Richard Remp, who was receiving hospice care in Maryland, received his diploma Friday thanks to a whirlwind effort that involved one school superintendent driving 4.5 hours to reach him in time. He died Sunday, said James Cappuccilli, second vice commander of American Legion Post 247 in Poolesville, Maryland.

“All the dominoes lined up,” said Cappuccilli, a Marine veteran. “And if one little piece was not in place, none of this would have occurred.”

During World War II, a 17-year-old Remp joined the Marine Corps, and he would go on to serve for more than 20 years, DC News Now reported in 2021.

As a gunnery sergeant, Remp served as a door gunner in the Vietnam War, according to Cappuccilli, who pointed out that he could have avoided that dangerous work but chose it anyway.

While on a reconnaissance mission in Vietnam in December 1966, Remp helped extract nine Marines who were surrounded by Viet Cong forces, DC News Now reported. With his helicopter hovering over the pickup area for more than an hour under fire, Remp fired more than 1,000 rounds at enemy forces, enabling the Marines to be saved, according to the outlet.

Despite a lifetime of proven toughness, Remp was a gentle man, “a peach,” Cappuccilli said.

“You would have never known he was a Marine, other than we talked a lot of Marine stuff,” he said.

And Remp had a mischievous sense of humor, said Cappuccilli, who said the nonagenarian was “funny, funny, funny.”

In February, Cappuccilli, a former high school guidance counselor, had the idea of honoring Remp by securing him a high school diploma. Initially believing Remp was a graduate of Sharon High School in Sharon, Pennsylvania, Cappuccilli got in touch with school officials there, he said.

Justi Glaros, superintendent of the Sharon City School District, quickly agreed to speak with with her school board and see what she could do.

Glaros learned that Pennsylvania allowed the awarding of high school diplomas to veterans who didn’t graduate from high school because they had served in World War II, the Korean War or the Vietnam War. Remp had served in all three.

“From our board, it was no question, 100%, we would like to give Mr. Remp an honorary diploma,” Glaros said.

But as she dug through yearbooks, she discovered there had been a mixup: Remp actually had attended a different high school nearby. That school board got to work on securing a diploma.

On May 14, Cappuccilli learned Remp had been diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer and was in hospice care. He called Glaros to tell her Remp was very ill and to thank her for her efforts, he said.

Glaros wasn’t giving up. She reached out to the nearby school to see if it could get the diploma to Remp in the next few days, but school officials told her they couldn’t speed up the process.

So Glaros talked to her own school board president and, on Friday morning, got Remp’s diploma printed. Fearing it wouldn’t reach Remp in time if she mailed it, she decided to make the 4.5-hour drive to Maryland herself, she said.

As Glaros stepped foot out of her car, Cappuccilli recounted, he told her, “You’re going to heaven, because this act puts you there.”

For Glaros, meeting the World War II veteran was like meeting a rockstar, she said. At first, it made her nervous.

“It was just an incredible honor to be able to give that to him,” she said. “When I was speaking with him, it was like we had been best friends forever.”

Remp told the crowd of family and friends by his bed that he was “really happy,” ABC 7 reported.

“You people just don’t know what it means to me,” Remp said, according to the outlet. “I’ll cherish this for the rest of my life.”

The next day, Saturday, Remp was speaking with pride about that diploma even as he began to fade, according to Marine veteran Julien Singh, commander of American Legion Post 247.

Glaros said she was glad she had the opportunity to give back to Remp. She said she tries to instill in her students the importance of being good to others.

“For me, it was a no-brainer,” she said. “It was just an act of kindness.”

The Criminal Investigations Division of Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, arrested the pair for trespassing and notified ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, or ERO, office in Washington, office spokesperson James Covington told Marine Corps Times in a statement Thursday.

Deportation officers arrested the two people, whom Covington described as “Jordanian noncitizens.”

“Both individuals will remain in ERO custody pending removal proceedings,” Covington said.

The pair had driven up to a gate of the base in a box truck and, when questioned by military sentries, claimed to be Amazon subcontractors making a delivery to the town of Quantico, Virginia, which is accessed through the base, Marine spokesman Capt. Michael Curtis told Marine Corps Times on Tuesday.

