The event, scheduled for Oct. 26-30 at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, will bring together military personnel, government employees, industry and academic partners and contractors supporting the government. Participants will choose one of two tracks: developing AI agents on the Defense Department’s GenAI.mil platform or advanced AI development using the service and school’s resources.

The hackathon’s intent, according to the message, is to “generate practical, digital solutions that solve registered requirements while accelerating the Marine Corps’ ability to integrate AI-enabled capabilities into operations.”

Participants will spend at least two full days hacking — at the unclassified level — before final presentations and judging on the fourth day.

Those interested must apply by Oct. 9. Chosen attendees will be notified by Oct. 16.

The military’s push toward AI and automation is being driven in part by the sheer volume of information expected on a future battlefield. During an exercise earlier this year, the Army found that a large-scale conflict could require troops to process as many as 1,500 targets a day, which is a workload far beyond what a headquarters staff could manage without automation.

Gen. Francis L. Donovan, commander of U.S. Southern Command, directed the activation Tuesday, describing Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, or JTF-WHEM, as a purpose-built joint task force that will provide unified command and control at the tactical and operational levels, while integrating military capabilities with the 18 partner nations of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition, or A3C.

SOUTHCOM Media Relations Officer Steven McLoud told Military Times the activation of JTF-WHEM “represents an evolution from Operation Southern Spear,” reinforcing the command’s whole-of-government, multinational approach to defending the homeland while building on the successes of Operation Southern Spear.

McLoud said JTF-WHEM serves as SOUTHCOM’s “action arm,” focused on what he described as imposing “total systemic friction” against threats across the hemisphere.

He said the task force builds on Operation Southern Spear, which employed “precise kinetic strikes and maritime interdiction operations” to disrupt illicit trafficking and undermine entrenched criminal networks, by advancing efforts to disrupt, dismantle and defeat narcoterrorism networks.

According to McLoud, JTF-WHEM coordinates U.S. military actions targeting cartels and narcoterrorist networks while leveraging the commitment of Americas Counter Cartel Coalition member nations through expanded bilateral and multilateral cooperation in border security, countering threats and protecting critical infrastructure. He said enhanced cooperation and information sharing support the president’s national security strategy, the defense secretary’s national defense strategy and SOUTHCOM’s theater priorities.

According to SOUTHCOM, JTF-WHEM will serve as the command’s operational headquarters for executing missions across the region.

The command said the headquarters integrates intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, operational planning and multinational coordination while supporting intelligence sharing, combined training, interoperability, partner-capacity building and humanitarian assistance and disaster response.

SOUTHCOM said the task force is intended to increase operational effectiveness against transnational criminal organizations and other threats affecting the United States and partner nations.

“JTF-WHEM strengthens our ability to work alongside trusted allies and partners, synchronize military capabilities and apply sustained pressure against the networks that threaten our collective security,” Donovan said in a statement. “Together, we are increasing security across the hemisphere and protecting our homeland.”

Donovan also said, “Together with the 18 nations of A3C, we are changing the way we confront these threats.”

Gen. Donovan selected Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Kevin Jarrard to command the new task force. Jarrard most recently led U.S. military support to U.S. Department of State-led disaster relief operations following the June earthquakes in Venezuela.

Pvt. Guzman had hoped to become a Marine since he was 5 years old, inspired by his uncle’s service. However, after graduating from high school, his weight reached nearly 270 pounds, making that dream feel out of reach.

After praying for guidance, Guzman received a text message the following day from Staff Sgt. Luis Cervantes, a recruiter with Recruiting Substation Clermont, asking if he was interested in becoming a Marine.

“I took that as a sign,” Guzman said in a release. “Ever since then, my life has been transformed.”

Determined to earn the title of Marine, Guzman began running every morning, training in the evenings and eating healthier. He remained focused on his goal, even when it meant missing personal events. He said his family, especially his mother, kept him accountable, while discipline and consistency became the foundation of his training.

Recruiting Substation Clermont also became an important source of motivation. Cervantes and the Marines there regularly checked on Guzman’s progress and adjusted his training.

“It was constantly reminding him of his ‘why,’” Cervantes said. “Why did you want to become a Marine? Why did you come into this office? We just kept bringing him back to that.”

After months of training, Guzman lost enough weight to qualify for recruit training and was shipped to Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island on April 14, 2026.

Throughout recruit training, Guzman continued completing additional workouts on his own.

One day, his senior drill instructor stopped him and said, “I can’t call you Meatball anymore.”

During the Crucible, the culminating event of recruit training, Guzman found himself keeping pace with recruits who had been athletic their whole lives.

“I realized I was actually keeping up with people who had been athletic their whole lives,” Guzman said. “That was another moment where I knew I could do this.”

As recruits returned from the Crucible, Guzman looked up and saw the words, “We Make Marines.”

