According to the complaint, the task force fails to meet requirements under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, or FACA, which include a defined structure and purpose, transparency and public input, and balanced membership.

The lawsuit alleges that the Defense Department failed to follow several procedures required under FACA. Among them, the department did not publish a notice in the Federal Register, which would allow the public to review materials and submit comments, or consult the General Services Administration, or GSA, to determine whether the research would serve the public interest.

In a statement, Donald K. Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, one of the plaintiffs, said FACA “sets clear requirements about transparency and avoiding conflicts of interest.” He argued that the Defense Department must either comply with those requirements or disband the project.

When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Project Meridian in September, he named Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey, both owners of defense companies, and conservative politician Newt Gingrich as its directors. Nineteen others were also appointed to participate, most of whom have financial ties to the defense industry or are political allies of the administration.

According to the complaint, Musk’s SpaceX holds approximately $8 billion in defense contracts, while Luckey’s Anduril Industries holds approximately $25 billion. Other participants include executives from software and AI company Oracle, autonomous shipbuilder Saronic Technologies, manufacturer Hadrian Automation and humanoid robotics company Agility Robotics, as well as investors in other defense companies.

The lawsuit also challenges the qualifications of participants without direct financial interests in the project, arguing that they “do not provide fair balance.” Their experience, according to the complaint, is largely limited to working with companies already represented on the panel or advancing the Trump administration’s political agenda.

Before filing the lawsuit, the plaintiffs say they offered to make their own experts available to the project but received no response.

“Given Project Meridian’s purpose to ‘map the trajectory of future warfare,’ the views of its members do not approach fair balance,” the lawsuit says, adding that the panel “has no meaningful representation from any person or entity with a record of advocating for restraint in the proliferation and use of military assets.”

Sherman argued that federal law prohibits the Defense Department from “getting advice in secret, by defense contractors with enormous potential conflicts of interest.” He said the department is “soliciting private counsel from contractors about military capacity, including the president’s largest political benefactor.”

The other plaintiffs are the nonprofit organizations Public Citizen and the Project on Government Oversight, or POGO. Their leaders argued that the panel would “very predictably” recommend increased government spending on “AI-enabled weaponry” and “further skew national security policy toward corporate priorities, and away from the public interest.”

Hegseth gave Project Meridian the deadline of Jan. 28 to submit a 30-page report of its findings. The Defense Department also commissioned the research nonprofit Mitre Corporation to help coordinate the project.

“Military culture is different from civilian culture, military aviation culture is distinct from both, but fighter pilot culture is a world unto itself,” writes Michael W. Hankins in Flying Camelot: The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia.

However, things were different for Vietnam War pilots. Century Series fighters had struggled in the conflict’s air combat and the Air Force’s front-line fighter was the two-seater F-4 Phantom. The mythos of the fearless, individualistic fighter and the desire for turn-and-burn dogfights seemingly evaporated.

Col. John Richard Boyd and his “Fighter Mafia” strove to change that.

Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1927, Boyd entered the U.S. Army Air Forces at the tail end of World War II, spending 12 uneventful months in Japan before his discharge in 1947. At the outbreak of the Korean War, Boyd reenlisted and was assigned to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada where he trained in a North American F-86 Sabre before logging a slew of combat hours in Korea — and, in the final few weeks of the war, was credited with damaging a MiG-15.

Ordered back to Nellis, Boyd began training to become a flight instructor, and he soon earned a reputation for being unafraid of criticizing superior officers.

His detractors would later call him profane, crude — perhaps even treasonous. Boyd’s proponents praised him as a genius, comparable to Sun Tzu.

Loved or despised, however, no discussion of the F-15 and F-16 design process, or the influence of energy maneuverability theory — a formula he co-produced to determine the specific energy rate of any aircraft — would be complete without discussing Boyd.

He and his disciples, a mixture of pilots and engineers, “were selling a powerful idea: Defense technology could be both cheaper and more effective, and that we used to have it right but had lost our way. In the late 1970s, coming out of the difficult Vietnam War experience, the desire for more efficient, less complicated technology found a lot of traction, and it’s still with us,” writes Hankins.

Essentially, Boyd and the members of his self-dubbed “Fighter Mafia” — which included the likes of pilot Everest Riccioni, civilian mathematician Thomas Christie and aeronautical engineer Harry Hillaker — argued that the defense industry of the 1960 and 70s was in a crisis due to its overreliance on complex, expensive weapons and championed the superiority of man over machine.

