Military

Naval Hospital Ship To Begin Accepting COVID Patients

The Washington Post reports: New York and New Jersey will finally receive a small amount of comfort for its crowded hospitals. On Monday night, hours after New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) thanked President Trump on Twitter for allowing covid-19 patients to be treated aboard USNS Comfort, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) also announced the navy ship’s new …

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US Army Announces “Tactical Pause” In Basic Training

NBC News reports: The U.S. Army has paused the movement of future U.S. soldiers to basic combat training, the department announced Monday. “This tactical pause will allow commands to ensure appropriate safety measures are in place and are operating effectively at training installations,” the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, which oversees training of Army recruits, said in a statement. …

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Navy Sec Calls Ex-Captain “Stupid” In Speech To Crew

CNN reports: The Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly blasted the now ousted commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt as “stupid” in an address to the ship’s crew Monday morning, in remarks obtained by CNN. Modly told the crew that their former commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, was either “too naive or too stupid” to be in command or that …

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Fired Aircraft Carrier Captain Tests Positive For COVID

The New York Times reports: Capt. Brett E. Crozier, the Navy captain who was removed from command of the coronavirus-stricken aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, has tested positive for Covid-19, according to two Naval Academy classmates of Crozier’s who are close to him and his family. The commander began exhibiting symptoms before he was removed from the warship on Thursday, …

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Pentagon To Require Face Masks For Service Members

ABC News reports: The Pentagon will soon announce a new policy requiring face masks for military personnel, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Sunday on ABC This Week. “We will have a directive coming up on that today,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos. “Now we’re going to move towards face covering.” Over 1,200 service …

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Acting Navy Secretary Rushes To Right Wing Radio To Defend His Firing Of Carrier Captain Who Raised Alarm

Politico reports: Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said Friday that his firing of the captain who raised the alarm about a coronavirus outbreak onboard a U.S. aircraft carrier was the “hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do.” “I know that in my heart and in the heart and mind of this particular officer, every single thing that he was …

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Sailors Cheer Fired Carrier Captain As He Leaves Ship

The Hill reports: Sailors on the USS Theodore Roosevelt cheered for their departing captain Thursday night as he was removed from duty. Videos captured on social media and sites like Stars and Stripes show sailors shouting “Captain Crozier” for Capt. Brett Crozier as he left the ship. Crozier was removed from duty after a letter he wrote pleading for help …

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Naval Hospital Ships Refuse COVID Patients, Sit Empty

The New York Times reports: Such were the expectations for the Navy hospital ship U.S.N.S. Comfort that when it chugged into New York Harbor this week, throngs of people, momentarily forgetting the strictures of social distancing, crammed together along Manhattan’s west side to catch a glimpse. On Thursday, though, the huge white vessel, which officials had promised would bring succor …

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Reuters: Navy To Relieve Captain Of Stricken Carrier

Reuters reports: The U.S. Navy is expected to relieve the commander of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote a scathing letter that leaked to the public asking the Navy for stronger measures to control a coronavirus outbreak onboard, U.S. officials told Reuters on Thursday. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Captain Brett Crozier was being relieved not …

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Pentagon Seeking To Acquire 100,000 Body Bags

Bloomberg News reports: The Pentagon is seeking to provide as many as 100,000 military-style body bags for potential civilian use as the U.S. warns that deaths could soar in the coming weeks from the coronavirus pandemic. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has requested 100,000 body bags, known as Human Remains Pouches, through an interagency group that directed it to the …

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Navy “Disappointed” With Captain Of Stricken Carrier

The Navy Times reports: The Navy’s senior leadership was aware of both the COVID-19 outbreak onboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and the concern about properly isolating sailors well before the ship’s commanding officer, Capt. Brett Crozier, sent a letter Monday up his chain of command sounding the alarm, the Navy’s top admiral told reporters Wednesday. “Let me emphasize that …

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Navy To Evacuate Sailors From Virus-Stricken Carrier

The Washington Post reports: The Navy plans to remove some 2,700 sailors from a coronavirus-inflicted aircraft carrier in Guam in coming days, senior Navy officials said Tuesday, after government officials on the island secured hotel rooms for many of them. The move comes amid intense scrutiny, after a letter from the ship’s captain circulated in the media drew attention to …

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Aircraft Carrier Captain Pleads For Help, 100+ Cases

The San Francisco Chronicle reports: The captain of a nuclear aircraft carrier with more than 100 sailors infected with the coronavirus pleaded Monday with U.S. Navy officials for resources to allow isolation of his entire crew and avoid possible deaths in a situation he described as quickly deteriorating. The unusual plea from Capt. Brett Crozier, a Santa Rosa native, came …

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Pentagon Preps To Activate US Navy Hospital Ships

Just in from the US Naval Institute: The Pentagon is starting the process of activating Navy hospital ships USNS Mercy (T-AH-19) and USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) as part of the Defense Department’s domestic response to the spreading COVID-19 virus, USNI News has learned. “We’ve already given orders to the Navy… to lean forward in terms of getting them ready to deploy,” …

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Pentagon To Reconsider Denial Of Amazon Contract

Reuters reports: The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is seeking court permission to reconsider certain aspects of its decision to award a $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft Corp, court filings showed on Thursday. A U.S. judge last month granted Amazon.com Inc’s request to temporarily halt the DoD and Microsoft from moving forward with the deal, which Amazon had …

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US Army Signs Deal On Experimental Anti-Virus Drug

The Military Times reports: U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command has signed an arrangement with Gilead Sciences to provide the company’s investigational coronavirus drug to U.S. troops confirmed to have the COVID-19 virus. Gilead’s medication, remdesivir, was approved for clinical research in February by the FDA. The medication, which initially was developed by the Foster City, California-based company to …

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Judge: Amazon “Likely” To Win Pentagon Cloud Lawsuit

The Washington Post reports: A federal judge has concluded that a bid protest lawsuit brought by Amazon over President Trump’s intervention in an important Pentagon cloud computing contract “is likely to succeed on the merits” of one of its central arguments, according to a court document made public Friday. The document provides the first indication of how Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith …

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Pentagon Linguist Charged With Spying For Terrorists

Via press release from the Justice Department: Mariam Taha Thompson, 61, formerly of Rochester, Minnesota, was charged today in the District of Columbia with transmitting highly sensitive classified national defense information to a foreign national with apparent connections to Hizballah, a foreign terrorist organization that has been so designated by the Secretary of State. According to the affidavit filed in …

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Appeals Court Hears Challenge To Male-Only Draft

Courthouse News reports: An attorney for a men’s rights group argued Tuesday before the Fifth Circuit that the military’s all-male draft registration system, which the Supreme Court upheld in 1981, should now be struck down as unconstitutional. Marc Angelucci, representing the National Coalition for Men and two men challenging the male-only draft, said a 2015 decision by the military to …

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Marine Corps Bans Confederate Symbols From Bases

From the military blog Task & Purpose: Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger has ordered all Confederate-related paraphernalia to be removed from Marine Corps installations, his spokesman confirmed on Wednesday. Military analyst B. A. Friedman first tweeted a document showing the commandant’s decision on Wednesday. The document did not say when all of the Confederate-related paraphernalia needed to be removed …

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