.4 pounds, with 2.4 pounds of that on the front of the helmet. The total target weight for the 1.2 device is 2.85 pounds, equal to the currently fielded Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binocular.

Other ongoing improvements include better eye relief, weapons compatibility, air flow, processing software and a display that provides peripheral vision.

A major feature included the addition of color-coded navigation points and other map-marking features viewable in the goggle either in map format or in the rotating compass headings in “sight” on the user’s upper view.

On a 20-minute walk outside of the PEO Soldier’s Soldier Integration Facility, the user was able to select features, drop points on a virtual map and track the entire route while communicating with another goggle user.

Users can also build a virtual sand table of terrain, a building complex or whatever feature they face on an upcoming mission.

No more Lego bricks or MRE boxes to build a “map” of the objective.

Inside the building, development team members highlighted training features that included tracking the goggle wearer through a simulated shoot house. The shooting scenarios featured thin office cubicle-style walls. Inside the goggle, however, images of enemy combatants, civilians and even a dog presented shoot house scenarios and challenges that are familiar to many who trained or deployed in the Army in recent decades.

But it was after the training that some of the features showed iterative promise, what officials called “training at the point of need.”

The devices record location and actions of shooters. Viewers can watch an “instant replay” of their moves, shots and hits play out, pausing to examine where a barrel was pointed or who shot first.

Sorry soldiers, no more “tall tales” on your shoot house performance. It’s all captured for posterity, and improved training, now.

Multiple reports from soldier touchpoints have shown that some soldiers get dizzy or nauseous when using the device. That’s common in virtual reality goggles and augmented reality use across the spectrum.

The Army has formed a special team to solve that queasy problem.

Teams from industry, government and academia are examining feedback from soldier use and pulling in lessons learned from other high-tech efforts. Think of jet fighter pilots hitting G-forces or medics working with tablet screens while treating patients in a medevac helicopter.

Those partners include Microsoft Visual Sciences, Engineering and Human Factors Team, independent consultants, Soldier Systems Branch from the Army Test & Evaluation Command and experts with the Engineering Psychology Department of Behavioral Sciences & Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, among others.

As those 1.2 tests and experiments move forward, the developers with Program Executive Office Soldier and Simulation, Training and Instrumentation along with teams at the Army Futures Command will harvest added feedback from the rollout of 1.0 and 1.1.

The fiscal 2024 rollout was delayed by at least three months from earlier targets of late fiscal 23. However the delay this time is not due to a technology challenge but instead a shift in funding priorities under the currently proposed fiscal 2024 budget, officials told Army Times.

Earlier delays pushed delivery of the earlier variants due to image distortion problems. A reduced field of view, which still exceeds the existing night vision field of view, along with software fixes resolved early hurdles with image distortion.

Another challenge developers faced was including an improved low-light sensor for night vision that would equal the recently fielded Enhanced Night Vision-Binocular device.

While the mixed reality goggle’s early versions already produce night vision that exceeds legacy fielded systems, the image quality on the device didn’t match the newly fielded gear.

That’s in part because the developers are melding digital information using augmented reality with new forms of night vision, pushing technology developed over 70 years to new levels, Brig. Gen. Christopher Schneider previously told Army Times.

The Army seeks to spend $38 million on research, development, testing and experimentation and another $293 million to procure the Next Generation Squad Weapon in fiscal 2024, the service announced Monday.

That will end up buying 17,122 rifles, 1,419 automatic rifles, 14,932 fire control optics and 21 million rounds of 6.8mm ammunition, said Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo.

The service bought more than 18,000 weapons last year, according to budget documents.

Those rifles, light machines, optics and rounds are set to reach the first unit equipped by early 2024, officials said. The weapon, which will also include a suppressor, is primarily for special operations forces, infantry, scouts and combat engineers attached to infantry or other close combat units.

