The Chairman of Veteran Advocates of Ore-Ida, Ronald Verini, writes two articles every month for publication in a Regional Newspaper, this article ."LEADERSHIP GAPS AND THE ILLUSION OF MILITARY READINESS?"

 will be published SEPTEMBER 16, 2026 Here is a part of Mr. Verini's article, and you can read the full article by clicking the red bar below.

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Leadership Gaps and the Illusion of Military Readiness?

September 16th, 2026 Veterans Column by Ronald Verini

In my opinion, the most pressing challenge facing America’s active-duty armed forces today is not merely sagging morale or political debate. It is a concrete, institutional crisis of whether our services actually possess enough trained, available, and properly supported personnel to perform the high-stakes missions assigned to them. This operational deficit is now dangerously compounded by what I view as a severe qualification gap at the top of the Department of Defense, alongside a damaging loss of key civilian and military personnel. Based on documented Government Accountability Office (GAO) findings updated through 2026, our forces are operating under immense strain, not because service members lack commitment, but because leadership asks too few people, with uneven preparation and incomplete data, to sustain an increasingly demanding global posture.

The reality of this structural breakdown is clearest at sea. In its review of sailor-led ship maintenance, the GAO surveyed executive officers aboard 232 ships, achieving a 91 percent response rate, and interviewed more than 140 leaders and 200 sailors across 25 ships. The results were stark: 63 percent of surveyed executive officers stated that it was moderately to extremely difficult to complete necessary repairs while underway using the number of sailors assigned to their ships. GAO’s August 2026 assessment on Navy attack submarines highlighted that maintenance delays and shipyard idle time cost over 15,000 operational days and $3.4 billion over the past decade. In my view, this is not an abstract statistic; it directly threatens whether American warships can deploy on schedule, sustain power projection, and repair mission-critical systems during combat.

This deep strain intersects directly with the appointment and tenure of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. While Hegseth served honorably as an infantry officer in the Army National Guard, it is my considered opinion that his background lacks the senior executive management, flag-rank command, or large-scale enterprise experience required to lead an $800+ billion bureaucracy and oversee 2.8 million personnel. Navigating a cross-service readiness crisis requires a deep operational understanding of defense acquisition frameworks, global supply-chain logistics, and force-structure management. Relying on a background primarily defined by media commentary and non-profit advocacy leaves the Department of Defense without the seasoned executive stewardship necessary to solve multi-branch operational failures.

Compounding this leadership shortfall is what I observe as a chaotic loss of vital institutional memory across the Pentagon. High turnover, abrupt departures, and political friction within the Office of the Secretary of Defense have drained the defense establishment of career policy experts, senior civilian administrators, and experienced military planners. When these key personnel leave, the informal networks that quietly resolve inter-service logistical bottlenecks collapse. Without that connective tissue, the Pentagon struggles to address basic operational failures, such as accurately tracking whether assigned service members are actually available for duty or merely filling space on an organizational roster.

This distinction between paper strength and true availability represents a critical vulnerability. As GAO assessments highlight, the Navy consistently fails to maintain accurate information regarding assigned personnel versus those available for duty, as well as existing skill or experience gaps. Consequently, a unit can appear fully staffed on paper while lacking the technical expertise, rank, or physical availability required in practice. Furthermore, training deficiencies compound the problem. Sixty-four percent of surveyed naval executive officers reported severe difficulty conducting sailor-led maintenance using available formal training, while 75 percent reported similar difficulty completing repairs. When formal training fails, experienced personnel must teach on the job while carrying excessive workloads, creating a self-defeating cycle of exhaustion and early departure.

These maintainer and supply shortages directly cripple military hardware across the active force. According to GAO reports, the Air Force’s C-130J Super Hercules met its mission-capable goal in only one of ten years between fiscal years 2015 and 2024, the Army’s CH-47F Chinook failed in every single year, and the Navy’s EA-18G Growler similarly failed every year. Further underscoring this trend, a June 2026 GAO report revealed that the F-35 fleet's full mission-capable rate fell to just 25% in fiscal year 2025, with the Air Force variant dropping to 38.6%. These figures demonstrate that having state-of-the-art platforms is meaningless if the military lacks qualified maintainers to keep them airworthy.