“No amount of electronic or optical equipment can substitute for a pilot’s ability to turn his head and see his antagonist,” Riccioni wrote in his thesis on air superiority.

“From Boyd’s acolytes’ point of view,” writes Gerald A. Schiller, “the Pentagon’s sole function was hardly defense; it was merely a bureaucracy created to get Congress to fund expensive weapons systems — systems that often performed poorly when tested, and whose price tags kept escalating at alarming rates.”

Their argument, according to Hankins, was, at its core, “steeped in specific cultures, with specific beliefs, assumptions, behaviors, and values. The F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon, originally designed to focus on air-to-air combat, are the strongest examples of the influence of culture on technology within the US Air Force.”

Boyd, alongside Christie, had already conclusively proven, through their energy maneuverability theory, that the Soviet MiG-21 was superior to the General Dynamics F-111 in combat. The swelling ranks of the Fighter Mafia sought to produce a pure air-to-air combat aircraft to counter the Russian threat.

“Department of Defense 1960’s era aircraft, such as the F-105, F-4, and F-111, while adequate in air-to-ground roles, were significantly disadvantaged in air-to-air maneuvering,” writes the Air Force in 2025.

Boyd and Christie’s physical theory would, according to author Robert Corum in Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, forever change how fighter planes were designed.

Boyd and his “Fighter Mafia” became almost biblical in their efforts to create — behind the scenes — their generation’s greatest fighter and put the pilot firmly back in control.

The members even spoke in code when discussing their work to develop a pure fighter, calling it “the Lord’s work,” writes Hankins.

To that end, over several years, Boyd and his followers secretly worked the “hallways, back doors and alleys of the Pentagon and the aircraft industry,” according to one of Boyd’s closest friends, Col. James Burton.

“In essence, the Fighter Mafia had spent several years in secret, illegal meetings with two contractors (General Dynamics and Northrop) to design an aircraft; then the Fighter Mafia co-wrote the RFP for that plane; then they participated in a source selection committee that also contained many of their devotees who shared their values; and finally, amid numerous possible outcomes and other potential factors affecting the selection process, the winners were the two companies the Fighter Mafia had been secretly meeting with all along,” writes Hankins.

Ultimately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, General Dynamics, led by engineer Robert H. Widmer, secured Department of Defense funding to develop the YF-16. The first test flight occurred on Feb. 2, 1974, and it entered service four years later.

While the Air Force has since modified the F-16 into an effective, low-cost multi-role aircraft, it remains one of the strongest examples of how fighter culture swayed Air Force technology — with Boyd firmly at its center.

He was, writes Corum, “The fighter pilot who changed the art of war.”

The decision by the chamber formally closes not only the line of inquiry into alleged crimes by U.S. troops, which had already lain dormant since 2021, but also a probe into the Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) militia. The office of the prosecutor told Reuters on Friday it had appealed the decision but could not give further details.

It is the latest step in a legal tussle between prosecutors and judges about the Afghanistan case, and comes after the United States issued institutional sanctions against the court, citing U.S. opposition to arrest warrants issued for Israeli officials and ​the investigation into actions of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

This year, judges ordered prosecutors to split their Afghanistan inquiries into two separate probes — one focusing on the alleged crimes committed by the Taliban since 2021, and the other on the original Afghanistan inquiry, which also looked at alleged war crimes by U.S. troops but has shifted towards looking at the ISIS-K militia.

Judges said they had taken the decision to close part of the case because prosecutors had not shown they would be able to effectively investigate allegations in Afghanistan apart from the Taliban probe. The splitting of the cases means the arrest warrants issued against four Afghan Taliban leaders remain in effect.

It is unclear if formally closing part of the Afghanistan case will be enough to allay American fears over the court exerting jurisdiction over U.S. nationals, as it does not change the court’s founding statute. The statute says the court can prosecute anyone accused of atrocity crimes committed on the territory of ICC member states.

The United States asks military families like mine to accept a lot: deployments, repeated moves, long separations and lives built around the needs of the service. It should not deny us the medical care we need to have children.

TRICARE, the health insurance program for our nation’s service members and their families, refuses to cover in vitro fertilization in most cases, denying service members the tools they need to start a family. Congress has not yet fixed this failure, but it can now.