“I actually did it,” he said. “That’s all I could think.”

Graduating alongside his family, especially his uncle who inspired him to join the Marine Corps, “meant everything,” Guzman said.

Guzman will next attend Marine Combat Training before reporting to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for military police training. He said he hopes to become a Marine recruiter one day.

“I’m stronger than I thought I was,” Guzman said. “I always saw myself as the person in the background. Now I realize I can be the person I wanted to be. It’s not out of reach. You just have to push yourself.”

In a letter shared exclusively with Military Times, the oversight committee’s ranking member, Robert Garcia, D-Calif., and Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., ranking member of the Military and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to provide a complete record of every change made to the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, involving Operation Epic Fury, “Overseas Operations” or any other category used to track casualties from hostilities with Iran. The lawmakers requested a response by Aug. 18.

The investigation follows questions raised after three U.S. soldiers killed in Jordan and one killed in Iraq were initially included in the Pentagon’s Iran war casualty total before being removed. Days later, the deaths reappeared under a new “Overseas Operations” category.

The new category has a stated start date of July 7, the same date the Trump administration said renewed military operations against Iran started a new 60-day period under the War Powers Resolution.

The lawmakers are seeking records explaining why those changes were made, the rules governing casualty classifications and any legal analysis underlying those decisions.

Garcia and Subramanyam also requested records documenting every change made to DCAS, the policies governing how deaths and injuries are assigned to operational categories and legal analyses related to a proposed expansion of the Defense Department’s authority to withhold certain controlled unclassified information under the Freedom of Information Act.

Taken together, the requests seek to examine how official casualty records are created, revised and publicly disclosed.

“The Pentagon appears to be lying about the casualties of fallen soldiers to continue justifying Donald Trump’s war of choice with Iran,” Garcia said in a statement announcing the investigation. “The American people deserve the truth about every life lost and soldier wounded in this illegal war.”

Subramanyam said the lawmakers are seeking transparency because the four service members “were killed in action during Trump’s war of choice in Iran” and “the Department of Defense should not play games and try to hide the true cost of this war.”

Unlike a July 29 letter led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., that primarily focused on force protection and medical care following the March 1 attack at Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, this inquiry seeks actual records related to the Pentagon’s casualty accounting process and public reporting.

The Defense Department declined to comment on either letter.

Roll Tide.

The inert cannonballs, which were — naturally — wrapped in paper towels, were discovered during the baggage screening process at Alabama’s Gulf Shores International Airport and later determined by police to have been stolen from the nearby coastal stronghold Fort Morgan.

“My first thought was, ‘I couldn’t see a fuse and need to get some help quick,’” TSA officer Justin Dupree recalled in a release. “I couldn’t see the entire item but was scared I might have been holding a live explosive.”

Dupree noted the antique artillery projectiles ranged in size, with the largest comparable to a grapefruit.

“I had never seen anything quite this unique,” Dupree said. “I’ve seen inert grenades and training munitions but never an Indiana Jones-esque stolen artifact-type situation.”

A TSA explosives specialist and the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office were subsequently notified and determined that the cannonballs posed no threat.

Law enforcement investigating the incident stated the passenger claimed to be unaware of how the projectiles were acquired. The cannonballs were later returned to Fort Morgan, the release added.

Passenger attempts to transport illegal items, including outlandish weaponry, through the screening process are, of course, nothing new.

In a more glaring example from 2019, a Florida man traveling through Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley International Airport set off alarms after his bag was found to contain a disassembled rocket-propelled grenade.

The individual was subsequently taken into an inspection area, where he told airport security he was under the impression he could bring the checked RPG on the plane, CBS Philadelphia reported.

Inspection of the weapon itself revealed that the launcher was not in working order, and the grenade was a realistic replica.

The items were confiscated by security, and, miraculously, the individual boarded his flight on time.

When compared to a rifle, though, a shotgun is less capable on the battlefield because it holds less ammunition, has a significantly shorter range and delivers more noticeable recoil. It also poses logistical hurdles. Someone has to carry it along with ammo that’s incompatible with other squad weapons.

In a nutshell, that’s how anti-drone ammo was born. Connor Schnepf, co-founder of the Arizona-based company Drone Round, explained that about a year ago, he and his partner were already making targets in the defense space when they learned that shotguns weren’t really working to address the military’s drone problem.

“It kind of sparked the idea with one of our other business partners. He was like, ‘Hey, we make ammo. Let’s make a rifle cartridge that almost simulates a shotgun that you can use in a regular battle rifle to shoot down drones,’” he said in an interview with Fox 10 Phoenix.

A small unmanned aerial system, or UAS, equipped with an explosive device can be used to destroy major infrastructure and expensive equipment. In turn, traditional counter measures prove either to be ineffective or too expensive to deploy. Therefore, the U.S. military is prioritizing inexpensive yet practical solutions.

Although Drone Round isn’t the only company making anti-drone ammo, the Marine Corps said in a notice of intent filed in June that its 5.56 L Variant is the only kinetic munition currently available in the commercial and defense marketplace that meets the service’s minimum standards for immediate counter-drone defense.

“Specifically, this round is the only solution offering ‘drop-in’ compatibility that requires no physical modifications, specialized upper receivers, or distinct weapon platforms to be operable in current-issue Marine Corps 5.56mm weapons,” the announcement said, referring to the M27 and M4A1.

Last week, the service confirmed with Task & Purpose that it has already bought 400,000 rounds from the company and plans to buy another 1 million in the next fiscal year.

Justin Lawrence, the company’s other co-founder, explained that the L Variant functions like a standard 5.56mm cartridge, but it has multiple projectiles.

“It’s essentially five bullets coming out of one trigger pull. Basically, what the real technology and advantage is sticking with the one caliber in a rifle platform, your soldier [or] warfighter is already carrying,” he said. “So you don’t have to change to a 12 gauge because these FPV drones move very fast and it’s something you need to have very quickly.”

From a logistical standpoint, a single magazine loaded with anti-drone ammo replaces an entire weapon system or expensive countermeasure.

Schnepf added that although they came up with the idea about almost a year ago, they didn’t have the ability to scale production, so they partnered with the Idaho-based Freedom Munitions. He said together, they now produce millions of rounds per month.

“The capability truly fills a gap in what we call counter UAS or counter unmanned aerial systems, so it is a needed solution … It’s like, you know, we brought water to a desert and they can’t keep enough of it because it’s so needed.”

The poll, conducted Friday through Sunday, also showed the Republican president’s approval rating ticking higher to 37%, up 3 points from last month when his rating tied the lowest of his presidency.

Trump has offered shifting objectives for the conflict such as aiding Iranians to topple their leaders, taking out Iran’s ballistic-missile capabilities and preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The poll found that 69% of Americans — including four in 10 Republicans — think Trump has not “clearly explained the goals of U.S. military involvement in Iran.”

White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said Trump will not make decisions based on “fluid opinion polls” and reiterated the president’s resolve to prevent Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon.

“What matters most to the American people is having a commander in chief who takes bold action to keep them safe,” Wales said.

Approval of the conflict has been below 40% since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on February 28 — a stark contrast to the opening months of other recent conflicts.

While each had different context, the Iraq War from 2003 to 2011 had the support of about 70% of Americans in its early months. During the early days of the Afghanistan War, which lasted from 2001 to 2021, about 90% of the country backed the war, according to polling by Gallup.

‘No idea’ why US at war

Public disapproval of the war is weighing on Trump and his Republican Party ahead of the November midterm elections when the president’s allies will defend slim majorities in the U.S. Congress.

“It’s not clear why we started a war with them. I have no idea,” said Alex Womack, a retired turbine repair specialist from Stockbridge, Georgia, who became a Republican in part because he liked how Republican President George H.W. Bush handled the Gulf War in 1991.

Womack, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps during that conflict, said his support for Trump has ebbed because of the war. “I don’t think he’s doing very well, personally,” he said.

To date, 18 American soldiers have died in the conflict while thousands have died in Iran and in Lebanon, where Iran-allied fighters have battled Israeli forces.

The war has pushed gasoline prices sharply higher, a blow to the finances of many Americans. Gasoline prices are averaging just over $4 a gallon nationwide, up from about $3 a gallon just before the war started on February 28.

“This puts pressure on the party in a myriad of ways, all of them bad,” said Alex Conant, a Republican political strategist and a White House spokesman during the presidency of George W. Bush. “The White House officials have been saying since January that they need to win economic arguments. It’s hard to win the economic arguments when you’re clearly focused on foreign policy.”

Independent registered voters in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll said they were favoring the Democratic congressional candidate over the Republican by 36% to 20%. Independent voters also favored Democrats over Republicans on economic policy, the poll found.

Trump vowed to stay out of wars

In campaigning for the 2024 presidential election, Trump said he would keep the U.S. out of enduring conflicts. He initially estimated the Iran war would last four to five weeks. He has bristled over comparisons to other wars, including the Vietnam War, which lasted two decades and claimed the lives of more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers.

Rhyan Anderson, an independent from Fairburn, Georgia, who voted for Trump in 2024, said he thinks Trump should focus on domestic problems rather than on helping Israel or other allies.

“My biggest thing is just focus on the people who are actually in the country,” said Anderson, who works two jobs in security and data collection and said he voted for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. “I know we have allies and things like that, but there’s a lot of people here that really need help.”

Since mid-March, the Reuters/Ipsos survey has asked respondents whether they support or oppose military strikes on Iran. At that time, 37% said they supported the war.