When military police directed the two to go to a holding area to undergo standard vetting procedures, the driver instead went past that area and attempted to drive onto the base, Curtis said. The base’s law enforcement put up the vehicle denial barriers, blocking the truck from getting farther onto the base, and detained the pair.

Potomac Local News first reported the attempted breach.

The Virginia base is home to Marine Corps Combat Development Command, which is dedicated to modernizing the force, along with some of the service’s training schools and other elements. Other Defense Department components and federal law enforcement agencies also have a presence on the base.

Former Pfc. Joshua Cobb, 23, of Trenton, New Jersey, was charged via complaint with one count of transmitting a threat in interstate and foreign commerce, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey said in a news release.

Records of the alleged threats start in December 2022, when a social media user with an IP address linked to Cobb’s residence in New Jersey declared he was planning to “erase” white people in a shooting, according to the complaint.

“I want to cause mayhem on the white community,” the user wrote. “The reason i specifically want to target white people is because as a black male, they will NEVER understand my struggles.”

On another social platform, a user who went by the name “1dayUsuffer” posted in spring 2023 of his hope of becoming a serial killer.

The user made several posts expressing a desire to commit mass violence, and said the posts would serve as “evidence” and “clues” for “when im done.”

“I’d probably (overdose) on my own adrenaline after the 10th body goes down,” he wrote in one post.

In another post, the user said he had killed his cat with a crossbow.

“Very bloody scene and I loved it,” he wrote.

The user described a family history of schizophrenia but said he refused to get evaluated lest he lose his firearms license.

FBI agents later used IP addresses and other clues to link Cobb to the account, the complaint said.

In June 2023, Cobb started boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, Marine spokeswoman 2nd Lt. Giselle Cancino said in an emailed statement to Marine Corps Times on Tuesday. He became a private first class in September 2023.

He checked into Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California, in February, as a rifleman with 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, according to Cancino.

FBI agents seized Cobb’s phone and interviewed him on the California base April 2, according to the complaint.

During the interview, Cobb admitted he had written the posts, and he specified the gym and grocery store he had considered as targets for an attack, the complaint said. He told the FBI agents he had access to guns through people he knew, including a relative who legally owned firearms.

When FBI agents informed him that his cellphone was being seized, Cobb became irate and said, “These are the things that make someone want to do the things we talked about,” according to the complaint.

On his phone were notes from April 2023 and May 2023 expressing his desire to kill and detailing how to bring guns into New Jersey, according to the complaint.

The Marine Corps discharged Cobb on Friday, according to Cancino, who did not specify the nature of the discharge. During his brief time in the Marine Corps, Cobb received a Certificate of Commendation but no personal awards, and he did not deploy, the spokeswoman said.

Cobb has been in federal custody since his arrest Monday, according to court records. His bail hearing is set to occur this Friday.

He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to the news release.

Saverio Viggiano, a federal public defender with the District of New Jersey who is representing Cobb, said the public defender office doesn’t comment on cases.

In unveiling the name, Carlos Del Toro called back to his late 2022 announcement that the America-class amphibious assault ship LHA-9 would be named the USS Fallujah, after the Marines who fought in the first and second battles of Fallujah and more broadly who served in Iraq.

Naming a ship for Helmand province will recognize “the bravery and sacrifice of our Marines and our sailors who fought for almost 20 years in the mountains of Afghanistan,” Del Toro said in his remarks at the Modern Day Marine conference in Washington.

Trish Smith, the wife of Marine Commandant Gen. Eric Smith, will serve as the ship’s sponsor. She will see the ship through all its construction-related milestones and support the ship and its crew once it joins the fleet and begins operating around the world.

The Navy awarded HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding a $130 million contract in November 2023 to begin buying long-lead materials for the ship.

Smith gave an emotional accounting of the meaning of the ship’s name on Thursday, following the secretary’s announcement.

He called the region — which was the focus of Marines’ operations that at its height involved a full Marine expeditionary force forward, and more than 19,000 Marines and sailors — “the heart of the opium trade, a Taliban stronghold, and a terrain as rugged and formidable as any on earth.”

“And yet, it was there that our Marines and sailors and allies and partners showed what it means to be at the tip of the spear,” Smith said. “It was there that another generation of warriors added to the storied history of our Marine Corps.”