The new combo gives soldiers a uniform round for fighting at the squad level, as they had with the weapons’ predecessors the M4/M16 and the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. Those older systems, still in use by the force and likely to remain for non-close combat forces for decades to come, fired the 5.56mm round.

The intermediate cartridge of 6.8mm relies on an Army-designed projectile but is an entirely new round not used by U.S. forces before. It falls between 5.56mm and 7.62mm, both NATO rounds in use for more than half a century.

But the 6.8mm retains the accuracy needed at farther ranges than the smaller round while delivering energy on target that equals or exceeds 7.62mm in some instances, officials said.

Sig Sauer won the contract last year to supply the weapon and some of the ammunition to the Army. This came after the company won the contract to replace the previous M9 Beretta 9mm sidearm with the M17 handgun made by Sig Sauer, which continues to fire the 9mm round.

The service unveiled its part of President Joe Biden’s overall defense budget request to Congress today.

The Army is asking to fund an Army with 452,000 active duty soldiers, 325,000 soldiers in the Army National Guard and 174,000 soldiers in the Army Reserve.

That’s a drop of 21,000 soldiers from the active rosters as compared to last year’s initial request for 473,000 active troops.

And last year’s figure was already the smallest active Army since before World War II, Army Times previously reported.

Last year both the Guard and Reserve were left untouched. This year, the Guard’s numbers remain the same as the previous request but would cut 11,500 soldiers from the number of Guardsmen in uniform this time last year, which was 336,500.

The reserve suffers its own cuts from 178,000 reservists in Army green down to 174,000 under this current request.

As cuts to personnel began to mount last year in order to make room for modernization spending, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said at the time.

The service is fielding major platforms in nearly all categories now and in the coming years, from robotic combat vehicles to new helicopters, futuristic mixed reality goggles and anew rifle and machine gun.

But last year, senior leaders promised to put the Army on a path to increase its forces back to 485,000 active duty soldiers, though it didn’t provide a timeline.

Current projections would begin adding 4,000 more troops per year in the next fiscal year’s request. That would mean a 485,000-soldier Army sometime in the early 2030s.

Officials did not provide a timeline or target year for reaching that figure. Though previously officials have said that incremental increases could occur over the five-year budgeting period.

As it cuts soldiers from the rolls, the Army faces some of its most challenging recruiting obstacles in decades.

The force fell short on recruiting goals lasts year by 15,000 troops. The shortfall was one quarter of what the Army had expected to bring into the ranks.

Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said at the time that 2022 was the most difficult recruiting year for the Army since the start of the All-Volunteer Force in the 1970s.

She said then also that the active-duty side would need to lean on the Guard and Reserve to fill empty slots for deployments and training. Last year the Guard and Reserve remained level on their end strength numbers, with no cuts called by senior leaders.

The 2022 shortfall was when the service had a target of recruiting 60,000 new soldiers. That missed mark hasn’t stopped the service from setting an even more ambitious goal of recruiting 65,000 new soldiers this year, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said recently.

To recruit those soldiers the Army has revamped and relaunched its “Be all you can be” marketing strategy, pushed into major urban centers where it previously had little success.

It also added bonuses and rank to a soldier referral program and adopted a mentality that every soldier serves as a kind of recruiter.

The service is continuing its 10-year, $10 billion barracks and housing improvement plan.

This budget calls for five new barracks projects, costing the service $288 million in the coming fiscal year. Those efforts will add two buildings to Fort Bragg, North Carolina and one each at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, Fort Wainwright, Alaska and at the Natick, Massachusetts Soldier Systems Center, said Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo.

But what’s less commonly known about the laboratory, called the “Rad Lab” for its work on radiological technology, is that it developed some of the most important advances in nuclear science since its founding 70 years ago.

And for 40 of those years, Tom Ramos has worked as a physicist at the laboratory, part of the team that developed the X-ray Laser for President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and other technological achievements.

This year Ramos published a book that gives a detailed, inside history of the laboratory and specifically focuses on how work at the laboratory contributed to technologies that allowed then-President John F. Kennedy to stare down the Russian political and military leadership early in the Cold War.

