Maj. Jordan R. Cochran, a spokesman for the Corps’ Manpower and Reserve Affairs, told Marine Corps Times via email the Corps was waiting on the national defense bill to be passed for the numbers to be finalized.

After receiving President Joe Biden’s signature on Dec. 23, 2022, the legislation confirmed an end-strength of 177,000 for active-duty Marine Corps personnel, lower than the previous two fiscal years.

After hitting all its recruitment goals for fiscal year 2022, one of the only branches to reach all its target numbers, the Corps quickly redirected efforts to achieving its next recruitment mission.

“Over the next year, Marine Corps Recruiting Command will: reinforce and expand the trust of the American people in their Marine Corps, enable our Marines and their families to be happy and successful and will positively shape the future of the Marine Corps – one highly qualified applicant at a time,” Maj. Gen. William Bowers, the commanding general of Marine Corps Recruiting Command, said in a statement.

In the past fiscal year, the service recruited 28,608 active-duty enlisted Marines, making its goal by just eight service members and among Reserve enlisted personnel, the Corps met its exact accession target of 4,602 troops, Marine Corps Times previously reported.

Even while the final fiscal year 2023 end-strength goals were officially confirmed only recently by the signing of the defense bill, the Corps is already working to keep and bring in new talent.

In July 2022, the Corps started its fiscal year 2023 retention campaign for enlisted service members as well as for its Reserve troops. The first phase of the Reserve campaign will end in February 2023, with subsequent phases ending in April and July 2023, an October MARADMIN post said.

“The Marine Corps Reserve career force objectives are to retain the most qualified Marines,” it added.

A panel of judges for the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Dec. 23, 2022, issued a preliminary injunction that will allow Jaskirat Singh and Milaap Singh Chahal to become Marine recruits without giving up their articles of faith.

The two men, along with Aekash Singh, had sued Defense Department officials in April 2022, arguing that rules barring them from wearing long hair, turbans and beards during boot camp violated their rights to religious liberty.

Jaskirat Singh and Milaap Singh Chahal plan to ship off to boot camp “as soon as their personal circumstances allow,” according to Amrith Kaur Aakre, legal director of the Sikh Coalition, one of the organizations representing the plaintiffs.

“They have been in limbo for so long, so they have taken on additional commitments which they must wrap up before they can ship out,” Aakre told Marine Corps Times via email. “Additionally, we want to ensure they have a smooth and safe transition to Recruit Training, so those details must be ironed out before they go.”

She added that the two men are also waiting to hear whether the Marine Corps will appeal the judge’s decision granting the injunction.

Aekash Singh, meanwhile, is waiting on a decision from a district court whether he requires an injunction immediately. The appeals court wasn’t so sure, since “counsel has advised this court that Aekash Singh may have postponed his plans to enlist until at least 2024.”

A statement from the Sikh Coalition on Dec. 23, 2022, said Aekash Singh planned to attend Officer Candidates School rather than recruit training.

The Corps previously has offered grooming accommodations for Sikh men, but only after boot camp and not while deployed in combat zones. In defending the restrictions for boot camp, lawyers for the government argued that Marine recruits need to adhere to uniform grooming standards so they can build a spirit of cohesion.

Col. Adam Jeppe, the Corps’ head of manpower military policy, wrote a declaration for the case. “The expeditionary mindset requires a commitment that runs counter to humanity’s most primal survival instincts. In the Marine Corps’ judgment, to be effective, every member of the team must commit to accepting a role in support of the team and demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice individually in order to carry out that role.”

In their opinion announcing the injunction, the panel of judges pointed out that other military branches accommodate Sikhs and that even the Marine Corps allows different grooming standards for women and for men with chronic razor burn.

A fourth plaintiff, Marine Capt. Sukhbir Toor, is seeking the right to wear his articles of faith while in combat zones.

After depositions and legal briefings about the recruit training issue conclude in early February, Aakre told Marine Corps Times, “a schedule will be set for the second phase of the case, which involves the career limiting and insufficient accommodation that Captain Toor is subject to, and which our pre-accession clients will have once they graduate from Recruit Training.”

Few details are known about the program, which began in 2020 and is the Navy’s contribution to the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control effort, an initiative that seeks to reliably connect forces across land, air, sea, space and cyberspace.

Leaders have framed it as one of the Navy’s most important missions in 2023, one made doubly vital by a parallel drive to incorporate more drones in the fleet that can serve as intelligence-collecting nodes, feeding vital information to ships and ashore command centers.

While the Navy has not identified the specific technologies or software involved in next year’s expected CSG demonstration, Rear Adm. Doug Small, who leads Project Overmatch and Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, told sister publication Defense News that the event will be the “starting gun” of the effort.

Small said that after the first CSG deployment, the plan is to install the required hardware and software on all 11 carrier strike groups, Defense News reported.

