Soldiers, meanwhile, remain in the dark, waiting to see if they’ll have to pay the cost for the Army’s paperwork errors.

In more than a dozen conversations with Army Times and comments posted to private Facebook groups, alumni of the Green to Gold Active-Duty Option program (G2GADO) accused the Army of dragging its feet on the matter — even as their retirement plans hang in the balance.

Anger and confusion began to surface in September, when U.S. Army Cadet Command’s (USACC) inspector general published an unexpected one-page guidance for soldiers noting that federal law “does not allow any of his/her accrued time period as a Cadet participant” in G2GADO to be counted “towards [regular Army] 20–year retirement eligibility/benefits and/or RC retirement eligibility points.”

The September USACC guidance baffled soldiers. It seemed, after all, to contradict nearly two decades of well-established — if mistaken — Army policy. Many active-duty soldiers joined the program with the understanding that the time they spent in school would count as time in service — the time spent in uniform used to calculate retirement benefits. Every soldier who spoke with Army Times said that their personnel files still logged the roughly two years they spent as active-duty cadets as serviceable time.

Brig. Gen. Hope Rampy, the Army’s director of military personnel management, told Army Times Tuesday that the branch has begun reviewing the files of past program participants to determine which soldiers might have been incorrectly awarded time towards retirement while in school.

Rampy said the Army is “considering any legal viable solution that has the least amount of impact” on already retired G2GADO alumni, including “no remedial action” for those who have already left the service. For program graduates still on active-duty, the Army is evaluating whether impacted soldiers “were aware” of federal regulations that prevented them from counting their time in school as time in service before they enrolled. Rampy added the Army is assessing the possibility of “relief” through the Army Board for Correction of Military Records.

Rampy did not clarify how a soldier’s awareness of the law might impact their retirement date or what relief the service might provide.

“It’s not about trying to find fault with the soldier,” she said. “If we have the chance to correct their record with little or minimal adjustment, we have to have proof.”

Broadly speaking, the Army’s personnel management office would not state outright whether or not the Army would reject retirement packets for G2GADO alumni or deduct service time from their records.

“There could be a couple of different courses of action or options that the Army decides to take, depending on what we’re able to discern from their files,” Rampy said. “There will be no action taken against those two populations, if any, until we reach a conclusion.”

Army officials said they aren’t sure how long it will take for that to happen.

In a Nov. 3 email to an inquiring officer shared with Army Times, an official with Human Resources Command’s officer retirements and separations branch said that “[HRC] will not approve a retirement, as an officer, utilizing the time the officer was a Cadet as that time is specifically excluded by [federal law].”

“I don’t doubt you,” Rampy said in response to a question about the Army already rejecting retirement applications from G2GADO alumni. “I just can’t confirm or deny it.”

The Army, until now, has largely kept soldiers in the dark since the bulletin’s release. Worried officers, leveraging their connections across the force, attempted to tease out hints about the Army’s intent over the past several weeks, but official direction has been scant. After running their concerns up the Army flagpole and getting nowhere, program alumni said they’ve resorted to contacting their senators and representatives in the hopes of rallying Congress to their cause. Rampy confirmed that the Army is communicating with legislators on the matter.

Army officials told Army Times that around 3,100 soldiers have participated in the G2GADO program since its founding in 2004. The program commissions around 400 officers annually. The Army would not provide an estimate of how many soldiers might have incorrect files, or how many files they are reviewing.

Meanwhile, soldiers on the cusp of the 20-year retirement mark have already begun bracing for an unforeseen two extra years of service.

“We’ve already put a hold on purchasing a house,” one soldier with their retirement packet currently under review told Army Times by phone in late November. They spoke under the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the press.

Housing plans are the least of the officer’s concerns. Their father and daughter were recently diagnosed with chronic illnesses. Two more years in uniform would, in their eyes, mean two years of being unable to adequately care for their loved ones.

Some of the G2GADO graduates who spoke with Army Times said they weren’t aware of USACC’s advisory until Army Times covered it.

Soldiers’ frustrations over the Army’s lack of communication on the matter were compounded by a sense that they’d been misled. In a few instances confirmed by Army Times, ROTC recruiters explicitly touted time in service accrual in G2GADO marketing materials. For example, a 2020 recruitment slideshow shared with Army Times from the University of South Carolina’s ROTC program, one of the country’s largest, lists “accruing time for retirement” as one of the active-duty option’s benefits.

Other G2GADO recruitment documents didn’t reference time in service at all. The official Green to Gold website appeared to make no mention of retirement until late September 2023. The G2GADO information packet linked to the page at that time (last updated that summer) also failed to mention it.

Some soldiers, given no explicit guidance, thought it reasonable that a program for active-duty soldiers promising “normal PCS entitlements,” “current pay and allowances,” and no separation from the Army — a requirement of other Green to Gold scholarships — would allow them to also accumulate service time.