Smith spoke of Medal of Honor recipient Cpl. Kyle Carpenter, who used his body to shield others from a grenade explosion in Marjah, Afghanistan, on Nov. 21, 2010.

He spoke of Sgt. Christopher Farias, who refused treatment for his wounds when his patrol base was ambushed in 2010 in Kajaki, Afghanistan. With fragmentation from a 73 mm recoilless rifle in his neck and shoulder, Farias climbed to a rooftop to coordinate his Marines’ fire and maneuver to repel the assault, in “true Marine fashion,” Smith said.

And the commandant spoke of Lance Cpl. Donald Hogan, who was patrolling a road on Aug. 26, 2009, when he spotted an insurgent preparing to detonate a roadside bomb. He protected a nearby Marine from the blast and remained in the blast zone to warn fellow Marines. Hogan died in the explosion, but he saved the rest of his squad.

“Three hundred and sixty-six Marines would lose their lives to hostile action in Afghanistan during the years of the Helmand campaign, and almost 5,000 more were wounded,” Smith said.

But beyond fights on the battlefield, the commandant said they trained Afghan counterparts, supported local governance and helped develop infrastructure.

“As we reflect on these years of hard-fought victories and painful losses, it is crucial to remember why we fought,” Smith said. “Our mission was to deny a safe haven to terrorists who would harm the United States, and support the Afghan people in their quest for peace and stability. It was about what they might one day become.”

Smith did not directly address the fall of Kabul in 2021 or the emotional reaction by many Marines who had served there and families of those who died there.

But the commandant told the audience, “The legacy of our Marines in Helmand is not defined merely by the ground that was gained or lost, but by the spirit they embodied and the lives they touched. They fought with honor, they served with compassion, they led by example, and they made a difference in this world.”

To the families of the fallen, Smith said, “Through the naming of LHA-10 as the USS Helmand Province, your sacrifices will never be forgotten and their legacy will endure through the generation of Marines that follow.”

Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz said in a video posted to Instagram on Thursday, “This name not only honors the battles won and the successes of our units in the Helmand province, but it also honors the names of those who left blood, sweat, tears and even their lives on the battlefield. The stories of what Marines did in combat are epic and more often today are not shared enough.”

The legacy of the fighting in Helmand, Afghanistan, is personal for Ruiz, the senior enlisted Marine.

On Oct. 28, 2009, he was the first sergeant for Lima Company within 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, in the province, he said in the video.

That day, he was the vehicle commander of a shock trauma platoon. While he was on his way to recover Marines who had been wounded by improvised explosive device attacks, the vehicle that was supposed to clear his way to the landing zone also was hit.

A Marine kicked open the hatch of the vehicle and pointed at Ruiz with his minesweeper. Undaunted by whatever injuries he may have sustained in the recent blast, the Marine told Ruiz to follow him to the landing zone, and he cleared the way.

There were 11 casualties from the explosions that day, ranging from routine injuries to deaths, the sergeant major said.

“It’s a story for me that I’ll never forget,” Ruiz said, adding, “Thousands of you have your own stories to tell.”

Marine veteran Cole Lyle, who served in Helmand province as a diesel mechanic and wrecker operator and volunteered at Camp Bastion’s trauma hospital, said in a statement to Marine Corps Times on Thursday, “Today’s announcement gives those Marines and partners that served in Helmand an ironclad symbol of our victories; a permanent memorial honoring our collective losses; and a commemoration of the individual experiences and unbreakable personal bonds we forged in fire.”

“I’ll be proud to point at the U.S.S. Helmand one day and tell my son about the Corps’ role in Afghanistan and some of my personal heroes who served there,” he added.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday with comment from Lyle.

To some observers of the Marine Corps’ modernization plans, that sounds familiar.

In a fight with the Chinese military, the Corps wants Marines to move from place to place near shore in stealthy groups, working with the Navy to monitor and block enemy vessels.

The Houthis, Iran-backed rebels in Yemen, have followed similar tactics in their attacks on ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

From outposts on land, the Houthis figure out the locations of ships and then launch drones and fire anti-ship missiles at them, explained Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Then they move to another location, making it harder to track them.

In order to launch counterattacks, the U.S. military has to engage in “very aggressive, persistent surveillance and targeting,” Clark said.