No, not the Cuban Missile Crisis, though that was likely affected, too. An earlier event, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, was Kennedy’s first nuclear-driven challenge against the Soviet Union.

In mid-August 1961, East German officials closed the border and directed by Soviet leaders put up what would become The Berlin Wall, cutting East and West Berlin off from each other.

Then-Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev threatened the use of nuclear weapons if the United States intervened.

By October 1961 the standoff had escalated to the point that U.S. and Soviet tanks were positioned 100 yards apart at Checkpoint Charlie, a now-infamous Berlin Wall crossing point between East and West Berlin.

What the public didn’t know and would not be revealed in detail until years later was that leaders on both sides were weighing the use of nuclear weapons. Kennedy called Khrushchev’s bluff and the Soviets backed down.

The episode served as a kind of dry run, with its own very dire consequences, of the more widely known, Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.

Ramos discovered through his research in the archives of the Livermore laboratory that Kennedy traveled to Livermore and personally thanked scientists at the installation for the technological breakthroughs, including the Polaris missile, a submarine-launched weapon developed by the Livermore lab.

That weapon allowed Kennedy to have nuclear weapons within striking distance of the Soviet Union at the time.

Ramos talked with Military Times about his book, “From Berkeley to Berlin: How the Rad Lab Helped Avert Nuclear War.”

Editor’s Note: This author Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What drove you to research and write this book?

A: Back in the 1980s I’d written a 300-page history of the X-Ray Laser program, the Star Wars program that I’d been a part of on the design team. I’d shared that with our associated director a few years ago and offered to start writing a history of the Robin program, a small, more efficient nuclear warhead initiative started in the mid-1950s. As I was researching, I realized you couldn’t really understand what the scientists were doing at the time unless you went back further. Such questions as, why was the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory created in the first place? I really got intrigued by what I was digging into. I took every single nuclear test the laboratory had conducted since its beginning and looked at why did they conduct that test and what were the results? I learned about Kennedy’s visit, and I talked with Michael May, the lead physicist on the team that Kennedy came to thank for helping avert nuclear war. I asked him what it was like. He said Kennedy walked into the lobby doors with a big smile on his face, came across the floor, stuck out his hand and said, “Thank you so much.” May said it was the proudest day of his life. And I said, this is a story I’ve got to write about, and I got passionate about what these people have done back in the 1950s.

Q: Your book focuses on the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the laboratory’s connection to it. Why was that event so important in the history of nuclear weapons development?

A: My research started unraveling how Kennedy’s access to the Polaris warhead, a mobile, submarine-launched weapon, gave him the ability to stand up to Khrushchev’s moves in Berlin. And I learned that achieving that military dominance for Kennedy was not easy, it was a challenge. There were experts at the time who said that the United States achieving military and technological dominance over the Soviet Union was nearly impossible. So, the gist I tried to portray in the book was these guys, and a few women, mostly 20 and 30-year-olds, had a challenge. They designed a thermonuclear warhead that was three times smaller than the smallest one that had ever existed. That allowed the Navy to put these warheads on submarines and gave the U.S. military mobility and reach for weapons they could put wherever they needed to strike.

Q: The Livermore has notched some major achievements, but many people would be hard-pressed to recognize it by name, whereas the Los Alamos laboratory still has some name recognition. What should readers know about the Livermore lab?

A: To me, a story must have a hero to accomplish a goal. The lore that I was told when I arrived at this laboratory was that it was created by Edward Teller so he could build hydrogen bombs. And everyone accepted that. But through my research, I realized no, that’s not true. The real hero who’s most responsible for all of this I learned was Ernest O. Lawrence. Historians treat him very badly; they treat him like a country bumpkin. But I realized what Lawrence accomplished was phenomenal as an experimental physicist, he’s one of the greatest of the 20th Century.