As lawmakers consider this year’s defense bill, they have another opportunity to expand IVF coverage. They have come close before: Last year, both chambers included IVF coverage in their versions of the bill, only to drop it from the final legislation.

For my family, those decisions have real consequences.

My wife and I want children. But every conversation we have about parenthood runs into the same hard fact: I inherited the BRCA1 mutation, which is linked to prostate and pancreatic cancer in men and substantially higher risks of breast and ovarian cancer in women. Any child we conceive would have a 50% chance of inheriting it, and with it, their own significant cancer risk.

This is an all too familiar story in my family.

My mother carries the same mutation. She survived breast cancer in her forties, underwent a mastectomy and continues to live with significant complications from her treatment. My sister carries it, too. At just 30, she is currently undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer and will need a mastectomy, along with the removal of her uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries.

That is an inheritance my wife and I hope never to pass on, but we are struggling to find a path forward. Without military insurance covering IVF and genetic testing, the cost of these treatments creates an enormous barrier. A single cycle of IVF costs between $12,500 and $25,000, and most patients require multiple cycles.

I am an Army officer, and my wife is a nurse. If we saved for several years, we might be able to afford the treatment ourselves. But a junior enlisted soldier making roughly $32,000 a year in basic pay may have no realistic way to absorb tens of thousands of dollars in fertility care.

Infertility affects thousands of service members. Among active-duty women surveyed by the Department of Defense, 15% reported having tried unsuccessfully to conceive for at least a year; among married active-duty women, that figure rose to over one in five. Nearly one in three women receiving fertility services reported paying that cost out of pocket due to lack of coverage.

Much of this gap in coverage stems from the military insurance’s exceedingly narrow eligibility standards, which only cover IVF when infertility was caused by a qualifying service-related illness or injury. That requirement creates two problems and a massive obstacle to care.

First, many barriers to having healthy children have nothing to do with military service. Many, like mine, are inherited genetic conditions.

Second, even when infertility is related to military service, proving that connection can be extraordinarily difficult. Infertility often has multiple possible causes, and in roughly 30% of cases, doctors cannot identify a cause.

Congress can remove these barriers in this year’s defense bill, but neither chamber has yet produced a complete solution. The House-passed version of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act included IVF coverage but specifically excluded genetic screening. The Senate completely rejected IVF coverage in committee.

But the bill is not finalized, and Congress still has the opportunity to do right by military families.

First, the Senate could adopt a bipartisan amendment adding IVF coverage back before its final vote. Second, if it does not, House and Senate negotiators could include coverage for both IVF and genetic testing when they reconcile the two bills.

This should not be controversial. IVF coverage is already available through federal employee health plans and offered by half of large private employers. Even members of Congress have access to plans that cover IVF. Military families should not be asked to accept less.

For now, my wife and I discuss more than just baby names, nurseries and strollers. We talk about oncologists and chemotherapy. We worry about whether one day our future daughter might confront the same diagnosis and hardships as my mother and sister.

If I had left the military for a civilian career, we could have had access to an employer health plan that covered the treatment we needed. Choosing to serve my country should not make it harder to have children.

Congress can still change that this year. It is time to finally provide military couples with comprehensive IVF coverage, including the genetic testing that families like mine desperately need.

Capt. Parker Bolstad is a second-year student at Yale Law School and an active-duty Army officer.

A letter sent Tuesday to House and Senate leadership signed by Van Hollen and 11 other Senate colleagues, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., specifically addresses Section 1217 of the Senate version and Section 219 of the House version of the bill.

Those sections, called the United States-Israel Defense Cooperation Initiative in the House and the United States-Israel Framework for Upgraded Technologies, Unified Research, and Enhanced Security (FUTURES) Act in the Senate, each call for enhanced cooperation between the two countries on weapons technology development, including in artificial intelligence, quantum technology and chemical and biological weapons. 

“The Senator is working with his colleagues to remove these provisions and will determine next steps should they remain in,” Van Hollen’s office said in an email to Military Times. “The Senator will continue to push to remove these provisions and push to protect the United States’ ability to act independently and in line with U.S. national security interests.”

The letter also addresses a provision of the fiscal 2027 Intelligence Authorization Act that proposes enhancing intelligence-sharing between the two countries, which, according to the text of the bill, is intended to help Israel “maintain its qualitative military edge” and “deter and counter destabilizing activities by the Government of Iran and Iran-aligned state and nonstate actors that threaten Israel, United States forces, and regional partners.”