An internal Department of the Army memo dated by officials to 2008 instructs HRC, in collaboration with USACC, to inform candidates of a 1964 federal statute prohibiting almost all ROTC cadets from accruing service time while in school. The law—10 U.S. Code, section 2106(c) — states “that for the purpose of computing length of service for any purpose, an officer appointed under this section may not be credited with enlisted service for the period covered by his advanced training.” Cadets simultaneously serving in the Reserves are exempt from this ban. Army Times was unable to confirm whether this stipulation was communicated across the service.

The 2008 memo also ordered that a requirement to inform prospective G2GADO cadets of this limitation be included in Army codes (AR 145-1). That change was made in April 2023.

G2GADO alumni aren’t the only ROTC graduates to be affected by botched recordkeeping. The Army has mistakenly awarded time in service to some former four-year cadets, only to strip away years’ worth of service points as they were poised to retire.

The service also told Army Times that it is “reviewing” how the Navy managed similar concerns with its G2GADO equivalent — the Seaman to Admiral-21 (STA-21) program. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2010 instructed the Navy to exclude time spent in the program from sailors’ service calculations.

The 2022 NDAA undid the change for sailors that participated in the program between fiscal years 2010 and 2014, allowing the 515 officers minted by the Navy during that period to count their STA-21 time towards retirement. Senators that pushed for the exemption argued that the sailors deserved service time because “it was only in September 2015 that the STA-21 official program site began notifying members that time spent in the program would ‘not count towards retirement.’”

Whether soldiers will be granted the same relief for the Army’s mistakes remains uncertain.

Department leadership quietly upped the age limit for new enlisted and officer recruits by three years on Oct. 25. The change arrives around a month after the Air Force missed its recruiting target for the first time since 1999.

“This opens the aperture to allow more Americans the opportunity to serve,” Leslie Brown, the chief of public affairs for the Air Force recruiting service, wrote in an email to Air Force Times. “The accession age of 42 allows an Airman or Guardian to serve a full 20 years since the retirement age is 62.”

The Air Force fell roughly 2,700 airmen short of its recruitment goal this year. Its space-focused sister service fared better, surpassing its 472 enlisted recruit benchmark.

Service recruiters continue to fight a confluence of headwinds on the way to reaching recruiting targets, including a strong job market and waning youth interest in military service.

Air Force officials anticipate that the new age ceiling will attract around 50 more recruits per year. In recent months, they also softened once strict rules surrounding tattoos and past drug use to lower barriers to entry without, they hope, compromising the quality of recruits.

The Air Force last revised its age cutoff for service in 2014, raising the bar from 27 to 39. Hundreds of recruits in their late thirties have joined the ranks since.

He often envisioned himself in a cage surrounded by sneering Taliban fighters, clubs in hand. When they approached him, he’d jolt awake, teeth clenched, suppressed screams quivering through his chest.

Satary’s mortal fear of capture never became a reality during his nearly two decades of service for the American mission in Afghanistan, first as a combat interpreter and then as a security coordinator for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

He, his three young sons, and his wife, then eight months pregnant, managed to slip out of the Afghan capital on an American military plane on Aug. 17, 2021, two days after the Taliban seized the city.

Despite escaping to the U.S., along with roughly 80,000 other Afghans that summer, Satary has found the wounds of the war difficult to leave behind.

For many Afghan veterans like him, the stresses of refugee life continue to suppress and exacerbate the traumas of combat two years after arriving stateside. Thousands with expiring immigration statuses are stuck in legal limbo. Many live paycheck to paycheck, if they can hold down a job.

Deep cultural stigmas surrounding psychological struggles and inadequate treatment options allow mental wounds to fester. Untreated, experts warn, they could carry over generations and derail the future of a community striving to break free from its past.

Satary himself has found a level of personal and professional stability that many evacuees would envy. Yet his story, in many ways, epitomizes the slow, precarious journey to recovery endured by many of his compatriots.

Satary began working as an interpreter for the Department of Defense in June 2003, two years after the U.S. military ousted the Taliban from power. He was born without a birth certificate, but he estimates he was around 17 at the time.

His family needed cash, and his English skills set him apart in an otherwise bleak job market.

“I had my camouflage uniform. I was thinking I was so cool,” he recalled. “I was thinking everything is like Hollywood movies.”

About a year later he was in Kandahar, unzipping the body bags of Afghan soldiers killed in an IED blast. He knew most of the dead — they’d traveled from Kabul together — so his commander tasked him with identifying the bodies.

He unsheathed the first corpse, the face a jumble of bone and cartilage, mutilated beyond recognition.

“I cannot do it,” Satary recalled telling his commander.

“They are our friends,” the officer replied.