OBSERVED ANNUALLY · THIRD FRIDAY OF SEPTEMBER

The only official national day of observance dedicated entirely to honoring Americans who were prisoners of war or remain missing and unaccounted for - from all conflicts, in all theaters, and from every branch of service.

NEXT OBSERVANCE

From its origins to a nationally codified annual observance now held worldwide, National POW/MIA Recognition Day has grown alongside the League's own five-decade effort to hold the country to its promise that none are forgotten or left behind.

Jimmy Carter - National Day of Prayer for those missing

Until July 18, 1979, no special commemoration had been held to honor America's POW/MIAs — those returned and those still missing and unaccounted for. That first year, resolutions were passed in Congress and the national ceremony was held at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. A Missing Man Formation was flown by the 1st Tactical Squadron, Langley AFB, Virginia. The Veterans Administration published a poster bearing the letters "POW/MIA."

The simple "POW/MIA" text poster format was replaced with a black and white drawing of a POW in harsh captivity — designed to convey the urgency of the situation and the priority that President Ronald Reagan assigned to achieving the fullest possible accounting for Americans still missing from the Vietnam War. For the following decade, various renditions of the American Eagle by artist and Vietnam Veteran Tom Nielsen came to symbolize America's POW/MIAs and the nation's determination to account for them.

The 1984 National POW/MIA Recognition Day ceremony was held at the White House, hosted by President Reagan. It remains among the most impressive ceremonies in the observance's history — the Missing Man Formation flown up the Ellipse and directly over the White House was described by witnesses as perhaps the most remarkable ever. That year, the American Ex-POWs had advocated for April 9th — the date during World War II when the largest number of Americans were captured. Legislation covering both dates was passed: July 20, 1984 (as initially proposed) and April 9, 1985. The April ceremony had to be cancelled due to inclement weather — a concern that had been raised from the start about an April date.

The September 19, 1986 national ceremony was held on the steps of the U.S. Capitol facing the National Mall — concluding with a flight of high-performance military aircraft in Missing Man Formation. The ceremony drew members of Congress, returned POWs, MIA families, and thousands of Americans who gathered on the Mall.

In an effort to accommodate all returned POWs and all Americans still missing and unaccounted for from all wars, the League proposed the third Friday in September: a date not associated with any particular war, not tied to any organization's national convention, and a time of year when weather nationwide is generally moderate. The date was adopted and has been observed annually ever since. Most national ceremonies have been held at the Pentagon, though the observance now takes place in communities across the country and around the world.

National POW/MIA Recognition Day legislation was introduced yearly until 1995, when Congress opted to discontinue considering legislation to designate special commemorative days. Since then, successive Presidents of both parties have signed an annual proclamation designating the third Friday in September as National POW/MIA Recognition Day — making it a permanent fixture of the national calendar without requiring annual legislation.

National POW/MIA Recognition Day ceremonies are now held throughout the nation and around the world — on military installations, ships at sea, state capitols, at schools, churches, national veterans and civic organizations, police and fire departments, and fire stations. The League's POW/MIA flag is flown, and the focus is ensuring that America remembers its responsibility to stand behind those who serve and to do everything possible to account for those who do not return.

Recognition Day is not a passive observance. It is a call to action — an annual opportunity for every American community to renew the national commitment to account for those who did not come home.

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By Sarah McFarlane and Gram Slattery, Reuters

LONDON/WASHINGTON — Deep in Arctic waters near the remote Svalbard archipelago this spring, NATO allies caught Russian subs training to unleash a secret weapon designed to disable critical undersea cables without leaving any fingerprints.

The clandestine Russian operation, described to Reuters by two Western officials, was carried out by Moscow’s GUGI undersea warfare directorate, which used deep-sea submersibles to simulate the deployment of the sophisticated and destructive technology.

A joint operation involving Britain, Norway and the United States tracked and confronted the Russian vessels at sea, said the two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. The vessels were prevented from completing their exercise and eventually left the area.