Q: What can readers learn today from both the Berlin Crisis and the 70 years of work that’s been done at the laboratory that pertains to current events?

A: Starting in the early 1990s with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Congress forbids any funding for any testing or work on new nuclear weapons at the laboratory. Before this, I spent 10 years of my life on interesting ideas that had a profound effect on the Cold War. But now we’re facing, a much more belligerent China and now Russia coming up and they throw around the nuclear word. The question is, how do we handle these nuclear states? And the answer is, we’re not prepared for that. I’m not going to say anything classified, but for example, you make a warhead and the thing that starts it off is an atom bomb, and that has a high explosive. A high explosive is acidic. Put it against metal, put it in a box having been exposed to humidity, etc. and let it sit for 50 years. That’s the state of our nuclear stockpile. Each year our stockpile gets one year older. Regardless of how much science and how much people say to Congress, “We’re ready,” the reliability of our strategic deterrence can’t be as high as it was 30 years ago.

Correction: This article has been updated to correctly identify the name of Ernest O. Lawrence, a nuclear scientist.

Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth nominated Col. Warren L. Wells for promotion to brigadier general, which the Senate approved last week, according to an Army Public Affairs statement. Wells will report to Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth in his position as the Army’s first lead special trial counsel.

“We are restructuring the way the Army prosecutes perpetrators of covered offenses such as murder, rape, and sexual assaults,” Wormuth said. “As Army’s Lead Special Trial Counsel, Col. Wells is the experienced leader the Army needs to lead the Office of Special Trial Counsel and ensure its independent oversight of the Army’s most complex cases.”

The restructuring comes as Congress has called for revamping the handling of military sexual assault cases and ongoing inquiries into sex crimes and homicide cases in each of the military branches.

The Army received scrutiny and calls for action by Congress following the murder of Spc. Vanessa Guillen at Fort Hood, Texas in April 2020.

Based on subsequent investigation, Guillen faced sexual harassment before her death at the hands of Spc. Aaron David Robinson, who killed himself when approached by police for questioning in the case.

Then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told Congress in July 2020 that he had called for a “full independent review” of the case.

That review concluded in December 2020 and resulted in the firing or discipline of 14 Army leaders at Fort Hood. The report found a “permissive environment for sexual assault and sexual harassment at Fort Hood,” Army Times reported.

The service will also assign more than 150 civilian and military personnel specializing in litigation to the new office, under Wells’ command when it becomes fully operational in December 2023, according to the Army Public Affairs statement.

Wells official biography shows he has served as a judge advocate general, or military lawyer, since 1996 with stints as a prosecutor on multiple installations, teaching work at the U.S. Air Force JAG School and other legal counsel and JAG assignments at units such as 1st Armored Division, 1st Infantry Division and the XVIII Airborne Corps.

Wells’ most recent assignment has been as the deputy chief of personnel, plans and training at the Office of the Judge Advocate General since August 2021.

The office will have exclusive authority over offenses such as: murder, manslaughter, rape and sexual assault, rape of a child, sexual assault of a child, other sexual misconduct, kidnapping, domestic violence, stalking, retaliation, child pornography and wrongful broadcast, according to the statement.

Details of the established office are covered in Army General Order 2022-10 at the Army Publishing Directorate website.

Note: Army Times Senior Reporter Davis Winkie contributed to this article.

The centers are community-based counseling clinics that were established in the wake of the Vietnam War, connecting social workers and counselors with military or combat experience to with other combat veterans.

Ted came on board in 2009, but by 2016, the people-centric approach to helping combat vets had turned into a numbers game where counselors were tallying metrics and rushing through appointments to meet VA-mandated expectations.

Ted was burning out, watching his fellow counselors leave jobs they loved because they couldn’t provide the help they knew veterans needed.

In 2018, Blickwedel emailed 1,300 Vet Center counselors across the country to learn how the new expectations and bureaucratic demands were impacting them.