The Houthis lack some of the Marines’ capabilities — in electronic warfare, for instance, Clark said.

“But still, I think it’s an example of the kind of operation that the Marines are trying to pursue,” Clark said. “And the Houthis have done it pretty effectively with a much less sophisticated force.”

The U.S. Navy and coalition fleets have managed to block most Houthi attacks on ships — but at a high cost. The warships have launched missiles that cost millions to intercept Houthi drones worth just thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile, many commercial ships are making lengthy diversions around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa to avoid transiting the Red Sea. The rebel group has said it is launching the attacks in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.

The Houthis’ attacks come as the Marine Corps is four years into its ambitious plan to overhaul the force to counter a naval power like China, after spending decades waging land wars. The service intends for Marines to be lighter, more dispersed, and better at tracking enemies while avoiding being tracked themselves.

The plan, called Force Design, has attracted criticism from a group of retired Marine leaders, although it has largely secured the support of decision-makers in the Pentagon and Congress. The group of retirees claims the Corps made cuts and other changes with insufficient evidence, while current Marine leaders have argued that experiments, exercises and wargames back up their decisions.

“A lot of people have said, ‘The Marines aren’t going to be able to pull off these distributed operations inside the weapons engagement zone of an adversary like China,’” said Marine Lt. Col. Travis Hord, a student at the Joint Advanced Warfighting School who previously worked on future concept and capability development for the Marine Corps.

“I think what the Houthis are showing is that you might be able to do that, because they’ve been able to do it against us to some degree.”

In Hord’s view, while the Houthis’ operations are “not an absolute validation” of Force Design concepts, they show a land-based force equipped with sensors and missiles can pose dramatic challenges to ships.

Hord, who emphasized he was not speaking on behalf of the Marine Corps, is one of six Marines and Marine veterans who drew parallels between Force Design and the Houthis’ operations in January in a War on the Rocks piece defending the Corps’ modernization plan.

Another of the essay’s co-authors, Lt. Col. Zach Ota, stressed that the U.S. military would not emulate the Houthis’ mission of disrupting trade, even as it might learn from their tactics.

“We are the upholders of freedom in the Pacific and of open commerce in the maritime commons,” said Ota, an operations planner with U.S. Pacific Fleet and Marine Corps Forces Pacific who noted he was not speaking on behalf of the Corps.

Another difference between the Houthis’ sea-denial operations and those the Marine Corps might undertake in a war in the Pacific is that the Houthis operate on the offensive, while the Corps’ stand-in forces are geared toward defensive actions, Ota said.

Ota pointed to a real-world example of land-based forces striking ships for defensive purposes: Ukrainian attacks on Russian ships in the Black Sea that have freed up commercial ships to export grain from Ukraine’s ports.

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who led U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000, expressed deep skepticism about the Marine Corps’ turn toward sea-denial operations from land.

Of course land-based missile systems can be part of sea-denial operations, Zinni said, but, he asked rhetorically, should the Marine Corps focus on that at the expense of other capabilities?

“Looking at this like a combatant commander, this was the crisis response force,” Zinni said. “They could respond with a greater degree of capability faster than anybody else. … That degree of readiness, deployability and flexibility were unique to them — all thrown away for Force Design.” (Corps leaders insist that Marines remain ready to respond quickly to a range of crises, even as they make Force Design-related changes.)

There’s also the fact that the Houthis haven’t damaged any U.S. Navy ships.

“How effective have the Houthis been at sea denial against our capabilities?” Zinni asked.

Retired Col. T.X. Hammes, a distinguished research fellow at the National Defense University, said one lesson from the fighting between the Houthis and the Navy is that ships can fend off a small number of missiles. So the Marine Corps should have more of them.

The Marines, Hammes said, should be capable of firing volleys of missiles that can overwhelm enemy ships’ defenses.

It is unclear to what extent the Marine Corps is implementing lessons from the Houthis’ operations. The Marine Corps did not respond to requests to speak with Marines who are studying insights from combat operations in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

One thing is clear, however: Even when developing Force Design, the Corps drew lessons from U.S. adversaries.

In its 2021 document explaining stand-in forces — a concept that envisions Marines lurking near an adversary to conduct reconnaissance and support naval missions — the Corps devoted a page to the Houthis’ 2016-2018 activities in the Red Sea.