So, the teenager went body by body, pointing out features that connected name to flesh.

“This was the worst feeling I ever had,” he said. “I’d never touched a body, and I didn’t know how hard the body can be after someone dies.”

After naming the last corpse, he left the morgue and vomited. He didn’t sleep for days.

A 2018 European Union survey found that 85% of Afghans witnessed or experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetimes. The average Afghan saw or suffered an average of four. As a result, experts estimate, at least one in every two Afghans suffers from psychological distress.

But this abundance of struggles is met with a scarcity of services. Before the Taliban ascended to power, the Afghan government spent only $0.26 per person annually on mental health services — well below the ~$4.00 standard deemed appropriate for low income countries by the World Health Organization.

Fewer than 10% of Afghans accessed the paltry services that were available, in large part because of the stigma mental illnesses carry, according to Human Rights Watch, a non-profit.

Over time, through some fusion of willpower and circumstance, Satary hardened, insulating himself from the routine horrors of the war. The crackle of gunshots, the deafening blasts, the dust and the blood, the spikes in adrenaline, the impatient lulls in between — violence became habitual and familiar.

“Dying was very simple,” he said. “A blast or a bullet will have you, you will be gone. No problem.”

There were moments, however, that pried open this shell, forcing him to reckon with how the war had changed him.

One August morning in 2009, Satary weaved through the clogged arteries of central Kabul en route to the U.S. embassy.

Soon after arriving, as guards finished inspecting his vehicle, he heard a faint bang. A burst of energy whooshed by, bending branches like storm winds. His ears rang and felt like they’d burst.

Satary threw open the car door and ran for a nearby bunker. Sirens and shrieks soon filled the silence. First responders raced by and he joined them.

He’d scrambled fewer than 50 yards before the corpse-strewn street reared into view. The car bomb had shredded the tree-lined boulevard outside NATO headquarters, now spattered with leaves, flesh, and twisted metal.

Without pause he started picking up bloodied bodies — mostly kids, he remembered — and carrying them into ambulances.

With the dead collected and the debris cleared, he returned to the embassy and rushed for the showers. Thirty minutes later he showered again — and then again, and again.

Satary couldn’t sleep for the next few nights, he recalls. He suffered terrible headaches. Visions of the children — their squeals, gashed skin and pretzeled limbs — haunted him.

Witnessing his American colleagues process the same horrors put his own psychological struggles into starker relief. A few years after the August attack, an embassy colleague was reassigned stateside because doctors and family worried about the toll the war had taken on his mind.

“I looked at the mirror and I said, ‘If [he] is going through that, I’m definitely worse than him,’” he remembered.

Still, he worried his American supervisors would deem him unfit for service if they learned of his torments. Seeking help was also burdened by shame, a sense of unbecoming weakness that came with being an Afghan man — a fighter, a father, an only son — venting about his feelings and bad dreams.

So, he continued.

Satary, now 38, cuts a graceful figure. Tall and slender, with well-coifed hair reminiscent of the Hollywood actors he once emulated as a young soldier, he projects gentleness and endears himself to others with little effort, often punctuating his sentences with a smile.

His nightmares began to subside last year, but slammed doors and other sudden loud noises still trigger a survival instinct when he’s awake.

For a time, Satary experienced a visceral intolerance for crying. Sometimes he’d leave the room to escape his kids’ blubbering. On other occasions, he yelled at them.

“For the past 14-15 years, I was dealing with high pressure, sensitive situations,” he said. “That’s probably where I put all of my patience. I don’t have much left.”

His elderly parents and his three sisters, meanwhile, remain stuck in Kabul.

Days before he fled, aware he might have to leave them behind, Satary installed a router in his parents’ home and taught his mother how to accept incoming FaceTime calls on an iPad. He’s called every day since.

“I talk to them for, like, half an hour, giving them hope that they can still see me, that I will be able to see them one day.”

When the family was together, Satary was their primary caregiver. He’d take his ailing father to appointments, change his diapers and bathe him. Now, with 7,400 miles and a vengeful regime separating them, care takes the form of a few longing “I love yous” through a lagging screen.

Supporting the family he has within reach was long a burden of its own. His wife gave birth to their fourth son a few weeks after they landed in the U.S., on Sept. 11. She suffered through postpartum depression for months.

Life’s more mundane complications piled on. Satary went months without a car. He didn’t receive work authorization until March 2022, half a year after his arrival. He kept his family fed through donations and food stamps.

“For the first nine months, I didn’t go for a medical checkup because I was afraid that they would come and tell me, you have some kind of disease,” he said. “I didn’t want to have another thing to be worried about.”

It was his responsibility to shepherd his family through the transition, to provide reassurance and stability when the world spared them so little.

“We are in the best place in the world. We have nothing to be worried about,” he’d encourage them.

“I was trying to do that to myself, thinking ‘I am fine, nothing is wrong with me.’”

A State Department colleague connected Satary with Sarah Cady a week after he landed at Dulles International Airport. The longtime social worker had worked in refugee advocacy on and off since 2003 before helping resettle the first planeloads of Afghan evacuees.

Cady, now head of the Virginia-based resettlement support agency REACT DC, has worked with thousands of Afghans since August 2021. Mental health symptoms like Satary’s, she said, are alarmingly common.

“Every refugee group comes with trauma,” she said. “The rates of undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder are much higher in [the Afghan] population than many of the previous [refugee] populations because of the chaotic nature of the evacuation.”

Reliable data on the scope and severity of mental health struggles in the Afghan community are hard to come by.

A survey of 1,815 evacuees conducted this spring by the Department of Health and Human Services found that more than half of respondents experienced mental health challenges. Three in four respondents said they have yet to receive professional help.

More than a dozen resettlement advocates and clinicians interviewed by Military Times spoke to the gravity of the problem.

Many evacuees had to leave behind close family, exacerbating the pain of being forced to abandon home. The agony of separating from loved ones is particularly acute for veterans and contractors, who fear their past affiliation with the U.S. government makes their relatives targets of Taliban vengeance.

“I’m physically here, but mentally I’m thinking about my family back home,” a former interpreter turned resettlement advocate — who wished to remain anonymous to protect their family — told Military Times. “I’m ready for any phone call, like, ‘Hey, your brother is no longer alive. We killed your father.’”

Yet many evacuees are too consumed by day-to-day pressures to lament.

Financial insecurity among Afghan refugees is chronic and widespread. Almost 20% of resettled Afghans surveyed by Health and Human Services this year are unemployed. Around 50% of respondents reported needing housing assistance.

Legal concerns also loom. Most of the nearly 80,000 Afghans airlifted to the U.S. in the late summer and early fall of 2021 were granted “humanitarian parole,” a tenuous, temporary license to reside in the country. Parolee status, which allows Afghans to apply for employment authorization and other government benefits, expires after two years for most evacuees.

Extending parole can be a tedious and convoluted process. Thousands who have managed to file their paperwork have yet to hear back. Losing parole can mean losing work — or, at worst, deportation. Onerous documentation requirements and months-long backlogs have stymied the hopes of those trying to secure more stable forms of residence, such as asylum or special immigrant visas. (Satary, once a parolee, now has a green card.)

“Sometimes daily problems or issues will lead to anxiety or depression that probably will increase other problems,” said Yousuf Jabarkhil, a project manager at the Afghan Medical Professionals Association of America. “They relate to each other.”

Pathways to adequate treatment for newly arrived Afghans, meanwhile, remain riddled with structural and cultural obstacles, experts say.

Many difficulties are symptomatic of broader problems plaguing the American mental health ecosystem. Parolees and special visa holders qualify for Medicaid, which can cover mental health treatment. Still, counselors and therapists are in high demand and short supply.

An even smaller sliver of qualified therapists understands Afghan cultural sensitivities. Fewer still speak Dari, Pashto, or another Afghan tongue.

Experts doubt many Afghans would seek out treatment if quality care were readily available.

“Whenever you talk about mental health, it means [you] are totally crazy,” another former Afghan interpreter, also anonymized to protect his family, said of the stigma.

High numbers of evacuees struggle to even conceptualize psychological health as being worthy of treatment.

“More than providing these services, there is a bigger need of educating the community on the importance of mental health,” said Naheed Bahram, the U.S. operations director for Women for Afghan Women, a community organization.

A loose network of government agencies and resettlement groups, conscious of these gaps, is attempting to assemble and advertise a patchwork of affordable and accessible care options.

Jabarkhil’s organization received a grant from the Office of Refugee Resettlement in January to pilot its own mental health service. The program’s eight case workers, fluent in Dari and Pashto, share 250 patients between them, running therapy sessions of their own or connecting clients with other providers and translating sessions when needed.

The following month, the Office of Refugee Resettlement began doling out grants for “Services to Afghan Survivors Impacted by Combat,” a medley of mental health resources tailored to “Afghans who experienced combat-related trauma.”

In August, Lutheran Social Services National Capital Area, or LSSNCA, one of the country’s most active resettlement agencies, debuted a mental health program — dubbed a “wellness program” to destigmatize seeking treatment. Its two new clinicians expect to work with around 20-30 clients each.

This incremental progress is meaningful yet insufficient, advocates say. Thousands, not hundreds, need care. Time and improved circumstances can have their own healing properties, but proper treatment has few substitutes.

“We know that the mental health piece, unless it is addressed, can actually be [an] obstacle to long term refugee integration,” Mamadou Sy, LSSNCA’s chief operating officer, said. “It can delay employment; it can lead people to losing employment; or not being able to secure housing or maintain a roof over their head.”

