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Sara B. Castro, Mission to Mao: U.S. Intelligence and the Chinese Communists in World War II (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2024); Zach Fredman, The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941–1949 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022). Confucius says, “To have friends come from afar to visit, is that not, indeed, a joy?” Not always, as it turns out — at least when those friends are Americans coming to help in World War II.

As they continue to investigate and resolve a growing caseload of hundreds of reports from current and former government officials about encounters with unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), personnel in the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) are also launching new projects and resources to declassify materials, promote transparency and enhance collection capabilities.

The acquisition, technology and logistics arm of U.S. Special Operations Command is seeking micro drones that could be launched from a variety of platforms and operate in multiple domains — including in the air and underwater.
A special notice released Thursday told industry that SOCOM’s program management office for remote capabilities is requesting feedback to help identify Group 1 uncrewed aerial systems that could be evaluated next year.
Group 1 drones are at the small end of the spectrum of UAS that the Defense Department uses.

Suicide rates across the active duty military have increased gradually, but steadily since 2011, according to the Pentagon’s annual review of suicides across the military which was released Thursday.
The Pentagon has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on suicide prevention programs in recent years and has requested over a half billion dollars for 2025. But the number of deaths each year have moved stubbornly upward since 2011.

In 2018, Jessica Trisko Darden wrote “Compounding Violent Extremism? When Efforts to Prevent Violence Backfire” where she argued that government-funded development programs intended to counter violent extremism contributed negatively to counter-extremism efforts. Given the continued nonsuccess of counter-extremism and counter-terrorism foreign aid programs, we invited Jessica back to reflect on her article.

Ukraine’s defence SME sector is developing low-cost platforms for use in operations on the front lines, but further investment is required.

Stand Up for Heroes (SUFH), New York’s highly anticipated night of hope, healing and laughter, returned on Veterans Day for its 18th annual celebration to honor our nation’s veterans and their families at David Geffen Hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The event raised awareness and over $29 million for the Bob Woodruff Foundation, whose mission is to ensure that our nation’s veterans, service members, and their families — those who stood for us — have stable and successful futures.

John F. Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States and one of the most famous. He is the youngest person elected to the presidency, the first Catholic president, and the most recent president to have died in office. Kennedy is also well-known for his Naval service during WWII; his survival at sea and rescue of his fellow sailors following the sinking of their PT boat made him a war hero. As a result of his extraordinary life, items associated with Kennedy command a high price when they are put up for sale.

Republican lawmakers on Wednesday night pledged to intensify their efforts to ensure transparency and enhance public awareness about how the Defense Department is handling reports and evidence of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) that might threaten U.S. national security. 
They did so at an invite-only summit hosted on the Hill by the non-partisan UAP Disclosure Fund, on the heels of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s latest hearing on the issue earlier that day.

The Army’s cavalry scouts are hard to miss. Cav scouts, as they’re often called, are the only soldiers who wear a black cowboy hat, aptly named a cav hat. The hats have a 3-inch curved brim, yellow-braided cord around the exterior bucket of the hat, and a black leather chin strap. It’s unique to cavalry scouts and one of the ways their uniforms pay homage to a heritage that dates back to America’s first horse soldiers. 
But for soldiers in this field, it’s not the hat that makes the cav scout, but the spurs. There are two kinds of spurs: Silver and gold.