Welcome back to the Rundown! The Senate voted on Wednesday to send the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, to President Joe Biden. If signed into law, the NDAA would give junior enlisted service members a 14.5% pay raise effective April 1, 2025.
Quick reminder: The NDAA is a defense policy bill, not a budget. Congress still has not passed a spending bill for this fiscal year, which began nearly three months ago.
Among the many items tucked into this year’s 1,800-page NDAA, is a requirement that the military start a 5-year pilot program in which the promotion process for some field grade officers would include anonymous bottom-up feedback from peers and subordinates. The pilot program would be limited to officers in certain fields, such as surface and submarine warfare in the Navy, infantry and artillery in the Marine Corps, and operations and logistics in the Air Force. Existing programs that already incorporate such feedback will be allowed to continue.
The NDAA could also shave the way — sorry — for airmen and Space Force guardians to grow beards. The bill calls for the secretary of the Air Force to brief lawmakers on a potential pilot program that would look into how beards would affect discipline, morale and unity in the ranks and what impact beards would have on using air-tight equipment like gas masks. If you think the idea that airmen and guardians could eventually be allowed to grow beards is farfetched, just remember that the Navy finally allowed sailors to put their hands in their uniform pockets this year. (Hands in pockets are still a long way off for the Marine Corps and unlikely to ever happen. After all, how can you defend yourself from an unexpected attack if your knife hands are in your pockets?)
Here are some other stories from this week, starting with all those ‘strange’ lights in the sky that everyone has been talking about:
- “These aren’t the drones you’re looking for.” It’s been more than a month since the recent wave of mysterious drone sightings first began, and many people still are not satisfied by U.S. government officials’ repeated statements that there is nothing to see here. National Security Council Communications Advisor John Kirby told reporters this week that most of the drone sightings reported so far include a combination of lawful commercial hobbyist, and law enforcement drones along with manned aircraft, helicopters and “even stars that were mistakenly reported as drones.” Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, followed up on Wednesday by saying that on any given day roughly 8,500 drones are flying over the United States, and most are recreational or hobbyist aircraft. “Is it possible that some of those drones could be up to malign activity?” Ryder said. “It’s entirely possible, but the vast majority, that is not the case.”
- Ban on gender-affirming care. The final version of the NDAA includes a provision added by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) that prevents TRICARE from covering gender-affirming care for service members’ children. That puts service members in a tough spot, said Kara Corcoran, vice president of SPARTA Pride, an advocacy group for transgender troops, and an officer in the Army. “They have to think about two things — two polar opposites here,” Corcoran told Task & Purpose. “I have to think about defending my country or defending my family. And when you put that into context, they are having to figure out whether they should continue to serve because their country is no longer taking care of their families. That’s not a position that any service members should have to be put into.”
- More airstrikes against ISIS. The folks at U.S. Central Command have shown they have no f—ks left to give when it comes to hitting the Islamic State group, or ISIS, in territory that used to be under the control of now-ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad. On Monday, U.S. forces struck four locations in Syria’s Badiya desert that targeted ISIS camps and operatives, killing an estimated 12 suspected ISIS members, officials said. This comes after U.S. warplanes blitzed 75 ISIS targets in the same region on Dec. 8. A source with knowledge of that operation told Task & Purpose shortly after that, U.S. military planners had taken into consideration that the target areas were no longer defended by the Russians.
- Going Winchester — twice! Speaking of airstrikes, take a few minutes and read this story from Task & Purpose’s senior editor, Matt White, about an F-16 pilot who dropped all his ordnance and emptied his cannon to help a team of Rangers locked in an intense firefight in Afghanistan, and then he came back in a second F-16 to do it again. At the time of the 2017 mission, Craig Andrle was an Air Force lieutenant colonel and commander of the 79th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. “I told my squadron, we were a customer service-oriented organization,” Andrle said. “And that day, our customers were the Army Rangers.”
- Low T in special ops. Congress is seeking answers about “Operator Syndrome,” an ongoing issue facing U.S. special operations forces, who are dealing with health effects stemming from low testosterone levels. A 2020 research paper first identified that chronic stress was causing some 35-year-old special operators to have the same testosterone levels as 80- to 90-year-old men. Lawmakers are asking the Pentagon for information on how the condition can be screened for and treated.
- Tower 22 arrests. The Justice Department has charged two Iranian men with violating U.S. export control and sanctions laws for providing Iran with the type of drone navigation technology used in the Jan. 28 attack on a U.S. base in Jordan known as “Tower 22” that killed three American soldiers. Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi, 42, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, and Mohammad Abedininajafabadi, also known as Mohammad Abedini, 38, have both been arrested. Abedininajafabadi is also charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization that resulted in the deaths of Army Sgt. Kennedy L. Sanders, Sgt. Breonna Moffett, and Staff Sgt. William J. Rivers, who were killed in the attack. “What they were doing there was trying to do something to help us continue the ISIS fight in Syria,” Army Lt. Gen. Joel “JB” Vowell, who led U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria at the time, told Task & Purpose in June. “And, so we remember that. We don’t want to forget. We can’t forget.”
Thank you for reading this week’s Rundown! We will be off for the holidays and returning in January. On behalf of everyone at Task & Purpose, I wish you and your families all the best this time of year. To quote the most infamous Folgers Coffee commercial ever: “You’re my present this year.”
Jeff Schogol