“That August tore me down. That August marked a failure, a failure that I was not expecting,” Satary said.

The café’s piano jazz playlist offered a melodramatic soundtrack for his ruminations. He twisted a coffee cup in one hand, the other rested on his legs.

He bowed his head and gazed at the table.

“I remember those last very last seconds when I was leaving my house, and my mom was kissing [the] feet of my sons. My dad—”

His free hand clasped his face. A few tears streamed through his fingers as he stifled sobs.

A few months ago, he was on the cusp of booking a flight to Kabul. The thought of his parents living out their final years alone, searing on a regular day, had become unbearable.

“I wanted to go show myself to my parents and tell them, like, I’m not out of this world,” he explained. “It will give them a hope.”

He’d tuned out the self-evident dangers of certain arrest — probable death — until he received word that the Taliban detained his nephew and demanded information about his whereabouts. He shelved the plans.

He had much to lose. His young family had found peace after seemingly interminable war. They’d bought their first home this summer. His wife is fulfilling lifelong dreams, learning to drive and practicing English. His sons made friends and are doing well in school.

Satary himself had begun to find his way. He bought a car and plays pick-up soccer on weekends. He settled into a gratifying job at LSSNCA helping Afghan peers navigate the seismic adjustments he’d endured.

And yet, he says, the itch for justice, for redemption, for some realization of himself and the open, democratic Afghanistan he gave everything to uphold, feels irresistible.

“I have friends in the U.S. Army and Afghanistan army who lost their lives. I had my colleagues in the embassy who lost their lives fighting against the Taliban,” he said. “All those people, their lives matter to me if it doesn’t matter to politicians.”

Asked if he’d go back and fight should that need arise, his response was instantaneous and unwavering.

“Yes.”

The investigation found there was no shooter, a base spokesperson said in an email. The installation announced the all-clear around 3:45 p.m. local time, about an hour after warning all personnel at one of the East Coast’s largest military bases to seek shelter.

“JBDML is no longer under lockdown condition,” Air Force Capt. Kitsana Dounglomchan, a base spokesperson, said in an email. “We received notification of an active shooter on the joint base. After investigating the incident, it was found that there was no active shooter. We appreciate the public’s concern and thank you for your continued support.”

The base had announced on social media that a shooter was reported at Building 5321, part of the Army’s 99th Regional Support Command.

Dounglomchan did not immediately answer what prompted the active shooter warning. The Burlington County Sheriff’s Office referred questions to the military.

Around 47,000 uniformed and civilian employees from each branch of the armed forces and their families call JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst home.

The base is the Pentagon’s only installation that services the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. Located an hour northeast of Philadelphia, the sprawling 42,000-acre base is a hub for Air Force airlift and tanker fleets and Army reserve components in the northeast. It hosts the Army’s 174th Infantry Brigade, the Air Force’s 108th Wing, and the 99th Regional Support Command, among others.

Army Times senior reporter Davis Winkie contributed to this story.

Pfc. Cesar Gonzalez, an infantryman assigned to Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 58th Infantry Regiment, 198th Infantry Brigade, suffered a “medical emergency” during an on-post training exercise on Oct. 20, according to a statement from the Army. Gonzalez passed away at the hospital as medics attempted to provide treatment. Officials are investigating the exact cause of his death.

“The Wolfpack family is devastated by the unfortunate and untimely passing of Private First Class Gonzalez, an outstanding soldier in our organization,” Capt. Stephanie Snyder, his company commander, said in a statement. “This heartbreaking loss has affected every person in the company.”

The Chicago native began his Army career at Fort Jackson, South Carolina in May, as a trainee in the Future Soldier Preparatory Course. Gonzalez transferred to Fort Moore in June to start the Infantry One Station Unit Training (OSUT).

Gonzalez joined the Army to “challenge himself and to support his family,” he wrote in his in-processing form. He was only weeks away from graduating at the time of his passing, Army officials said.

Gonzalez is the second Fort Moore soldier to die on post this year. Pfc. Jacob Atchison, a 19-year-old recruit from Pella, Iowa, passed away in July during training and the investigation into his death is ongoing. Atchison, like Gonzalez, died shortly before his scheduled graduation.

Editor’s note: This article was updated at 11:35 a.m. EDT on Oct. 25, 2023, to note that Pfc. Jacob Atchison’s death remains under investigation.

By July 2008, Lt. Col. Joyner Livingston was ready to move on from the military. He was halfway through his second year in the Army Reserve — the sixth and final year of his ROTC service obligation. After a deployment to Iraq, he welcomed a return to civilian life.