“Their efforts quickly evolved into an excellent example of how one might conduct effective reconnaissance, counter reconnaissance, and sea denial while operating inside of a contested area,” the document reads.

The Houthis aren’t the only hostile actors from which the military may be learning.

Even if military leaders may not acknowledge it, they are learning from Russia’s electronic jamming of Ukrainian communications, Clark said.

Corps leaders have said the service’s autonomous low-profile vessel prototype was inspired by drug smugglers’ narco-submarines.

Drawing lessons from enemy tactics would be nothing new.

During the Vietnam War, for example, the U.S. military adopted jungle-warfare tactics of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces, noted retired Lt. Col. Travis Reese, another co-author of the War on the Rocks piece.

“Learning from your enemy is as old as war,” Reese said.

The Corps would like an additional $230 million for restoring and modernizing the living facilities where Marines have had to put up with mold, vermin, broken furniture and appliances, and other deficiencies.

The money would come on top of the $274 million for barracks restoration in the service’s official budget request — a sum that already was a $65 million increase from the fiscal year 2024 budget request. The Corps plans to spend that money on renovating 13 barracks, where 3,517 Marines live, according to congressional testimony Wednesday by Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz.

The Marine Corps’ wish list, known as an unfunded priorities list, totals nearly $2.4 billion. The service’s formal budget request includes $53.7 billion for personnel, weapons, operations, infrastructure and more.

The congressionally mandated unfunded priorities lists are a way for the branches to signal how they would spend any additional money that came their way — and nudge lawmakers for those extra funds.

But the defense budget topline is capped, based on Fiscal Responsibility Act spending limits put in place for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, so additional money for one service’s priority would have to come from somewhere else in the Defense Department’s budget.

On the Corps’ fiscal year 2024 wish list in spring 2023, the No. 1 item wasn’t even a Marine asset: It was an amphibious warship, which falls under the Navy’s budget.

Then-Commandant Gen. David Berger insisted the ship was necessary to maintain a congressionally mandated fleet size of at least 31 amphibious ships, which the Marines use to deploy overseas and conduct deterrence and crisis response missions.

Ultimately, Congress added a billion dollars to the fiscal year 2024 defense authorization bill to incrementally fund that amphibious ship, LPD-33. Congress has not yet passed an appropriations bill, though, to actually provide that money. The Navy has asked for remaining money needed to finish building LPD-33 in its fiscal year 25 budget request.

Throughout the past year, Marine leaders repeatedly have said fixing the barracks is a top priority. The state of the barracks could hamper the Corps’ plan to retain experienced Marines who have the training and talent necessary for fighting future wars, leaders have acknowledged.

The Marine Corps has rolled out a Barracks 2030 plan, which involves installing civilian barracks managers, consolidating Marines in the higher-quality barracks, improving the maintenance process, replacing outdated furniture and considering partnering with the private sector.

To restore the barracks, though, the service needs much more money.

The Marine Corps estimates its backlog of deferred maintenance in its facilities totals more than $15.8 billion, according to Department of the Navy budget request documents. Commandant Gen. Eric Smith said in October 2023 it would take about a decade for the service to fix its barracks.

On March 11, the day the military services unveiled proposed budgets, Marine spokesman Maj. Kevin Stephensen told Marine Corps Times that the formal budget request’s $274 million for barracks restoration came “in this time of hard choices and budget constraints.”

The Corps is now assessing how its barracks are being used, Stephensen said. Barracks occupancy averages between 55% and 63%, according to the spokesman.

“Simply put, we have too many facilities and need to ensure we are making smart investments,” Stephensen said.

Items No. 2 and No. 3 on the fiscal year 25 wish list also pertain to quality of life on bases. The list includes $119 million for base operating support and $293 million for other kinds of facilities modernization.

What else is on the Marines’ wish list?

The Marine Corps requests $1.25 billion for modernization efforts related to the Force Design initiative, ranging from developing new communications tools to accelerating vehicle procurement to buying more bombs.

The list includes $6 million to develop the autonomous low-profile vessel, something the Marines began experimenting with in 2023 and successfully used in February’s Army-led Project Convergence exercise in California.

These drug-runner-inspired boats would fill an important resupply gap for the highly mobile Marine littoral regiments that will hop around the Pacific theater. They’ll carry with them the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System to provide a sea-denial capability for the larger joint force — and the autonomous low-profile vessels solve the problem of how to resupply these units with more missiles.

The vessel could deploy from a landing ship medium or connector and swim undetected to the shore while carrying two naval strike missiles inside.

Two big-ticket items are $340 million for the amphibious combat vehicle 30 mm cannon variant and $250 million for two CH-53K heavy-lift helicopters.

The list includes $95 million for four sets of Marine Corps F-35C engine spares and power modules, $90 million for an improved variant of the long-range anti-ship missile, and $90 million for the Osprey drive system safety and health information kits to monitor performance of the MV-22B Osprey.

Also on the list are items to upgrade new systems important to Force Design, including $10 million to modernize some equipment related to the Medium Range Intercept Capability and nearly $16 million for equipment upgrades on the Common Aviation Command and Control System, or CAC2S.

The United States is considering deploying an elite Marine security team to Haiti because of a deteriorating security situation there, according to a defense official.

The Marines would be deployed at the request of the State Department, according to the defense official. Marine Corps Times asked the State Department for further details Thursday and didn’t receive a response.

“Deploying a FAST platoon is one option at the DoD’s disposal should the DoS request assistance with security at the U.S. Embassy in Port Au Prince,” Maj. Mason Englehart, a spokesman for Marine Corps Forces South, wrote in an email to Marine Corps Times on Friday.

Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry is struggling to stay in power as he tries to return home, where gang attacks have shuttered his country’s main international airport and freed more than 4,000 inmates in recent days.

Henry remained in Puerto Rico as of midday Wednesday. He landed in the U.S. territory on Tuesday after he was barred from landing in the neighboring Dominican Republic, where officials closed the airspace to flights to and from Haiti.

In 2023, more than 8,400 people in Haiti were reported killed, injured or kidnapped, more than double the number reported in 2022. The U.N. estimates that nearly half of Haiti’s 11 million people need humanitarian assistance, but the 2024 humanitarian appeal for $674 million has received just $17 million — about 2.5% of what’s needed.

On Wednesday, the U.S. embassy in Haiti urged Americans in the country to depart as soon as possible and said it would be on limited operations Thursday.

“Embassy operations may be further affected during the week because of gang-related violence and its effects on transportation and infrastructure,” the embassy said in the security alert.

The Corps’ fleet antiterrorism security teams, often known as FAST, are deployed around the world for limited periods of time to reinforce or recapture U.S. assets.

FAST Marines receive specialized training on noncombatant evacuation operations, close-quarters battle, military operations in urban terrain, convoy operations, shipboard operations and specialized security operations, according to a page on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service.

The teams are part of the Yorktown, Virginia-based Marine Corps Security Force Regiment.

In 2019, fleet antiterrorism security team Marines embarked a U.S. merchant vessel to provide security as it transited the Strait of Hormuz, located between Oman and Iran.

In 2010, after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, they were sent to assist the Marine security guards who already had been guarding the U.S. embassy in the capital Port-au-Prince.

At a press conference Wednesday, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, denied that the United States was considering sending U.S. forces to Haiti.

Jean-Pierre said noted that Kenya had agreed to send police officers on a security mission to Haiti.

“So, that was recently signed, and that’s going to move forward,” she said. “But there is no plan to bring U.S. forces into Haiti.”

In 2021, President Joe Biden sent Marines from the Marine Security Guard Security Augmentation Unit to the Port-Au-Prince embassy “out of an abundance of caution” following the assassination of the Haitian president but insisted sending U.S. forces to stabilize the country was “not on the agenda.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The special-operations-capable 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, embarked across three Navy ships, left the Mediterranean Sea on Tuesday and is sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, the Navy said in a news release Wednesday.

The Marines and sailors will return to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and Norfolk, Virginia, the release said.

“Our presence in the Eastern Mediterranean was exactly what our nation needed: an integrated Navy and Marine Corps force ready to respond when called upon,” said Navy Capt. Martin Robertson, the Amphibious Squadron 8 commodore, in the news release.

The ships — the amphibious assault ship Bataan, the dock landing ship Carter Hall and the amphibious transport dock ship Mesa Verde — deployed from Virginia on July 10, 2023.

Initially, the ships spread out, with the Bataan and Carter Hall traveling in the Central Command region and the Mesa Verde making stops across Europe.

But in the days after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Marines departed early from a training exercise in Kuwait and returned to the Bataan and Carter Hall “to prepare for further tasking as a result of emerging events,” unit spokeswoman Marine Capt. Angelica White told Marine Corps Times.

By Oct. 18, 2023, the Bataan was in the Gulf of Aden, captions of photos posted by the Corps indicate. Thirteen days later, the service described the ship as being in an “undisclosed location” in the Middle East region.

“The 26th MEU right now does not have orders,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Oct. 26, 2023. “They are there so that the secretary and the president can make a decision if they are needed. They are in the region. But I’m not going to get into specific operational details at this time.”

The Mesa Verde, which had been receiving mid-deployment maintenance in Rota, Spain, headed out into the Mediterranean Sea in October 2023.

In February, a defense official confirmed to Military.com that the deployment of the Marine unit and the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group, as the naval component is called, had been extended. The extension came amid maintenance issues that have delayed the deployments of other amphibious ships.

By then, the three ships were in the Mediterranean Sea, and the group was transferred to NATO command to train with NATO forces and the Turkish navy.

On March 1, while the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit was in Souda Bay on the coast of the Greek island Crete, the top enlisted Marine, Sgt. Maj. Carlos Ruiz, met with its Marines and sailors aboard the ships.

The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit is the first Marine expeditionary unit to get the special-operations-capable designation in more than a decade, according to a July 2023 news release from the unit. The unit is made up of approximately 2,400 Marines and sailors from the North Carolina-based II Marine Expeditionary Force.

The Marines in the unit aren’t themselves special operators.

Rather, they received enhanced predeployment training in areas including the recovery of aircraft and people, raids, stealthy insertion and extraction of special patrols, maritime interdiction, and noncombatant evacuations. The unit’s Maritime Special Purpose Force has practiced integrating with special operators, including Navy SEALs, White previously told Marine Corps Times.

The Navy’s Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group remains in the Middle East, where U.S. carriers jets and warships have shot down dozens of missiles and drones launched by the Houthi rebel group.

But exactly what that will mean for sailors and Marines going forward remains unclear.

While the study’s findings have not been disclosed, court filings make clear that the department is now mulling changes to unspecified aspects of its policies governing when sailors and Marines with religious or medical accommodations may wear beards.

Department officials haven’t provided an update on the beard study ― which Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro initiated in November 2021 ― for months. As recently as December 2023, Del Toro’s office did not respond to emails from Navy Times seeking an update on the study’s status.

But filings in a lawsuit about beard accommodations for Marines of the Sikh faith show the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego completed the study and sent it to Del Toro by June 2023.

Now, the department is examining whether changes to its beard policies would be “operationally supportable and prudent,” according to the court filing.

Both the Navy and the Marine Corps generally don’t allow facial hair other than mustaches, but they allow beards for religious reasons or for service members with medical conditions like razor bumps.

The lawsuit in which the information about the beard study recently popped up was filed in April 2022 by Sikh men who wish to keep their articles of faith, including beards, while serving in various locations where the Marine Corps had banned beards even for religious reasons.

In the first phase of the litigation, now-Lance Cpl. Jaskirat Singh successfully sought the right to go through boot camp with an unshorn beard and a turban.

Now, the lance corporal and Capt. Sukhbir Singh Toor are seeking to lift the Marine Corps’ restrictions on deploying to combat zones — where Marines may have to use gas masks — while keeping their beards, according to the January filing. The Corps initially told Toor he couldn’t wear a beard while in ceremonial roles but dropped that restriction in January 2022, according to the plaintiff’s April 2022 complaint.

Navy leaders have in the past expressed concerns about beards hampering service members’ ability to get proper seals on gas masks.

But Singh said in August 2023 that he kept his gas mask sealed in the tear gas chamber at boot camp without difficulty. Several sailors with beards previously told Navy Times they haven’t had any issues with gas masks, either.

Some Black sailors have voiced frustration about being alienated for needing no-shave exemptions for their razor bumps, a skin condition that predominantly affects Black men.

Del Toro directed the now-completed study examining the impact of facial hair on the functioning of gas masks as part of a diversity, equity and inclusion initiative.

Representatives for the defendants in the lawsuit — the Defense Department, the Department of the Navy and their senior leaders — sent a copy of the report on the beard study to the plaintiffs in November 2023, according to the January filing.

The Sikh Coalition, which represents the plaintiffs, said it couldn’t release the report to Marine Corps Times, citing a protective order governing sensitive or classified documents.

Terrence Clark, a spokesman for the Justice Department, which represents the military, confirmed that both parties had requested a protective order for some of the documents in the case but said he couldn’t share anything further.

A Navy spokesman on Monday declined to provide comment or updates about beard policies in the Department of the Navy, citing ongoing litigation.

The court filing doesn’t spell out the contents of the report. But it indicates the Department of the Navy, which encompasses both the Navy and the Marine Corps, is weighing changes to its beard policies now that the report is complete.

In December 2023, after reviewing the report and getting input from the assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment, Del Toro issued a memorandum directing a look into the report’s implications.

Del Toro told the assistant secretary of the Navy for manpower and reserve affairs to work with the Navy and Marine Corps on “an immediate assessment of the report’s impact as applied to religious accommodation and medical waiver policies both at sea and ashore,” according to the court filing.

This assessment will include “whether bringing parity to the Department’s policies for accommodating beards is operationally supportable and prudent,” the filing said.

The filing didn’t specify what aspects of the two naval services’ policies might be brought in alignment with each other.

The Navy doesn’t allow religious accommodations for beards aboard ships but allows them with some limitations on shore duty. The Marine Corps allows accommodations for beards except in combat zones, according to Giselle Klapper, the Sikh Coalition’s interim legal director.

There are also differences in the rules for medical accommodations.

Only the Marine Corps says the facial hair must be limited to the specific areas affected by the severe razor bumps, according to the services’ official policies, provided on Monday by a Navy spokesman. Only the Navy expressly allows service members with accommodations to shape their beards by clipping or trimming the edges.

The Marine Corps, unlike the Navy, can authorize some permanent no-shave accommodations.

Del Toro has tasked his department’s assistant secretary for energy, installations and environment with making sure that “any actions” the department might implement “maintain the integrity of regulatory safety compliance,” before those actions get implemented, according to the court filing.

That assistant secretary must conduct a department-wide review of policy to make sure it complies with “respiratory protection regulatory requirements.”

Both assistant secretaries have until mid-June to inform Del Toro of “actions, if any, taken or proposed to be taken in the future.”

Although the Navy and the Marine Corps are under the same department, they have distinct guidelines governing uniforms and grooming. The Corps tends to have more rigid uniform rules than the other services, including the Navy.

For instance, male sailors can grow their hair longer than male Marines, who must trim their hair down to the skin right above their ears.

Earlier in February, when the Navy allowed sailors to start resting their hands in their pockets, the Marine Corps did not follow suit.

An F-35C Lighting II assigned to 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing’s Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 311 “experienced an incident involving collapse of the nose landing gear” on Jan. 26 at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada, Marine spokesman Capt. Stephanie Leguizamon said via email to Marine Corps Times on Tuesday.

No injuries were reported. The jet will return to service once it is repaired, Leguizamon said.

Often referred to as Top Gun, the elite Navy Fighter Weapons School teaches advanced air combat maneuvering tactics and techniques, according to the Navy.

The F-35C had been parked and shut down “following a routine training mission in support of the U.S. Navy’s Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program,” Leguizamon said.

The military is investigating the incident, according to the spokeswoman, who added that the investigation will assess the cost of the damage.

An image of the jet with its nose on the ground were posted to social media earlier in February. The Aviationist first reported the incident.

The F-35C is meant to be flown from aircraft carriers or land bases and has a longer range than the more nimble “B” variant, which is more prevalent in the Marine Corps.

A similar face-plant incident occurred in 2022 with a Marine Corps F-35B, which went nose-down on a runway in Japan after it landed because of a suspected electrical issue.

In 2018, the nose landing gear of an Air Force F-35A collapsed on the ground following a landing for a midair emergency.