The Navy sought $195 million for Project Overmatch in fiscal 2023, a big bump up from the $73 million it received the year before.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday has called Project Overmatch his second-highest priority after fielding the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine.

“Fundamentally, this is all about management of data, exchange of data,” said David Deptula, the dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and a retired Air Force lieutenant general, at a Nov. 14 JADC2 industry event. “Without the appropriate infrastructure, you can’t be able to do the data, connectivity or networking. Without the security, all of it falls apart because you’re yielding a huge weakness and vulnerability to our adversary.”

“We are planning for a Force Design 2030 update coming ‘in the spring,’” Maj. Joshua C. Benson, a Marine Corps’ Combat Development and Integration mission spokesman, said in a statement to Marine Corps Times.

A more concrete timeline was not yet available, though the previous versions came out between April and May.

After announcing the initial Force Design project in 2020, the Marine Corps has issued the yearly report to provide clarity and progress on its effort to transform how it will engage in the future operating environment and counter threats posed by competitors.

In the most recent annual update, the Marine Corps reviewed, among other things, the state of its modernization efforts for its Marine expeditionary forces and for its Reserve troops.

As the content of the next report continues to be solidified, Benson said the Corps is focused on getting feedback from troops and on the third phase of its modernization process, which according to the initial Force Design report concentrates on “rapid and iterative wargaming, analysis, and experimentation.”

Er, or the “unmanned surface vehicles,” in the preferred Big Navy nomenclature.

Either way, 2023 should see the sea service stand up its first ever unmanned surface fleet by the end of the summer.

While the Navy and the U.S. military in general spent much of 2022 focused on the European theater following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not to mention the whole China situation, the Navy’s drone arm has been quietly hard at work in the Middle Eastern waters of U.S. 5th Fleet testing and developing all types of drone platforms.

Task Force 59, stood up in September 2021 to oversee the effort, has in roughly the past year operated surface drones in area waters for more than 25,000 hours, and the Saildrone Explorer in particular logged 220 consecutive days at sea with no refueling or maintenance.

“The pace of innovation is amazing,” Capt. Michael Brasseur, TF 59′s commander, said in a statement. “We are challenging our industry partners in one of the most difficult operational environments, and they are responding with enhanced capability, fast.”

Fifth Fleet held a three-week unmanned and artificial intelligence integration event called Digital Horizon in November, which a command press release billed as a crucial step to integrating new drones ahead of the unmanned surface vessel fleet’s standing up next summer.

Such efforts seek to improve what the U.S. and partner navies can see above, below and on the surface of the water.

“By harnessing these new unmanned technologies and combining them with artificial intelligence, we will enhance regional maritime security and strengthen deterrence,” Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, 5th Fleet’s commander, said in a statement. “This benefits everybody.”

The Digital Horizon exercise in November involved 15 different systems, 10 of which were operating among 5th Fleet for the first time.

The event involved two unmanned vertical take-off and landing systems, as well as a bevy of surface drones.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman became the second person to serve as the Space Force’s top officer in November. He replaced Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, who retired after six years as the Pentagon’s highest-ranking military space official.

The Space Force, which falls under the Department of the Air Force, seeks 472 new enlistees and 42 new officers in fiscal 2023, according to Air Force spokesperson Tech. Sgt. Deana Heitzman. That marks a slight dip in the number of enlisted sought from last year’s 521 guardians, and an even smaller uptick in officers from its goal of 32.

The active duty Space Force expects to consist of 4,286 enlisted billets and 4,314 officer billets, remaining the smallest branch by far.

Of the more than 8,100 troops who have joined the Space Force, nearly three-fourths are former airmen. About 1,500 people, or 19%, enlisted or commissioned directly into the newest service.

About 7% of Space Force members have come from the Army, 1% from the Navy, and less than 1% from the Marine Corps. The service will announce its latest transfer picks in early 2023.

The Space Force is growing its budget from $17.4 billion in fiscal 2022 to $24.5 billion in 2023. That spike is largely due to the Space Development Agency moving from high-level Pentagon oversight to instead report to the Space Force.

In the coming year, the Space Force expects to continue creating regional headquarters units that will report to four-star commanders around the world. It also plans to pursue more in-depth specialized training for its satellite operators, cyber experts and intelligence analysts, and hash out unique new features of its service culture.

In the coming year, the Air Force wants enough units moving through that four-step cycle — from resetting after a deployment, to basic training, to advanced training, to mission availability — to say it has created a sufficient foundation on which to grow that process.

Each phase is supposed to last six months, meaning units are supposed to have 18 months at home between six-month deployments. Some airmen, particularly those in the stretched-thin mobility field, have complained on social media that they’re still flying missions too often in the “reset” phase.