But then he looked at his personnel file. The Army had logged his years as a cadet as years in service, awarding him almost four years’ worth of retirement points, which are used to calculate pensions for reservists. Each point represents one day’s worth of service, and a Reserve member’s retired pay (which begins at age 60 in most cases) is based on their average annual points total, their highest pay grade and their qualifying years in service.

However, a federal statute created in 1964 prohibits the Army from crediting time spent in ROTC towards time in service calculations, unless the cadet is simultaneously serving in the Reserve.

“I said ‘Hey, I don’t think I should get points for being in ROTC,’” Livingston recalled telling a human resources official in his unit at the time. “‘I wasn’t in the reserves. I wasn’t active-duty. I wasn’t Green to Gold. I wasn’t any of those things.’”

The HR officer insisted his record was correct, he remembered. Suddenly, his career calculus changed. Counting his time in school as time in service meant he was roughly halfway to the 20-year service mark, after which retired soldiers qualify for generous Army benefits.

“I’m over the hump,” he remembered thinking. “I made the decision to go ahead and stay in.”

Livingston has served in the Reserve since. His record went unchanged for 15 years. Human resources officials continued to validate his file during annual records reviews. Livingston received his 20-year retirement letter in February 2021. A copy of his official retirement plan statement dated to March 2023, shared with Army Times, indicates he’d clocked in almost four years of service time and roughly 1,500 points between 2000, the year he started ROTC, and November 2003, when he received his commission.

“Personnel records management has always involved a margin of human error,” Lt. Col. Allie Scott, a public affairs officer for Human Resources Command (HRC), wrote to Army Times in response to questions about errors in retirement files. “Records management is a responsibility of the individual soldier and unit activities.”

Now, Livingston is left bearing the brunt of a mistake that, he feels, he did all he could to remedy. Livingston said that in August, an official from HRC called him and said that the Army was going to take back the points he’d been erroneously awarded while in ROTC. By Livingston’s estimate, that would slash his retirement pay by almost a third, he said. He protested the decision, pushing his complaint up the HRC ladder, but officials, citing Army Reserve statutes reiterating the 1964 law, dismissed his appeal.

“I’ve missed birthdays of my children [because of Reserve duties]. I’ve missed baseball games,” Livingston said. “For me, given the points calculation that the Army originally gave me, and the time and service that the Army originally told me I had, it was worth it.”

When asked whether the Army would delay retirement and garnish benefits for soldiers impacted by records miscalculations, or require soldiers with 20-year letters to serve more time, Scott said: “No, HRC will continue to work with each individual to overcommunicate and to find available solutions that are least disruptive to the current situation.”

The exact cause and scope of the miscalculations are unclear. The Army could not offer a specific or estimated number of impacted soldiers when asked by Army Times.

“Those details are being researched,” Scott said. “However, many factors may affect an individual’s retirement point calculation, including ROTC or service academy time, transfers between components, and missing retirement points earned while in other armed services.”

Despite the law, Livingston’s record “is not the only one that reflected incorrect data for service as an ROTC Cadet,” according to a September email he shared with Army Times from an HRC official once responsible for supervising points calculations. The official added that “many who served at West Point” had their records botched.

Another soldier — who wished to remain anonymous because he is still serving and not authorized to speak to the media — described undergoing a similar ordeal.

He joined ROTC in 2001, went on active duty in 2006, and transferred to the Army Reserve in 2014. During his first records review, an official in his unit noted that he’d accumulated points and time in service while in school. He was surprised, so he called HRC to confirm.

“They said, ‘Oh, you signed a contract post-9/11. Those four years worth of points count,’” he recalled, adding “I didn’t think anything of it.”

Figuring out which ROTC graduates had received points during school became a kind of game among soldiers in his unit.

“I remember we would compare points worksheets, it was like a 50/50 split,” he said. “Some had the points on there, some didn’t.”

Four years later, during another review, an official in his unit flagged the ROTC points as an error. She called HRC on his behalf, and, he says, officials once again verified his record.

Then, during a Reserve drill last year, as he was expecting his 20-year letter, he received a different message.

“I got an email that morning from HRC being like, ‘We’re taking these four years worth of points away,” he said. “’You’re going back to 16 years.’”

The HRC official that handled Livingston’s appeal blamed the glitches on the Reserve’s “legacy” personnel management system, which struggled to intake data from a separate active-duty database when soldiers transitioned between components, according to emails from the official shared with Army Times. HRC supposedly attempted to resolve the issue “for years,” but to little avail, according to the email the official sent Livingston. How exactly they attempted to do so is unclear.

The Army’s transition to a centralized human resources database last fall has revealed years-old record errors across numerous programs. Cadet Command, responsible for managing ROTC, said the introduction of the Army’s Integrated Personnel and Pay System (IPPS-A) revealed that potentially thousands of graduates from the Green to Gold Active Duty Option program might have been mistakenly awarded time in service and pay raises.

Scott says the new system has little to do with the discovery of broader ROTC errors.

“This is not a product of IPPS-A,” she said in a statement to Army Times. “Discrepancies routinely occur in finalizing individual personnel records and once identified we take appropriate action.”

A Department of Defense Office of Inspector General report published Monday uncovered critical deficiencies in how the Pentagon maintains and protects core components of the Army’s land capabilities. The shortfalls, the report warns, could endanger personnel, waste millions, and undermine readiness as the Army attempts to retool its logistical network for conflict across multiple theaters.

Investigators inspected $1.96 billion worth of equipment stored at two distribution centers controlled by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the Defense Department bureau tasked with managing the military’s sprawling supply chains. The DLA’s distribution division, responsible for storing and disseminating materiel, handled a total $3.87 billion of Army ground combat gear as of July 2022, according to the report.

The spare parts stored at these facilities support some of the Army’s flagship land fighting technology, including the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Stryker Armored Combat Vehicle, and the Abrams tank, the report noted.

Two-thirds of the inspected parts — valued at $1.31 billion — exhibited “critical” deficiencies, meaning they were “deteriorating and in immediate danger of moving to a lower condition code,” a measure of utility. In all, investigators determined that $1.8 billion (92%) of the inspected equipment was crumbling or at “increased risk” of falling apart because DLA storage facilities failed to follow Pentagon standards.

Among the spare parts in critical condition were 80 gas turbines, worth almost $90 million, stacked together on a lawn outside of a warehouse. The turbines, meant to be stored indoors, had been there since 2020, investigators learned. Investigators also found tens of millions of dollars worth of tank tracks, vehicle transmission assemblies, and diesel engines stashed away in open-air facilities without proper packaging.

Using appropriate containers and shielding gear from the elements can save millions. Investigators pointed to a case in 2021 when the Army spent $10.92 million to repair engines that had been improperly stored.

Inspectors also warned that cluttered, precarious piles of equipment risked injuring personnel working at the distribution centers.

The inspector general largely blamed the storage pitfalls on poor training and oversight.

“DLA Distribution did not provide adequate guidance to its personnel who are responsible for or support” equipment maintenance, according to the report. Investigators also found that DLA’s distribution division “did not have formalized training for the receiving, packaging, warehousing, or inspection personnel who are responsible for the storage and care of Army [ground combat systems] materiel.”

The report claims Army leaders failed to recognize the gaps in its materiel management because the branch does not “adequately oversee” how the parts of its fighting machine are cared for.

The inspector general issued eleven recommendations, including the implementation of new training regimes and regular inspections from the head of Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command. DLA agreed with them all.

The Air Force announced Wednesday it has formally charged Maj. Gen. Phillip Stewart, the service’s former pilot training boss, with sexual assault, dereliction of duty and multiple other crimes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

In all, the two-star general faces two counts of sexual assault under Article 120 of military law; two counts of dereliction of duty under Article 92; one count of conduct unbecoming of an officer under Article 133; and one count of extramarital sexual conduct under Article 134, according to a partially redacted charge sheet obtained by Air Force Times. Air University boss Lt. Gen. Andrea Tullos filed the charges Sept. 21.

Stewart allegedly penetrated a woman’s vulva with his mouth and penis without her consent on multiple occasions while visiting Altus Air Force Base, Oklahoma, in mid-April, according to the charge sheet.

During the same trip, Stewart allegedly violated Air Force rules by piloting an unnamed aircraft less than 12 hours after consuming alcohol. Altus is a training hub for pilots, refueling boom operators, maintainers and other aircrew across the mobility enterprise.

Stewart is also accused of inviting someone to spend the night alone with him in his private hotel room while on official travel to Colorado in March, having sex with someone other than his spouse in Oklahoma in April and pursuing an unprofessional relationship from March 6-May 9, according to the charge sheet.

The Air Force will consider whether there is enough evidence to begin a court-martial at a preliminary Article 32 hearing — the military equivalent of a grand jury proceeding — on Oct. 24 at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas.

If the case heads to trial, Stewart faces a minimum sentence of dismissal or dishonorable discharge, or up to 66 years in confinement and forfeiture of pay. He is presumed innocent until found guilty.

Air Education and Training Command boss Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson fired Stewart from his post as 19th Air Force commander in May due to a “loss of confidence in his ability to lead” after less than a year in the role. Stewart oversaw 32,000 personnel and 1,530 aircraft while managing the service’s pilot training enterprise from JBSA-Randolph.

He was reassigned to a staff position at Air Education and Training Command headquarters in San Antonio, Air Force spokesperson Capt. Scarlett Trujillo told Air Force Times in an email.