That compared to 27% approval on the day the war began, when the Reuters/Ipsos survey also gave respondents the option to choose unsure, which 29% did.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos survey, which was conducted online and nationwide, gathered responses from 1,246 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points in either direction.

SOFWERX, in collaboration the Marine Forces Special Operations Command, or MARSOC, is hosting an event in mid-September to develop ways to replace manual steps for documenting serialized inventory with digital and automated tools.

The July 27 announcement said the event’s purpose is “to design a secure, zero-signature automated armory that relies exclusively on optical recognition and computer vision.”

But here’s the catch: the tools cannot use RFID — the most common technology for tracking inventory — or active Bluetooth or radiating digital transmitters.

“Instead, this event challenges industry partners to develop a passive, image-based inventory system where weapons, gear, and serial numbers are automatically tracked, verified, and logged simply by taking a digital photo or scanning an optical image as items enter or exit the facility,” the invitation said.

It explained that the current process requires a person to manually inventory weapons using handwritten forms, resulting in repetitive data entry and multiple independent records.

“These processes are labor intensive, susceptible to human error, and consume significant man-hours while increasing accountability risk,” it said.

While eliminating “slow, legacy paper-based workflows and human-error bottlenecks,” the desired application would guarantee “absolute property accountability without exposing our facilities to electronic detection.”

Around 2010, the U.S. military began using RFID tags as a practical and simple way to keep track of weapons, but later discovered the technology can pose a major security concern.

An RFID tag, like the ones used by the military, consists of a microchip and a small antenna and does not require a battery. It is programmed with a unique ID signal that can only be activated by a reader.

Once a tag is read by a reader, that reader can be used to continue to track the weapon or clone the ID signal, creating a security risk.

Companies interested in attending the event must submit a request by Aug. 16. While the initial meeting will begins Sept. 17, additional events are planned throughout the year and and will conclude in December.

Two former U.S. warships, the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu and the cruiser USS Mobile Bay, were sent below the seas off the coast of Hawaii during a live sinking exercise, or SINKEX, event on July 17.

On July 24, the Navy released footage of the sinking, including video of the Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft uncrewed surface vessel targeting the USS Peleliu. On July 29, however, it released b-roll from inside the ship as it was pummeled by two UGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles, fired from Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Columbia.

Cameras placed inside and around the vessel show the warship shudder as the powerful blasts rip at its innards.

The sinking of the Peleliu and Mobile Bay was the third SINKEX event in recent weeks. The former USS Juneau was sent to the ocean floor during the June 22-July 1 Valiant Shield exercise off the coast of the Mariana Islands Range Complex.

Commissioned in May 1980, the USS Peleliu was the first ship to deploy Marines to Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit commanded by then-Marine Brig. Gen. James Mattis under Task Force 58.

That same task force went on to capture John Walker Lindh in November 2001. Lindh, an American citizen-turned-enemy-combatant, later confessed to being a member of Al-Qaeda while aboard Peleliu.

During 35 years of service, the ship, dubbed the “Iron Nickel,” steamed more than a million miles before its decommissioning in March 2015.

Researchers at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and Stanford University School of Medicine in California looked at VA disability benefits and Social Security Disability payments to veterans across 14 years.

They found that the average yearly payment rose from $17,286 in 2010 to $24,057 in 2024, while the percentage of U.S. veterans receiving compensation rose from 9% in 2010 to 22% in 2024.

The increases are likely attributable to a number of causes, the authors said. They noted the high rate of deployments and increased possibility of serious service-connected illness and injury for post 9/11 veterans, improved medical care that resulted in increased survivorship of combat injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan and VA policies that have made more veterans eligible and made it easier to receive benefits.

Over the same time period, meanwhile, annual Social Security Disability Insurance payments to veterans remained steady, averaging around $19,550. Veterans may be eligible for SSDI payments if they have a condition that affects their ability to work.

According to the study published Thursday in JAMA Network Open, college educated, married and younger veterans were more likely to receive VA compensation while older veterans with non-service-connected disabilities were more likely to receive SSDI.

The authors theorized that the challenges associated with filing VA claims — “administrative hurdles,” as they described them — and the draw of VA education benefits may favor those who can navigate the system.

The increase in the percentage of veterans receiving VA disability benefits as well as the rise in amounts paid comes at a time when the population of U.S. veterans is declining: In 2010, the country had 22 million veterans; by 2024, that figure had declined to 15.8 million.

The researchers described their study as “descriptive” and drew few conclusions.

“These findings can inform policy discussions about optimal fiscal payments and program structures needed to achieve and streamline federal programmatic goals, while underscoring the need to reduce growing disability burden among veterans and to ensure ease of benefits navigation,” they wrote.

The authors did not respond to a request for an interview by publication.