It turns out he wasn’t alone in his struggles. The retired Marine lieutenant colonel eventually filed official complaints as a whistleblower, triggering a Government Accountability Office report that, in 2020, revealed the new productivity standards were leading to burnout among many counselors across the Vet Centers’ 300 locations.

The resulting Vet Center Improvement Act was introduced in Congress in 2021, and remains alive but has yet to be approved by either the Senate or the House. The act would require the VA to reevaluate counselor standards and develop a new staffing model to provide adequate care for veterans.

Blickwedel spoke with Military Times about his new book, “Broken Promises,” which chronicles his experience and provides insights into how to report problems in government agencies.

Editor’s Note: This author Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What motivated you to write this book, and what do you hope readers gain from it?

A: I never intended on writing a book. I ran across somebody from my Basic School Days in the Marine Corps who’s a published author at a reunion last year. He encouraged me and we started to do the project. The reasons are twofold. Number one, I wanted to get the word out not only for the veterans and those who care for them, but also for the legislation. The more people who could be aware of these things, the more they could encourage congressional representatives to vote for the bill.

Second was to share the retaliation, tactics and what happens to people typically who speak truth to power and the abuse and misconduct that goes on when people speak out. The majority of the public is not aware of what happens. I wrote a chapter to highlight those issues and provide a resource for someone who decides to speak out.

Do you see this book as a sort of manual for potential whistleblowers?

It’s a cautionary tale of to be prepared it you do decide to raise concerns. If you take this on, this is what you can expect, because this is what happened to me. But it ends on a positive note, with a chapter of lessons learned. If you take something like this on or support someone who does, here are the things you’ve got to do to be able to stay healthy, stay the course and have the media and politicians working in tandem or you’re probably not going to have any success. And even if you do, there’s no guarantee — but it will maximize your chances of success.

What’s the state of veteran counselor burnout and morale now?

Key leaders at the VA are just giving these problems lip service. This is a national travesty. I sent out emails to nearly the entire Vet Center counselor network and the feedback I’ve gotten is that things have gotten worse. They keep throwing on administrative requirements that are redundant and unnecessary. Nothing’s changed with the metrics. People are really fed up, looking for jobs, retiring early, going into private practices. It’s horrible.

Once the Vet Center Improvement Act does pass, the real work will be to ensure that it’s going to be enforced. The bill stipulates congressional and Government Accountability Office oversight.

Are you concerned that there may be less public attention to veteran and veteran counselor concerns now that America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have ended?

When you don’t have veterans coming home from war and have that covered in the news it does fade from attention over time. The chances are the public would be made less aware of veterans issues. It’s a double-edged sword. It’s good we don’t have a war to be involved in, but also there’s not something out front there to keep media attention and coverage on these ongoing issues.

What should people know about Vet Centers?

The Vet Center program is a valuable resource that has dedicated and very highly qualified counselors who do great work. And that can’t be emphasized enough. It’s the management that’s the problem that’s causing the issues with compromised care, the burnout of counselors and degradation of the counselor’s welfare. But veterans should still be encouraged to go there for services. The counselors are still going to try to provide the quality care that they can.

Knowing what you know now, would you do it all again?

I almost threw in the towel a few times along the way. The first two months I took this on, the retaliation was so incredible. I was in such a dire state. I had to really regroup to stay the course, through self-help and my own therapeutic intensive.

There were times I almost gave it up. As I look back, because of what has been accomplished and how the counselors and veterans are going to potentially benefit from this legislation, it was well worth it. All along it was all about them, and despite the heavy price I paid, the bottom line is I would do it again because our veterans and those who care for them deserve no less.

What’s next for Ted Blickwedel?

I’m going to stay active with Whistleblowers of America and support them where I can. I hope to get involved in the Association of Comprehensive Energy Psychology. I also hope to get involved with teams providing trauma relief support for first responders and communities negatively impacted by a mass shootings and natural disasters. People need help to emotionally and mentally cope with those experiences.