The former commander has amassed more than 2,600 flying hours in several fighter, special operations, intelligence and trainer aircraft and flown more than 168 combat missions since commissioning as an F-15C pilot in 1992, according to his official biography. He has received a Bronze Star Medal, the Legion of Merit and the Defense Superior Service Medal.

Before taking over at 19th Air Force in August 2022, Stewart headed NATO’s effort to train the Afghan air force and served as the Air Force’s top air adviser in Afghanistan. He held multiple policy and staff jobs on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and with military commands in Europe, and led the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base, California.

General officers rarely face prosecution through the military legal system. Wednesday’s announcement marks the second time an Air Force general officer has been charged with a sexual crime. The first, Maj. Gen. Bill Cooley, the former commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory, retired as a colonel in June after being convicted of abusive sexual conduct for forcibly kissing his brother’s wife. He has lodged a complaint with the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals.

In 1992, Maj. Gen. Donald Kaufman was arraigned as part of a court-martial, but his case was dismissed and never went to a jury, Air Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek previously told Air Force Times. Kaufman, who faced allegations of taking enemy AK-47 assault rifles as trophies from the Gulf War, was demoted to the rank of colonel and retired.

Col. Anthony Bianchi’s firing, reported by Military.com on Thursday, follows the colonel’s suspension in late July amid an investigation into unspecified “alleged conduct.” Bianchi’s July dismissal was first reported by The Messenger.

Army officials did not provide details about the circumstances surrounding Bianchi’s firing.

The commanding general of U.S. Army Installation Management Command, Lt. Gen. Omar Jones, relieved Bianchi from his post “due to a loss of trust and confidence in his ability to command,” branch spokesperson Christina Bhatti wrote in a statement to Army Times. Bhatti added that the colonel “is currently performing duties as assigned,” though what those duties entail remains unclear.

Bianchi graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as a field artillery officer in 1997. He assumed command of the Army’s oldest garrison in July 2022, one year before his suspension.

The Tampa Bay native deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, receiving a Bronze Star Medal, five Meritorious Service Medals, and several other awards over the course of his career.

Bianchi is one of several Army colonels to draw scrutiny for misbehavior this year.

Col. Jonathan Chung was relieved from his post as commander of the 5th Security Force Assistance Brigade in June following allegations of toxic leadership. Col. Meghann Sullivan, a commander of the 5th Brigade Engineer Battalion, is under investigation for allegedly sexually harassing subordinates.

Editor’s note: This article was updated at 6:28 p.m. EST on Oct. 6 to note Col. Bianchi’s dismissal was first reported by The Messenger.

A techy group of former soldiers fed up with the grotty conditions of military facilities have developed a Yelp-style app to rate them.

“Hots&Cots” allows service members to anonymously review the quality of barracks and dining services. Troops have already posted more than a dozen ratings — scathing, glowing, and mediocre — since the app’s launch on Wednesday.

Housing at Fort Stewart, Georgia? Two stars (broken air conditioning). The Smoke Bomb Hill barracks at Fort Liberty, North Carolina? Three stars (chronic mold and pest issues, but laundry machines are located on site).

An unclean cafeteria and uncooked chicken tenders earned a DFAC at Joint Base Lewis-McChord one star. Dinner service at Fort Bliss, meanwhile, received a perfect five.

“I think [the app] can help with soldiers knowing what they’re going into,” Rob Evans, Hots&Cots’ lead coder and a former Army reservist, told Army Times. “You can get a review on pretty much anything these days, but there’s nothing like that for housing or barracks, or dining facilities.”

The app’s development follows the release of a blistering government watchdog report documenting dirty and dangerous conditions in military barracks across the country. The report’s findings caught the attention of lawmakers, who grilled Defense Department higher-ups during public hearings and penned a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin demanding reforms.

Evans hopes the feedback collected on Hots&Cots will help catalyze change.

“I have two young boys that may one day want to enlist in the military,” he said. “I want them to go into a military that is going to take care of them, and I personally don’t feel like that is what is happening now to our young enlisted.”

The Hots&Cots interface resembles a slimmed-down version of TripAdvisor tailored to military installations and the more spartan concerns of their inhabitants. Through a preset questionnaire, service members can provide detailed assessments of their living quarters — for example, are there pests? Is the HVAC system functional? Do the doors lock? — and their dining halls — How far is the DFAC from the barracks? Does the DFAC have healthy options? Is the food edible?

Evans and his team are tweaking the app to make it more accessible and user-friendly. It’s not yet available on Android, and users can only upload one photo per review. Evans also wants users to be able to sort and save rankings.

After all, enough pointed reviews can sink a bakery or bar. Maybe, just maybe, they can make one of the nation’s largest employers get its act together.

“I have a few moments of like, is this just going to be a little speed bump in the big world of the military?” he reflected. “But I’m hoping that this will make an impact on the quality of life for soldiers.”