The AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar, or G/ATOR, is the Marine Corps’ solution for defending against a broad range of airborne threats, particularly in the Pacific littorals.

It replaces five older radar systems, and last year received an extended-range software upgrade that boosted its capability and advanced its ability to differentiate friends or foes in the air.

In a call with reporters Oct. 7, Northrop Director of Mission Systems Paul Weaver said the company had delivered 43 of the 60 G/ATOR systems the Marine Corps has ordered, of which five are designated for the Air Force and one for Navy test and evaluation.

“Demand for the system in theater right now is high, and it’s based on that performance,” Weaver said. “We’ve been making modifications to the system based on customer input for the last four or five years. We’ve made some hardware modifications that extended its range, and we’re constantly making software improvements to adapt to the specific threat environment, whether that be [unmanned aerial systems], from the smallest to the largest, and other potential threats that they face.”

Weaver said the company was “actively engaged at the headquarters level” with the Marine Corps and the Air Force about how best to employ G/ATOR and had recently begun engagements with the Army as well. While he deferred on saying whether the Army had interest in acquiring the radar system, he said its capabilities had broad appeal across the services.

“When you put a number of these systems in the field, operating in a complementary way, you can stay in constant movement and complicate the adversary’s target cycle,” Weaver said. “That is of interest to every service that’s currently in conflict right now. So, to the level that we’re engaged with the Army and the Air Force, it all comes back to its current performance and the agility that this advanced platform potentially offers.”

At 9,000 pounds, G/ATOR is small and light enough to be transported by C-130 Hercules or MV-22 Osprey aircraft. It can be set up and emplaced by a four-person crew in under ten minutes, and can flex in power settings from 60 kilowatts for medium-range targets to 75 kilowatts for longer-range kills. Initial fielding to the Marine Corps began in 2018, and service leaders have suggested more recently that they might soon expand their acquisition plan.

“We learned that it’s much more capable than we thought,” Brig. Gen. Christopher Haar, now commander of the 3rd Marine Logistics Group, told Military Times last December. “And now there’s a demand for us to get that in more units, and to potentially increase the number of those systems that we buy.”

The War Zone reported last month that the Corps’ Pacific-based 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit had employed the service’s Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) concept for the first time in combat during operations in support of the Operation Epic Fury conflict with Iran. It’s not clear if the G/ATOR system was part of that concept employment. But Weaver did suggest that the current conflict is highlighting its strengths.

With its lightweight footprint and capable 360-degree active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, the system, he said, can be flown into an austere location to establish an expeditionary air base, allowing the establishment of a surveillance perimeter while also enabling airspace control. According to the company, the system can identify launch points of hostile fires ranging from mortars to artillery and serve as a ground-based air traffic control manager. Drone warfare, Weaver said, brings out other strengths.

“It’s proving in recent conflicts and around the globe to perform exceptionally well in clutter, which makes it very helpful in identifying all classes of UASs and cruise missiles,” he said. “It’s not only providing awareness of what’s in the airspace around it at all altitudes. It provides weapons quality data and that performance, which means the warfighter can not only see it but also connect it to any available countermeasure that it has, whether that be kinetic or non-kinetic, and address it appropriately.”

The idea: to radically reduce the sound signature of friendly troops by suppressing every weapon on a battlefield.

The contract also plunged the company into engagement with an emerging area of concern: the health dangers of toxic gases and particles blasted back into the shooter’s face when firing a suppressed weapon.

While the full extent of the risks is still being understood, SOCOM made it clear to Sig at the time of the contract that it wanted to cut down on toxicity, setting a standard that seemed unreachable.

“The requirement at the time was that they wanted a suppressed upper receiver group that produced less toxicity than an unsuppressed M4,” Josh Shoemaker, product manager for defense systems at Sig, told Military Times. “At the time the industry was all like, ‘That’s not physically possible.’ It was really a set of requirements that was defying everybody’s understanding of suppressors.”

In the years that followed, Sig would come under fire multiple times for tests that showed various suppressed weapons had too much toxic blowback. But through lengthy development and the introduction of advanced manufacturing, Shoemaker said, the company reached the ability to reduce 70% of toxic gas blowback in a suppressor.

But there’s a tradeoff, he added. Suppressors can excel at reducing noise, flash or blowback, but not all three at once. One solution the company is now proposing would offer specialized suppressors that maximize blowback reduction for training and signature masking for combat.

The idea, Shoemaker said, is that troops are most at risk from toxic gas exposure when shooting in enclosed spaces and over long periods in the same area, both of which are more likely to happen in training. On top of that, he said, training accounts for the vast majority of the rounds a soldier will ever fire.

“The Army already has this principle where they have training ammunition and go-to-war ammunition. When they go to war, they’re using a different projectile and different ammunition than they are when they’re training,” Shoemaker said. “They do this with their body armor, with their uniforms — their uniforms, when they’re training, are not all flame retardant. … Why wouldn’t we do that same thing with the suppressors?”

Early in its 10-year production contract to design the Army’s next rifle and light machine gun — a program known as Next Generation Squad Weapon — military testing officials cited concerns about how much toxic back-blast the suppressed weapons were producing. The result was a delay that pushed fielding from late 2023 into 2024.

And these problems continued to be reported as recently as last year. The Pentagon’s weapons testing branch noted in its Fiscal Year 2025 annual report that soldiers in an operational assessment “reported negative physiological effects caused by the noxious off-gassing from their weapons, as well as concerns about the extreme heat from the weapons’ suppressors after firing.”

Shoemaker said that some of this feedback was expected when comparing the previous standard rifle, an unsuppressed M4, to the new M7, which has a larger round and a more powerful discharge. But he added that the company was listening to soldiers and “actively working” to address concerns.

“Toxic fumes [are] still a very new thing, right?” Shoemaker said. “When you have a very narrow audience that you’ve been providing these products to for years, you don’t get the same feedback that you do when you’re providing to a much wider audience.”

Behind the scenes, according to Shoemaker, Sig has been close to the forefront of fume-reduction technology. The company uses a 3D printing process called Direct Metal Laser Sintering, or DMLS, to build “complex labyrinths” into their SLX and SLH suppressors designed for fume reduction.

Previously, suppressors were made with machined baffles that were welded together, one by one.

“There would have been no way to get a tool in here to cut any of these paths or direct any of that gas,” Shoemaker said of the new suppressors. “It was game-changing for the entire suppressor industry because it unlocked all of these abilities to … make these complex geometries.”

In service of developing reduced-toxicity suppressors for the Army and later the Navy, Sig acquired two specialized testing environments: the Crane box, invented at Naval Surface Warfare Center-Crane Division, Ind., to precisely measure released carbon dioxide as weapons fire in a confined space; and the Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) chamber, which now measures precise particulate amounts and concentrations of four gases: carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, ammonia and hydrogen cyanide. Sig is the only non-military entity to possess the chambers.

While Shoemaker said the company is still seeking to make incremental improvements to the blowback reduction capabilities of existing suppressors — from, say, the current 70% reduction maximum to 75% — he also said the DMLS technology would make it easy to deliver a variety of suppressors specialized to maximize reduction of either sound, flash or fumes based on use case.

The Army has yet to ask for a mix of training suppressors and combat suppressors. But Shoemaker indicated it may emerge as a solution for a service that wants to have it all in terms of sound, flash and toxic gas reduction, and can’t practically have it all in one can.

If so, the company will be ready.

“With DMLS, [engineers] can make a new design, and we can have it and shoot it three days later,” he said.

Speaking to reporters ahead of the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting, the Army’s leader for offensive fires said that the mobile tactical cannon, made by Hanwha Defense USA, was on display at a first-of-its-kind “Army Modernization Day” held on Capitol Hill earlier this month.

“We’re excited to have that and get ready to test it,” said Brig. Gen. Robert J. “RJ” Mikesh Jr., portfolio management executive for offensive fires. “And get that soldier feedback, that we think is so important.”

The Army in August announced it had entered a prototyping contract with Hanwha for the Mobile Tactical Cannon, a 155mm self-propelled howitzer intended to replace the legacy M777 155mm howitzers that have been in service since 2005.

The four-year contract, worth up to nearly $263 million, covers procurement of up to 18 of the systems for “rapid prototyping, testing, and Soldier experimentation,” the Army said in August. It calls for “accelerated delivery” of the first six system prototypes and allows the Army to execute options for up to a dozen more.

While the service hadn’t released full details about the testing regimen, officials said a series of operational experiments would take place to ensure the systems could perform reliably in “realistic combat conditions.”

The Mobile Tactical Cannon, which was contracted through an Other Transaction Authority agreement, is based on Hanwha’s K9 mobile howitzers, which have been employed by the South Korean military since 1999 and now have variants operating in 10 other countries, making up more than half of all self-propelled howitzers in service around the world.

The company announced at the time of the contract award that it was building an integration and test site in Opelika, Alabama, to develop and roll out the cannons.

“What enabled that was this close partnership under the PAE construct and trying new and novel ways of contracting,” Mikesh said Thursday. “In this case, we were not going after a clean-sheet design; we were looking for mature and available technologies. We opened our aperture for companies around the world, knowing that they’d have to onshore production within two years. That howitzer is now on contract.”

The Army has said in budget solicitations that its fielding effort for the new self-propelled howitzers will focus initially on Stryker Brigade Combat Teams, followed by Mobile and Infantry Brigade Combat Teams. And while the solicitation that received the Hanwha contract is for a wheeled self-propelled howitzer, the Army in late August published a new solicitation for a tracked variant of the Mobile Tactical Cannon. Hanwha officials told Breaking Defense they’re seeking to fill that requirement as well.

Army budget request documents for fiscal 2027 illuminate an additional testing role for the Mobile Tactical Cannon: It will facilitate work in the Army’s 155mm Artillery Propulsion Modernization project, designed to improve range and performance by pursuing novel propulsion technologies and advancements in “propelling charge, modular charge, ignition systems, propellant, and packaging solutions.”

“Solutions will be integrated into a system of systems capability to ensure interoperability, closing fires capability gaps to destroy or neutralize artillery targets out to 70 kilometers,” the document states.

The M777 has an effective range of under 24 kilometers, or about 15 miles, and up to 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, with the extended-range Excalibur round. The K9, a 52-caliber system, has a range of more than 60 kilometers, or about 37 miles.

Army leaders have said they want to field a ready version of the Mobile Tactical Cannon by 2031.

Speaking at a hearing before the congressionally created National Commission on the Future of the Navy on Thursday, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James Kilby said the Navy faced difficulties that weren’t all immediately visible when it came to sustaining and resetting after such combat demands.

“That’s the piece I think that we need to be better at articulating and demonstrating — what the cost of this extension will be two years from now,” Kilby said. “So people see that, and they sign that bill.”

Referencing Hegseth’s commendation of sailors on the Lincoln for their successful 321-day deployment, of which they spent 265 consecutive days without a port call, Kilby acknowledged that the crew had “delivered the goods.”

“So, it’s a little bit of a challenge for me to say you can’t do this when we keep delivering,” he said.

But, he said, readiness rates remain “artificially high” amid the combat surge because ships remain deployed or have yet to return to maintenance. When that happens, Kilby indicated, the “little bit of a false positive” readiness picture will change rapidly.

“The problem will come when eventually they do come home. The industrial base will not be able to swallow that pill, and so we’ll have to sequence that,” he said.

A standard solution to account for the additional cost: deferring maintenance.

“I’ll either squish the package into the bare minimum and not do modernization things I need to do, so that’s the bill that’s being paid there,” Kilby said.

Unmanned vessels, he added, present a promising future solution, but still one that’s a way off.

“When we get a combatant commander that’s willing to ask for a tailored force package, think a [littoral combat ship], an unmanned air vessel, and some unmanned surface vessels to do monitoring and maritime domain awareness and potentially action, it alleviates the request for him to ask for a strike group or an amphibious ready group. That will help,” Kilby said. “But that’s a long time coming because they don’t see that offer on the menu right now. We’ve got to act on that and produce that thing for them to ask for it.”

He suggested that a cultural change to give service leaders and key commanders more flexibility in how they meet requirements would help to sustain long-term readiness.

“They have very, very little flexibility in their basic phase to get through those gates, and we’re pressurizing that by saying, ‘Do it faster, so I can count you as combat-surge ready,’” Kilby said, “which prevents them from maybe doing some things that existed in what I maybe fondly remember from my youth, where we had a little bit more control of that culture.”

For now, Kilby said, the Navy is “in a system” where the geographic combatant commander is given a problem to address and will ask for whatever they need from the services to meet the requirement. The services, in turn, will do whatever it takes to meet the requirement, despite future costs.

“I think it’s a tough pill for us to swallow, because the Navy’s strength, the Navy and Marine Corps’ strength, is our weakness in that regard,” he said.

A memo from Assistant Secretary of War for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Timothy Dill increases hostile fire pay to $450 per month from its previous top rate of $250, and imminent danger pay to $275 monthly, or $9.16 per day, up from the prior cap of $225 or $7.50 per day.

The memo, released by the Pentagon, is dated July 14, but sets the change to take effect Thursday with the start of the new fiscal year.

It cites a Department of War Instruction updated in 2024 that gives the assistant secretary for Manpower and Reserve Affairs the authority to determine hazard pay amounts.

The Marine Corps had already announced earlier in September that it was updating its pay caps to the amounts set in the memo, but did not describe the move as a military-wide change.

“Those who face combat deserve higher compensation that reflects the risks that they willingly undertake on behalf of our nation,” Anthony J. Tata, undersecretary of war for personnel and readiness, said in a statement. “Raising imminent danger and hostile fire pays for the first time in two decades is a step toward recognizing that sacrifice.”

Hostile fire pay and imminent danger pay are mutually exclusive.

According to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, hostile fire pay is permitted for troops who meet at least one of the following criteria:

• Subjected to hostile fire or explosion of a hostile mine
• On duty in an area in close proximity to a hostile fire incident and the member is in danger of being exposed to the same dangers actually experienced by other service members subjected to hostile fire or explosion of hostile mines
• Killed, injured or wounded by hostile fire, explosion of a hostile mine or any other hostile action

Imminent danger pay is authorized on a geographic basis according to a list maintained by DFAS. Last updated in May, the list includes 58 locations, ranging from Afghanistan to Yemen. Iran, the oldest location on the list, has been designated an imminent danger location since 1979; it’s also one of 19 regions newly designated in February as dangerous with the start of Operation Epic Fury.

“If an [Imminent Danger Pay]-designated area escalates into active combat, commanders can transition personnel from IDP to [Hostile Fire Pay] immediately,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said in a separate statement Thursday. “This provides a clear and timely mechanism to acknowledge heightened risk levels.”

The memo also noted that the changes include a decrease from $150 to $100 monthly in hardship duty pay-location, another pay governed by a separate list of regions — in order to keep from exceeding set maximums.

The Pentagon’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget request in May contained indicators that the services were seeking to increase hazardous fire and danger pays for troops, though officials at the time said a decision had not been made about doing so. Officials noted in announcing the change that, even at the old pay rates, service members rarely got the maximum allowed.

“Before the last increase in hazardous pay in 2002, pay rates varied by qualifying duty and the service member’s rank/pay grade — typically ranging from $100 to $240 per month,” officials said in a release. The new increases, they added, “are designed to appropriately compensate Service members for the varying levels of operational risk they face while serving the United States around the world.”

That’s according to data recorded by the Naval Safety Center, which tracks Class A mishaps — those that cause at least $2.5 million in damage or lead to death or loss of life — in a publicly accessible dashboard. The Navy and Marine Corps did not publicly announce any of the in-flight fires when they happened. While the mishaps did result in aircraft damage, landings were completed safely in all three cases and no crew members were injured.

The first of the three incidents took place July 1 and involved a F/A-18F Super Hornet two-seater fighter jet over Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada.

A spokesperson from Naval Air Forces told Military Times that the aircraft was assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 22, out of Naval Air Station Lemoore, California, about 300 miles away. The Super Hornet “experienced a left engine fire while conducting a routine training mission,” the official said. “The aircrew executed emergency procedures and landed safely at [NAS Fallon] with no injuries.”

While the estimated damage exceeds $2.5 million, the Navy plans to repair the aircraft and return it to service, the official said. The incident remains under investigation.

The second mishap, on Aug. 16, involved a Marine Corps CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter with Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 466, out of San Diego, California. Officials with 3rd Marine Corps Air Wing told Military Times the fire took place around 11 p.m. while the aircraft was conducting a routine night training mission over Glamis, California.

“The aircraft executed an emergency landing after experiencing an engine fire while conducting training,” officials said in a provided statement. “After conducting an emergency shutdown, all crew members safely egressed the helicopter.”

An investigation is also underway into this incident, officials said, and no further details were provided.

The final incident involved an F/A-18E single-seater jet in the vicinity of Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia. A Naval Air Forces Atlantic spokeswoman, Lt. Cmdr. Courtney Callaghan, declined to answer most Military Times questions about the incident.

“A U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet experienced an engine fire in flight during a routine training mission and landed safely at Naval Air Station Oceana. The aircrew sustained no injuries, and the incident is under investigation,” she said.

While the aircraft engine fires don’t appear to be linked, the episodes are notable not only because they take operational aircraft out of commission during a time of heightened operational tempo, but also because such fires are relatively rare. The Naval Safety Center records only one other engine fire this fiscal year, one that took place on March 25 involving an F/A-18F that caught fire on takeoff and was forced to land at NAS Lemoore. The center reported none in Fiscal Year 2025.

Engine fires, which can be particularly dangerous because they require emergency landings, can at times point to larger issues. In 2022, the Army grounded its entire CH-47 Chinook helicopter fleet after a number of separate engine fires attributed to fuel leaks. The grounding lasted nearly a month before the roughly 400 aircraft were gradually cleared and returned to service.

Super Hornets, the core of the Navy’s fighter jet stable, have reported multiple engine fires in recent years, with two in-flight incidents in the same month in September 2020, and two more in-flight fires in late 2021. An August 2022 Super Hornet engine fire incident made headlines when it necessitated a first-of-its-kind repair at sea onboard the carrier George H.W. Bush.

According to a Marine administrative message published Tuesday, the rate for hostile fire pay will double to $450 per month, from the previous ceiling of $225 per month; and the rate for imminent danger pay will rise to $275 per month, prorated at $9.16 per day, up from $225 per month or $7.50 per day.

The change follows a move in the Pentagon’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget request to increase the caps on stipends given to troops in harm’s way. The Army and Air Force both proposed raising the caps on hostile fire or imminent danger pay, which are mutually exclusive and added to service members’ paychecks based on their duty location or deployment conditions.

Hostile fire pay, according to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, is given to troops who meet at least one of the following criteria:

• Subjected to hostile fire or explosion of a hostile mine
• On duty in an area in close proximity to a hostile fire incident and the member is in danger of being exposed to the same dangers actually experienced by other service members subjected to hostile fire or explosion of hostile mines
• Killed, injured or wounded by hostile fire, explosion of a hostile mine or any other hostile action

According to DFAS, 58 locations in the world are now designated as eligible for imminent danger pay, with 18 of those locations added to the list in February at the start of the conflict with Iran. The new designations are designed to be temporary and set to end in the third month after the end of Operation Epic Fury or “any follow-on operation directed by [the] President of the United States,” according to the accounting agency.

Sites of former conflicts, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Kosovo, among others, still retain their imminent danger designation. The Fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, now in effect, mandated a new 60-day review of imminent danger locations to ensure the accuracy of the current list, followed by a cyclical five-year review process, to begin in 2031.

The Marine Corps is the first service to move to unilaterally increase danger pay. In May, a Pentagon official told Military Times that the Department of Defense hadn’t yet committed to increasing rates for all troops.

“The department continuously evaluates its policies to ensure that they are advancing its mission,” the official said at the time. “At this time, no decision has been made to increase the current rates for hostile fire events or imminent danger pay.”

The last military-wide update to these allowances was in 2011, according to DFAS.

Announced in the Federal Register Sept. 11, the Homeland Defense Board aims to fill a gap Hegseth sees in providing military guidance to homeland security missions.

“The specific, integrated advice required by the SecWar regarding the military’s mission of defense of the Homeland and Homeland security cooperation is not available from any other Federal advisory committee, government agency, or alternative source,” establishing documents state.

“Department of war” and “secretary of war” are the Trump administration’s preferred monikers for the Defense Department and its head. Legislation to legally change the agency name is pending in Congress.

“While other agencies and departments operate within specific mission or geographic areas, their advisory mechanisms are statutorily constrained to their respective non-military domains,” the panel’s establishing documents add. “Relying solely on internal DoW staff or contracted studies is also insufficient, as it fails to provide the consensus-based, independent, and external peer review required at the highest levels of strategic decision-making.”

The board is to consist of up to 20 members, including the secretary of defense, who will serve as chair; the assistant secretary of defense for Homeland Defense and Americas Security Affairs as vice chair; and the deputy assistant secretaries of defense for Homeland Defense and Defense Continuity and Mission Assurance.

Also on the board will be one civilian and one field- or mid-grade officer from each military branch and “such other members as the SecWar or the Deputy Secretary of War may appoint or designate,” establishing documents state.

Asked for comment, an official said the Pentagon had “nothing to provide” about the new board’s creation.

The advisory board is the first of its kind for the Pentagon focused on homeland security, and the announcement argues that no other agency’s board can fill the need that defense leaders now see. The Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Advisory Council cannot fill the role because it focuses on civilian law enforcement and “lacks the mandate to advise on Title 10 or Title 32 [domestic troop] deployments” and military-specific crises, it states.

It also finds the Department of State’s International Security Advisory Board, with its focus on diplomacy and arms control, “underequipped” to deliver strategies for military campaign plans in the Americas.

“Over the past 10 years, rather than lessening, the threat from peer, near-peer, and rogue-state adversaries, in addition to non-state actors and hostile asymmetric activities, has become more intense and complex,” justifying documents continue. “The DoW provides for the common defense of American citizens and the Homeland by deploying and maintaining the premier warfighting force across the globe to provide a multi-domain, layered defense … In an era where peer and near-peer adversaries are actively projecting economic, cyber, and military power into the Western Hemisphere, the HDB will provide critical, independent assessments of the DoW’s hemispheric defensive posture and domestic security preparedness.”

The large-scale deployment of National Guard troops to U.S. cities to support law enforcement; the ongoing deployment of troops to the southern border; and the aggressive move into drug interdiction missions traditionally executed by the U.S. Coast Guard have all blurred the lines between the mission sets of the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. The establishing memo suggests the new board will create a bridge between the two that didn’t previously exist.

“The [Homeland Defense Board] will … provide the SecWar advice and recommendations necessary for strategic oversight for multi-theater security cooperation and multi-domain actions, validating that DoW resource investments and allocations are successfully countering foreign influence, disrupting transnational criminal networks, and building robust partner-nation military capabilities,” it states.

“Finally, the HDB’s advice and recommendations will serve an essential function by bridging the gap between the military and domestic Homeland security agencies to secure the defense critical infrastructure, vital transport networks and logistics nodes and the defense industrial base. Without this advisory body, the DoW risks strategic blind spots in its primary mission to protect the Homeland.”

According to the General Services Administration, there are now roughly 40 federal advisory committees serving the Pentagon. In March 2025, shortly after taking office, Hegseth dismissed all members of existing boards to conduct a “zero-based review” of their necessity and contribution to “warrior ethos.” Among boards terminated at the review’s conclusion were the 75-year-old Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services and the Defense Advisory Committee for the Prevention of Sexual Misconduct.

The outages affected at least Fort Irwin, California; Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico; Naval Station Newport, Rhode Island; Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas; F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming; Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, and Fort Huachuca, Arizona, according to official announcements and social media reports.

Officials at the Defense Department would not say how many commissaries were affected in all or if the outages are being investigated as linked.

“The Department is aware of a possible refrigeration disruption at some Defense Commissary Agency commissaries,” a defense official said in a statement provided to Military Times. ”[The Defense Commissary Agency] has taken appropriate precautions to transfer products to alternate temperature-controlled locations to mitigate any product loss. Commissaries remain open, and all possible measures are being taken to ensure food safety. Beyond this we have nothing additional to provide.”

Defense commissaries are a benefit reserved for active-duty military members and their families as well as military retirees with base privileges. They offer at least a 25% discount from prices in comparable civilian grocery stores by selling food at cost, plus a small markup for staffing and facility maintenance.

Naval Station Newport publicly announced Wednesday on its social media pages that its commissary was among those affected.

“Due to refrigeration system issues at the commissary, the store will be open for the purchase of dry goods only until further notice,” the base said. “The deli, sushi bar, and grab and go sections will not be available to customers during this time.”

Fort Irwin posted its own update Thursday, saying the commissary would not sell eggs and milk “until the refrigeration systems are functioning properly.” It later revised its announcement, saying only dry goods would be available for purchase.

“Technicians are working diligently to troubleshoot and resolve the refrigeration issues currently affecting the Fort Irwin Commissary,” the base said on Friday. “At this time, there is no estimated time for completion.”

Fort Huachuca described its commissary incident as an “overnight equipment failure” on its Facebook page.

“ALL freezers went into defrost mode – ALL frozen food has spoiled,” it wrote.

F.E. Warren described a refrigeration “malfunction” in its public post.

While no official has offered an explanation for the cluster of outages, some have suggested that bad actors intentionally knocked linked refrigeration systems offline.

“It seems [continental U.S.] commissaries that have fridges linked to an online system have been getting shut off over the past few nights, and we’ve not seen any official notice put out to warn anyone so they can monitor their fridges more closely,” the popular military page “U.S Army W.T.F! Moments” posted. It added that reports indicated at least 18 commissaries were affected.

A defense official told Military Times it would be inappropriate to speculate as to the cause of the outages. It’s not yet clear how they’re being investigated.

Ground Combat Element 2040, which outlines the service’s warfare vision and planning for the next decade and a half, doubles down on the Corps’ self-identity as a force specializing in island and coastal regions, such as the Pacific, even as a new conflict in the Middle East continues.

Discussing the document with reporters ahead of its release, Marine Corps director of Strategy Planning and Policy Lt. Gen. Jay Bargeron reaffirmed previously announced plans to add a fifth infantry company focused on reconnaissance and fires.

Bargeron also described a transformation of the anti-armor missile gunner military occupational specialty into a “precision strike” Marine role as units receive new weapons, including loitering munition attack drones, and the training to go with them.

“What I’m trying to do is bring precision strike capabilities down to the lowest level,” Bargeron told reporters. “That’s a great example of using advanced technology to enhance the lethality of Marines that are already doing that job.”

This change, he said, would also include increasing the manning of crew-served weapons, plussing up the number of 60mm and 81mm mortars within each infantry battalion and building in an additional heavy machine gun platoon.

“This is really about buying back or ensuring we have the right firepower and staying power in those ground combat units to do things like seize and defend a piece of ground when it’s necessary,” Bargeron said.

The 23-page strategy document emphasizes the “evolving character of war,” one that will increasingly force Marines to maneuver within targeting range of their adversaries. This approach, the document notes, will ramp up the need for effective camouflage and concealment measures and drive the use of autonomous and robotic systems as a first line between enemy weapons and human fighters.

“By deploying distributed, low-signature, expeditionary forces in close proximity to an adversary, the GCE can disrupt the enemy’s targeting cycle and enable sustained operations,” the planning document states. “This approach also reduces the need for high-signature, vulnerable fixed bases, allowing for more flexible and resilient operations.”

Bargeron noted that increased concealment measures would include greater adoption of multispectral camouflage and self-monitoring of heat and frequency signatures.

The aim, he said, is “trying to hide in plain sight and spectrum that’s out there — all to make ourselves more difficult to target.”

Bargeron referred to the three Marine littoral regiments, noting that they do belong to the ground combat element but don’t replace conventional infantry functions.

“They don’t replace the [ground combat element’s] foundational purpose, and that’s to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy, or to repel his assault by fire in close combat,” he said.

“That brings us to … the core of the military problem,” Bargeron continued, “and that is the need to develop GCE formations that are capable of succeeding against those peer-level ground combat units and remain resilient enough to operate effectively when our advanced technology is degraded or denied to us.

“So the GCE 2040 framework is built upon a central idea: modular, task-organized, multi-domain force that combines dispersed operations, lethality, information dominance and resilient command and control.”

Defending against hostile attack drones, Bargeron said, remains “one of the biggest holes in our swing,” and a key focus for development.

The Marine Corps, he said, had recently purchased 400,000 pieces of a special segmented 5.56 ammunition that can be fired from existing M27 service rifles. That’s part of a new multi-part organic counter-small UAS system, he said, of which the service plans to purchase 300 by the end of this year, with updated training to go with them.

Along with the fielding over the next few months of Organic Precision Fires-Light, which equips Marines with portable loitering “kamikaze” drones, these developments will significantly increase the power and autonomy of small infantry units, Bargeron said.

The fielding of OPF-Light and OPF-Medium, a larger anti-armor loitering munition, he said, will transform the traditional 0352 anti-armor gunner MOS into a “precision strike Marine” role. There are currently no plans, however, to make a formal title change.

“That will put in the hands of the squad-level Marines the ability to find and strike targets out to, I think, 20 kilometers,” he said. “That’s something that Marines — rifle, squad, platoon, company — would have had to depend on artillery somewhere else, mortars somewhere else, aircraft somewhere else to talk onto the target.

“So, in the hands of the individual Marines, to be able to strike targets like that, I think that will be dramatic.”