The U.S. government’s support for Israel has come under intense scrutiny over the past three years. Israel’s war in Gaza has killed at least 74,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and U.S. and Israeli attacks against Iran on Feb. 28 led to a war that’s increasingly unpopular in the United States, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

President Donald Trump promised to end outright military aid to Israel, which has previously come via a Memorandum of Understanding. The current MOU is set to expire in 2028 and provides billions in financing for Israel to procure U.S.-made weapons over the 10-year agreement.

Critics, including Van Hollen, have noted that the annual defense bills, as they stand, merely shift military provision from an aid model to a commercial partnership, this time overseen by the Pentagon rather than the State Department.

The new model, as proposed in the draft legislation, “would constrain the administration’s ability to independently determine how best to protect U.S. national security and would lock in long-term commitments despite our serious concerns with the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, the West Bank, and other parts of the region,” the letter states. 

The U.S. and Israel already cooperate on some defense technology; Israeli contractor Rafael Systems and Raytheon developed the David’s Sling missile interceptor system. But critics say that the proposed setup would decrease oversight of the weapons transfer system; could compromise sensitive U.S. weapons technology; and wouldn’t provide much benefit for the United States.

The NDAA is one of Congress’s “must-pass” bills, but the price tag alone — more than $1 trillion — has drawn significant pushback from Democrats. The House’s version narrowly passed in July, and Senate Democrats blocked that chamber’s version the same month, objecting to provisions for the Iran war.

In the House, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., tried unsuccessfully to pass an amendment striking the United States-Israel Defense Cooperation Initiative when the bill was being debated in committee. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., was also a vocal opponent.

In a 35-minute speech following a wreath-laying ceremony at the cemetery’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Trump praised service members who participated in military operations in Venezuela and Iran and said they have been “absolutely incredible.”

Comparing the lengths of the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the number of casualties – roughly 103,400 in total – Trump noted his operations had few deaths and said they have made the “world a much safer and better place.”

“In Iran, where we stopped them from having a nuclear weapon, the B-2 bombers, they took them out. We began operations against Iran seven months ago, of which only a few weeks were active hard fighting. We lost 18 beautiful souls,” Trump said.

The Venezuela operation, which resulted in the capture of President Nicolas Maduro, took just hours without any U.S. deaths, Trump said.

“We’re taking out billions and billions of dollars of oil and all sorts of other things [out of Venezuela]…Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. And we’ve paid for the cost of the war many, many times over already — nobody has ever even envisioned that. To the victor belong the spoils,” Trump said.

Eleven troops have died of combat-related injuries — as of Nov. 9 — since the start of the Iran operation in February and 12 perished from “non-hostile” causes, according to the Pentagon.

Joining the president at the Arlington Memorial Amphitheater in Virginia were former Marine and Vice President J.D. Vance; former Marine Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, a retired Air Force Reserve colonel; their wives; guests; and representatives from major veterans’ organizations.

The Tomb of the Unknowns lies roughly a third of a mile from where Trump plans to build what he calls a “Triumphal Arch,” a 250-foot granite memorial at the cemetery entrance between the Lincoln Memorial and the cemetery’s hilltop centerpiece, Arlington House, former home of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

When Trump first proposed the arch last year, he joked it was to celebrate him. He has since said it would commemorate the nation’s 250^th birthday, serve as a monumental gateway to the capital city, give Washington an arch it does not have – the “greatest of them all,” according to Trump – with a dual purpose of serving as a military platform used to house drones, ammunition and snipers.

On Wednesday, Trump said it was for veterans, whom he alleged have “been waiting for it for 200 years” for such a structure.

“Soon we’re going to dedicate a magnificent triumphal arc [sic] to our veterans, and that’s in honor of our great veterans and our great military,” Trump said.

Trump’s remarks followed a federal judge’s ruling last week delaying construction. Three veterans sued in February to stop its construction, and on Friday, during a hearing on the proposed monument conducted by the National Capital Planning Commission, dozens more veterans testified against it.

The vets say the arch, which could have has many as 2,000 to 22,400 visitors per day, according to the National Park Service, would disrupt funerals at Arlington, overshadow graves and destroy the cemetery’s quietude.

Speaking at a veterans rally at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Michael Lemmon, one of the veteran plaintiffs, said the cemetery was built “on hallowed ground” to preserve the memory of service members and allow friends and family to pay respects.

“This 250-foot monstrosity would profoundly disturb the peace and tranquility owed them by towering over both the dead and the living, violating that pact,” Lemmon said.

The NCPC voted Friday 8-4 to approve the arch. All members — who were appointed by Trump — are serving in the administration or are congressional Republicans who voted for the structure.

“President Trump’s historic vision for a monumental arch at Memorial Circle would complete a project over a century in the making, and honor our nation and her veterans, and provide the sacred ground of Arlington National Cemetery with the monumental gateway it deserves,” Chairman Mark Paoletta said during the meeting.

The three veterans who filed suit – Lemmon, Shaun Byrnes and Jon Gundersen – filed an additional request for an injunction on Tuesday, seeking to stop construction until their suit is settled.

The current injunction runs through Nov. 19.

On Tuesday, nine members of the Kennedy family, including children and grandchildren of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., sued to stop construction, saying the shadow the structure would cast on their loved ones’ graves would “fundamentally alter the experience” of visiting their plots.

The Kennedy suit is now one of at least four filed against the arch’s construction.

The proposal is among the numerous projects Trump has undertaken to alter the landscape of Washington, D.C. In addition to the arch, Trump demolished the White House’s East Wing to construct a massive ballroom, renovated the Reflecting Pool — a restoration that initially failed as a result of poor workmanship — fixed fountains, added his name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and later threatened to tear it down, and is now working to turn a 104-year-old public golf course into a luxury facility.  

The arch, Trump said, is part of his vision for the city.

“Each day at Arlington Cemetery, sometimes as often as 30 times a day, a bugler plays the sound of Taps over a new grave of an American veteran. In those 24 notes, there is sadness, there is pain, but there is always pride, pride in our nation, pride in our flag. And there’s never any doubt, no doubt, that our heroes served a noble cause,” Trump said.

The Take Care of America’s Veterans Act passed by voice vote on Veterans Day without a recorded tally of how individual lawmakers voted. The package includes more than 60 provisions, but its most contentious measure would change how the Department of Veterans Affairs rates sleep apnea and tinnitus, potentially reducing future disability compensation for some veterans.

The funding approach has divided veterans organizations that support many of the bill’s benefit expansions but disagree over whether veterans’ future benefits should help pay for them.

A disputed House vote

The legislation passed under contentious circumstances, with House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Ranking Member Mark Takano, D-Calif., and other Democratic leaders away from the floor reviewing proposed changes to separate veterans legislation, a Democratic leadership aide told Military Times.

Earlier Wednesday, Takano went to the House Rules Committee in an attempt to force consideration of a competing bill, the Major Richard Star Act.

Military Times spoke with several Congressional staff members who said Takano and other Democratic leaders left the floor at Republican leadership’s request to review proposed changes that would allow the House to take a single vote on the Star Act the following day.

While the Democrats were off the floor, Speaker Pro Tem Addison McDowell, R-N.C., called for a voice vote on the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act. The yeses prevailed, and McDowell declared the bill passed, according to the House Clerk.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told The Associated Press that the bill passed because no member called for a recorded vote and said Democrats could have voiced objections on the floor.

Takano disputed that account, telling the AP, “The intention was to sneak this through.” He described the result as a hollow victory and argued the legislation would go nowhere in the Senate.

Veterans of Foreign Wars criticized the procedure as “cowardly.” VFW National Commander-in-Chief Cory Geisler said lawmakers should have allowed members’ positions to be recorded.

“It is an insult to America’s veterans that Congress would advance legislation threatening their earned benefits on Veterans Day, the very day our nation is supposed to honor their service and sacrifice,” Geisler said in a statement.

“And if congressional leaders believed this proposal was worthy of passage, they should have had the courage to let every member’s position be recorded for the country to see,” he added. “Playing political games with veterans’ benefits while avoiding public accountability is cowardly and dishonorable.”

What veterans and families could gain

Take Care of America’s Veterans Act includes the Love Lives On Act, which would allow certain surviving spouses to retain Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, or DIC, and Survivor Benefit Plan payments after remarriage. Under current law, remarriage before age 55 generally ends eligibility for those benefits.

Samantha Pappas was 33 and had three children younger than 6 when her husband, Army Master Sgt. Stephen Pappas, died from injuries sustained in Afghanistan. She later became engaged but chose not to remarry because doing so would jeopardize survivor benefits that help support her children.

“Being asked to wait 20 more years to remarry feels so insane to me,” she said.