The Air Force hopes the plan, known as AFFORGEN, will be a welcome departure from the past two decades of nonstop deployments to the Middle East and Southwest Asia. That pace of operations has taken a toll on people and planes alike.

Expect the push for “multi-capable airmen,” whose broader skill sets allow units to do more with less, to continue throughout 2023. That approach is set to hit Air Force training as well, as the service spreads pre-deployment prep throughout the year and dumps its traditional “Beast Week” for a new test of airmen’s flexibility in combat.

And that lofty target comes even before lawmakers begin an expected debate on potential overhauls to the military pay table.

As part of the annual defense authorization bill passed by the House and Senate earlier this month, troops will see a 4.6% pay raise starting in January.

It’s the largest hike since 2003. For junior enlisted troops, it means about $1,300 more next year in take-home pay. For senior enlisted and junior officers, the hike equals about $2,500 more. For an O-4 with 12 years of service, it’s more than $4,500 in extra pay in 2023.

The raise is based on the federal Employment Cost Index, which tracks wages and salaries of private sector workers annually. Figures used in the recent calculation of the index point to a 5.2% pay raise for troops in January 2024, which would be the largest since a 6.9% average military pay increase in 2002.

That raise was designed to fix inequalities throughout the pay table, and provided even higher boosts for certain segments of the armed forces. The current numbers are being driven by high inflation costs and a competitive job market that has seen a battle for new workers for much of the past year.

Whether lawmakers will go along with the high index calculations will be the focus of budget debates throughout the spring.

Republican leaders on the House Armed Services Committee have already pledged to take a closer look at the pay raise formulas to see if some troops — particularly enlisted service members — need bigger raises to keep up with rising household costs.

In addition, lawmakers included in the annual authorization bill a mandated study on military pay tables, including “whether to update the current [military pay] model to meet the needs of the 2023 employment market.”

A junior enlisted service member with two years of service makes about $22,000 a year in base pay, regardless of their job responsibilities. An officer with 10 years in service makes about $95,000. Lawmakers want to know if those levels (combined with other military compensation like housing stipends) are enough for families to avoid financial problems.

Preliminary findings of that work are due to Congress in April. Members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees are expected to announce their decisions on 2024 military pay levels sometime in late spring or early summer.

The current range requirement on the missile is 310 miles, but in Oct. 2021, the Army conducted a test of PrSM that is believed to have exceeded the present requirement, originally reported by Army Times sister publication Defense News

America’s withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia has given the United States leeway to develop PrSM to fly farther than originally required.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and increased tensions in the Indo-Pacific – more attention has been placed on the potential to grow the missile’s range. While the European theater would be able to work with such distances, a longer range is required to be a decisive factor in the Pacific, said Col. Rory Crooks, project lead for PrSM.

Key U.S. allies have also agreed to purchase PrSMs.

Australia and the U.S. Army announced plans to develop precision missile capabilities, contributing $70 million to the $907 million PrSM program. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom plans to field PrSM in 2024 as a part of an upgrade to its M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System.

In Sept. 2021, the Army approved PrSM to move into the manufacturing and engineering development phase. Lockheed Martin was awarded two contracts to produce early operational PrSMs totaling more than $200 million.

The service plans to field the weapon in Fiscal Year 2023, while pulling in more capabilities later, including extended range and enhanced seekers. Land-Based Anti-Ship missile seekers are also expected to be integrated into PrSM in 2023.

The new session begins with five more veterans than the last Congress, a small increase (up from 17% of members in 2021 to 18% this year) but a significant one. It’s the first time since 1965 the number of veterans has gone up by five or more individuals, and only the fourth time in the last 50 years there has been any increase at all in the total veterans elected.

The number of veterans in Congress has declined almost steadily since the mid-1970s, as the military shifted from an end strength of largely drafted individuals to an all-volunteer force.

In 1973, nearly three in every four members of Congress had some type of military service. In 2023, it’ll be about one in every six members who have military experience.

Because of their backgrounds, veterans serving in the House and Senate are often seen as critical to discussions of Defense Department operations and Veterans Affairs procedures, and tapped to explain those issues to colleagues who lack direct personal experience on the topics.

Here’s a look at the incoming class of veterans:

• The new Congress includes 80 veterans in the House and 17 in the Senate.
• There are seven female veterans in Congress now, the most for any session.
• Congress has 42 Army veterans, the most of any single service.
• Nearly half of the veterans caucus (47) served a deployment in a combat zone.
• The list includes 19 newly elected veterans.
• The political breakdown of the veterans in Congress is 72 Republican veterans, 25 Democratic veterans.
• Of the group, 60 veterans served at least part of their career in the 2000s.
• Texas’ delegation includes 10 veterans, the most of any state.

Below is the full list of veterans elected to Congress last fall or returning to incumbent Senate seats that were not up for re-election this cycle: