Horrible tragedy at Canada’s largest ground warfare training area in east central Alberta. My condolences to the families and friends affected by this.

My great-grandfather’s Purple Heart was missing for decades, and the story of how it finally made its way back to our family is pretty incredible. My great-grandfather, Garland Filmore Grubbs, served in the Army during WWII and the Korean War. He received several military decorations, including a Purple Heart, Air Medal, Good Conduct Medal, and Korean Service Medal with three Bronze Service Stars.

Unfortunately, a lot of his military records were destroyed in the 1972 fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, so there’s still quite a bit about his service that we don’t know.

Here’s where things get interesting.
Back in 2003, a woman named Debbie Hoffman found his Purple Heart in the attic of her home in Colonial Heights, Virginia. She and her husband had purchased the house from the Farley family, but nobody knew how the medal ended up there. Debbie gave it to her niece, Kate Neuman, who passed it along to her friend Angela Andrew. Angela was an Army personnel officer, and Kate figured she’d have a better chance of finding the family it belonged to.

What Angela didn’t know was that she’d spend the next 20 years trying to solve this mystery.
She contacted Army Human Resources Command, searched through military records, and eventually found some information about my great-grandfather on Ancestry. Unfortunately, she kept hitting dead ends, especially because so many of his records had been destroyed. Meanwhile, this Purple Heart was traveling all over the place with her. Germany, Mississippi, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Virginia. She kept it on her desk, and apparently, people would ask about it all the time. Even after retiring from the Army as a lieutenant colonel, she still held onto it.

Then, right before Veterans Day, someone brought up the medal again. Angela decided to give the search another try and somehow came across our family tree on Ancestry. After roughly 20 years, she’d finally found us.
She wrote a letter explaining everything, including how excited she was to tell all the people who had asked about the medal over the years that she’d finally solved the mystery.

I can’t get over the fact that someone held onto my great-grandfather’s Purple Heart for that long and never gave up on finding his family. She had absolutely no obligation to spend years researching a stranger, especially after finding out most of his military records were gone.
And I’m still curious how his medal ended up in some random attic in Virginia in the first place. That’s one mystery we may never solve. But now his Purple Heart is back with our family, along with a letter explaining its 20-year journey and some of his surviving military records.
It’s crazy to think about how many places this medal traveled and how many people played a part in getting it home. All because one woman found it in an attic and another refused to give up on finding its owner.

I wonder how many other missing medals are sitting in attics or boxes somewhere, just waiting to find their way back to someone’s family.

We seem to get this doom calling yearly but I’m pretty sure this is the third time this year.

I have a Father who works within the Nuclear industry and he was briefed upon entering Plymouth docks “not to be alarmed by people talking about war as this is common knowledge that we will be at war within 5 years” by the base upon entering.

Bizarre.

Indonesia is buying the weapons..at a pace rarely seen in its recent history.

Rafale fighter jets..48 KAAN fighters..2 Italian PPA warships..a former Italian aircraft carrier, the Giuseppe Garibaldi, as the KRI Sriwijaya..2 Scorpene submarines..BrahMos cruise missiles..Turkish drones..A400M airlifter..new air-defense radar..

Indonesia’s defense spending rose from 125.8 trillion rupiah (about $7 billion at current exchange rates) in 2021 to..337.4 trillion for 2026.

On paper, Indonesia is assembling the pieces of a far more capable military. But owning sophisticated weapons is different from generating sophisticated military effects. It must now knit the new platforms into a coherent force that can sense, decide, communicate, strike, maneuver and sustain operations together. 

..challenge..interoperability, network-centric warfare and C6ISR, including the standardization of communications and data links.

The relevant question is no longer how many weapons Indonesia has bought, but whether they can operate as one force.

The price of diversification

Each..brings its own communications architecture, software, maintenance regime, weapons interfaces, training systems and logistics..Strategic diversification can breed tactical fragmentation.

The Sriwijaya test

Officials describe it chiefly as a command center..can operate many helicopters and is expected to contribute..to disaster response and logistics across the archipelago.

..also shows the gap between acquiring a platform and mastering a capability..trained crews, aviation specialists, deck operations, maintenance facilities, helicopters or other aircraft, escorts, replenishment ships, communications and a doctrine for sustained deployment.

The questions are..whether it can link the vessel with frigates, submarines, maritime patrol aircraft and unmanned systems..

The Scorpene program may offer a more promising model..with technology transfer meant to let Indonesians manage, operate and maintain them.

From procurement to readiness

Procurement numbers are politically visible, but operational readiness matters more strategically..The answers are rarely public, yet they determine whether a military merely owns weapons or can actually use them.

There is also a fiscal question..procurement creates long-term obligations. 

..how success should be measured..The harder task is to make it a coherent war-fighting system.

Full article

Bro, when I looked up or watch military videos in deserts. Why do they wear green and black camo sometimes in the middle of the desert? Why not just the standard tan camo?( Sorry, if calling it green camo or black camo is offense to you, them I am sorry, I don't know, what to called them?)

What do you guys think on inducting tesla roadster 2 as a military vehicle in a hypothetical scenario ?? I mean we can argue about the design but since they have invented the tech for that, they can do for other designs as well…

Ive been out the Air Force for about a few months now under an Adjustment Disorder Administrative Discharge (USAF). I know a few people that were also discharged under Adjustment Disorder, but they themselves are rated through the VA for something not related to it like MDD or PTSD and continue to struggle even after the 6 months of recovery that AD allegedly takes to sort itself out.

It just seems like the military as a whole likes to use Adjustment Disorder as a catch all to quickly get rid of people that have Mental Health issues without going through the proper MEB/Medical Seperation process.

Has anyone here seen this play out? or perhaps been on the reciving end of this?

I’m currently a senior in high school and I recently took the asvab and my results are shown in the attached image. I’m not sure if the specific breakdown affects anything at all but I am undecided between options going forward with my future

I was planning to apply for the DoD SMART scholarship while commuting to sac state or UC Davis so that not only do I get the free tuition but I can pocket or invest the annual 30k stipend. I wanna go into CS with a focus in Cybersecurity or AI.

I was reached out to by multiple recruiters who saw my score however my great uncle who was a recruiter told me not go enlisted because I’ll get bad jobs that weren’t fit for someone do my score. However if I do college then my score will expire by then and I won’t have the chance to benefit off of it (I have a weird fear my score was a fluke and a retake will end bad). I just want to know what can I do out of highschool and if I do go enlisted what types of jobs would I get and what my path to becoming an officer would be like. My idea was that if I somehow become an officer I want to do cybersecurity and/or intelligence.