For caregivers, the bill would extend CHAMPVA medical coverage for up to 180 days after qualifying participants leave VA’s Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers. It would also provide employment assistance during program participation and for 180 days afterward, including up to $1,000 in lifetime reimbursement for qualifying certification or relicensure fees.

The package also includes the Sharri Briley and Eric Edmundson Veterans Benefits Expansion Act of 2026, which would provide an additional $833.33 per month to veterans eligible for the aid-and-attendance allowance under specified special monthly compensation provisions.

Other provisions would expand education opportunities; increase housing assistance for some veterans in apprenticeship and on-the-job training programs; protect students whose education is interrupted by military orders; and address suicide prevention and VA mental healthcare.

Benefit changes drive opposition

Section 108 of the bill would establish new VA disability-rating criteria for sleep apnea and tinnitus.

Under the proposed schedule, asymptomatic sleep apnea would receive a 0% rating, whether or not the veteran is receiving treatment. A 10% rating would apply when treatment provides incomplete relief. A 50% rating would be available only when treatment is ineffective or a qualifying medical condition prevents its use, provided there is no end-organ damage. A 100% rating would require end-organ damage.

The bill would eliminate separate compensable ratings for tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, while retaining a 10% rating in a specified circumstance involving service-connected hearing loss.

Meanwhile, Section 104 increases the cost for some VA-backed home loans.

The fee for interest rate reduction refinance loans, or IRRRL would rise from 0.5% to 1.42%, which, for example, would add $3,680 to the fee on a $400,000 refinance. The fee for loan assumptions would also increase from 0.5% to 1%.

How the bill is paid for

Supporters say projected savings from the disability-rating changes and revised VA home loan fees would help finance the bill’s expanded benefits.

The American Legion and the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors were among 23 organizations that signed a June 29 letter urging Congress to advance the legislative package while acknowledging concerns about offsets from future disability compensation. The organizations said they would prefer the benefits without those offsets but supported moving the package forward while pressing for protections and alternatives.

Disabled American Veterans called for Section 108 to be removed. The VFW has opposed the bill as drafted, citing the rating changes, fee increases and other reductions, while supporting many of its benefit expansions.

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America also opposed the package. CEO Kyleanne Hunter said Congress should not establish a precedent for reducing earned disability compensation to finance other programs.

“Today it’s tinnitus and sleep apnea. Tomorrow it could be PTSD, migraines, toxic exposure conditions, or any other disability that becomes a tempting budget target,” Hunter said.

At a Nov. 9 town hall, families were told to prepare for a worst-case scenario of 12 months. If confirmed, it would mean another extension for a crew that has already seen its expected return date pushed back twice, according to families who attended the meeting.

The uncertainty surrounding the deployment’s length was evident even before the carrier left port. On March 31, Rear Adm. Alexis Walker, commander of Carrier Strike Group 10, acknowledged that the published deployment schedule did not guarantee when the sailors would return.

“There is a published length of deployment, but who knows how long it’s going to take, and when our job is done around the world, then we’ll come home,” Walker told reporters at Naval Station Norfolk.

For military spouse Shawna Berret, the uncertainty has reached her children.

“My 10-year-old is aware of the difficult conditions at sea and asks why Daddy doesn’t have enough food to eat. Do military children need to worry about their parents being hungry?” Berret told Military Times. “I’ve had to put my kids in counseling to help them cope with the now second extension of this deployment,” she added.

Some families say their concerns extend beyond the changing return date. They question the mission’s objectives and how much longer their loved ones may be kept away.

“The Secretary of the Navy told us that our loved ones will return home when Iran agrees to a non-nuclear Iran, and hearing those words made me sick to my stomach,” said Julie Fairchild, a Bush spouse who attended the town hall. “If Iran hasn’t agreed to not have a nuclear weapon for the past 47 years, why are our sailors responsible for ending it now?” she asked.

Another spouse said Adm. Karl Thomas, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, told families he was not exactly sure what would happen in the next phase of the war with Iran.

“How does the Navy think that makes military families feel?” the spouse asked.

Another spouse said families had heard directly from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that he was responsible for extending deployments.

“We have heard directly from the Secretary of Defense that he is the one extending these deployments, and that he’ll do it again – he has no remorse,” the spouse told Military Times. “Hegseth has no problem keeping our sailors beyond their breaking point,” the spouse added.

At the town hall, acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, Thomas and Vice Adm. James Kilby, the vice chief of naval operations, addressed families’ concerns.

Navy leaders acknowledged that the strike group’s future remained uncertain and that the decision about when it could leave the Middle East rested with Hegseth, according to reporting by The Daily Beast. Thomas told families that several outcomes remained possible, including a return to major combat operations, and said the decision was beyond his control.

Thomas also addressed concerns about food aboard the carrier. He acknowledged that the strike group was short on fresh food because produce shipped from Japan and the Philippines spoiled before reaching the ship. Fruit and vegetables, he said, did not last more than a week, leaving sailors with canned vegetables.

The concerns about the deployment’s duration come as Navy leaders say longer deployments are likely to remain standard for the next couple of years.

Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy John Perryman said in October that sailors should expect deployments of 10 to 11 months, rather than the traditional seven months. Perryman said the Navy wants to give sailors more realistic expectations before they leave, rather than repeatedly extending deployments after they are underway.

The Bush Carrier Strike Group departed Norfolk on March 31 and spent 187 days at sea before arriving in Phuket, Thailand, on Oct. 4 for its first port visit of the deployment. The five-day visit gave sailors an opportunity for shore leave before the carrier returned to operations in the Arabian Sea.

Moments later, Jeffrey’s parachute opened just 400 feet above the ground. As he fell, rifle fire rose towards him from below. He hit the ground hard, breaking his back and suffering other injuries. Armed farmers quickly surrounded him. His hands were bound behind his back. He was interrogated, subjected to a mock execution, hogtied and thrown into the back of a truck bound for Hanoi.

In Jeffrey’s own words, it was “the beginning of a journey and I had no idea what was going to happen.”

That journey lasted seven years.

More than 3 million Americans served in Vietnam. Lt. Col. Bob Jeffrey was one of them. And like so many of those who served, when he finally came home, the country that sent him to war was not there to welcome him back.

The work I do today with the Gary Sinise Foundation began, in many ways, with the Vietnam veterans on my wife’s side of our family. In the 1970s and 1980s, they gave me a personal education on how bravely our Vietnam veterans fought, and how poorly they were treated when they came home.

Their stories had a profound impact on me, eventually shaping my portrayal of Vietnam veteran Lt. Dan Taylor in the film Forrest Gump. In the decades since, supporting those who served and telling their stories has become my life’s mission. Along the way, I have learned that the weight of service does not disappear when the uniform comes off. It is carried forward, quietly, in the body and in the memory, and for too many Vietnam veterans, in the absence of the welcome home they deserved.

That is what drew me to Where We Once Stood, a new documentary following a group of Vietnam veterans as they returned to Vietnam for the first time since the war ended.

The documentary, produced by Veterans United Home Loans, follows a group of veterans, including Jeffrey, as they return to a place that shaped their lives forever. Together, they revisit the past and a bond forged through experiences few outside their ranks can fully understand.

For most Americans today, the Vietnam War is history encountered in books, documentaries and memorials. But for the men and women who served there, Vietnam is not history. It is personal. 

The veterans profiled in the film represent the breadth of American experience in Vietnam. 

Between 1964 and 1973, 1.7 million American men were drafted into military service. Beginning in 1969, the draft was determined by a televised birthday lottery. All men were required to register at age 18 and remained eligible through age 26, though college and occupational deferments disproportionately benefited those with greater means.

More than 50 years later, these men returned to a place that changed their lives. But perhaps the deeper story of Where We Once Stood is not simply that they went back to Vietnam. It is what happened after they first came home… How they built lives, raised families and carried with them the memories of a war and those who served beside them. 

The effects of service do not disappear when the uniform comes off. Veterans carry their experiences with them, including the visible and invisible wounds, the memories of friends who never came home, the loss of a community and camaraderie unlike any other, and challenges that change but never entirely disappear with time.

Where We Once Stood ensures that these stories, and the sacrifices behind them, are not forgotten.

I have long believed that we can never do enough to honor the men and women who have served our country. But we can always do a little more. 

Listen to these veterans. Learn their stories. Honor their sacrifice. Stand beside them.

And to every Vietnam veteran who never received the welcome you deserve: Thank you for your service to our country.

Welcome home. 

Gary Sinise is an award-winning actor, humanitarian, and founder of the Gary Sinise Foundation. Where We Once Stood was produced by Veterans United Home Loans and is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S. in honor of Veterans Day.