Britain and Norway disclosed in April that they had uncovered a covert Russian operation in Arctic waters. But the discovery of the new weapon, the location of the operation and the U.S. involvement have not been reported.

The deep-sea face-off comes at a time when some Western intelligence officials fear the Kremlin is ramping up sabotage operations in Europe and preparing for a conflict with NATO.

Some U.S. intelligence analysts are increasingly concerned Russia may test NATO’s mutual defense pact, known as Article 5, three U.S. officials said. If it does, destroying subsea cables could be a critical part of that effort, the Western officials said.

Cables no thicker than a garden hose, lying on the seabed or buried just below, are critical to global internet connectivity and financial transactions. Their economic and strategic importance has made them targets in past conflicts, including in the First and Second World Wars, when they were critical to delivering orders by telegraph or telephone.

Two 1,400 km subsea fiber-optic cables linking Svalbard to mainland Norway lie as deep as 2,700 meters below the sea’s surface. They carry vast amounts of satellite data downloaded at the SvalSat satellite ground station, the world’s largest and part of NASA’s Near Space Network.

Russia’s Defense Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment on the incident. The Kremlin consistently denies conducting sabotage operations in NATO countries or plotting any confrontation.

• By Brett Harrison Shaun Moore

Americans serving abroad often carry devices that can share precise location data across .multiple commercial apps, services and data-broker systems, frequently in ways users do not fully understand. They may not know it. Our adversaries do.

This is not hypothetical.

In 2018, Strava, a popular GPS-based fitness app, drew a map of one of America’s most sensitive military installations. Soldiers had simply gone for a run. When the app published an aggregated “heat map” of user activity, the GPS trails of service members illuminated base layouts and operational routines for anyone with an internet connection, not through espionage, but through data.

That vulnerability has multiplied since then. In March 2026, reporting indicated that a French naval officer’s public fitness-tracking activity exposed the location of the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle.

During recent tensions involving Iran, viral warnings circulated online claiming that location-enabled mobile applications could expose U.S. personnel movements, underscoring how credible and persistent this concern has become, even though military officials later said that specific message was false.

U.S. policymakers increasingly recognize that foreign adversaries, including China, can exploit commercially available sensitive data about Americans, including military personnel. These incidents reflect a simple but consequential truth: location data, when aggregated, leaked, or otherwise compromised, can reveal patterns of life, operational routines and sensitive infrastructure

Observation Post by Clay Beyersdorfer

It happens about 80 minutes into “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.” SpongeBob, denied a promotion and humiliated in front of his co-workers, wanders into the Goofy Goober Ice Cream Party Boat. He proceeds to spiral.After a binge of sundaes and shame, he stumbles on stage, belting out a shredded guitar solo rendition of “I’m a Goofy Goober (Rock!)” in front of a confused crowd. There’s glitter. There’s foam. There’s full-throttle emotional release.

And if you’ve spent any amount of time in uniform, you’ve likely seen that clip — or at least a meme of it — shared with eerie sincerity. Maybe you laughed. Perhaps you rolled your eyes. But maybe, just maybe, it hit a little too close to home.

For all its absurdity, SpongeBob’s “Goofy Goober” breakdown has become an unlikely touchstone in military circles, particularly among those who know what it feels like to carry more than they’re allowed to say.

It’s the screaming catharsis that never happens in a formation. The ridiculous meltdown captures the quiet, internal ones that don’t make it into war movies. Every service member who’s ever needed to cry and didn’t, who’s ever felt out of place in their own civilian life and who’s ever tried to joke their way through pain that had no good language. SpongeBob just says it louder.

Military culture breeds stoicism. You learn quickly not to complain, hesitate or show weakness. And when the mission ends and the uniform comes off, all that armor doesn’t just evaporate. It calcifies. You carry it home, to your relationships, jobs and silence.

SpongeBob, in contrast, is absurdly open. He is the emotional inverse of everything military training drills into you. He’s hopeful. He’s naive. He wears his feelings on his sleeves — and when those sleeves get dirty, he cries about it in a room full of strangers.

And that’s the point. Strangely, that scene feels honest. Honest about what it feels like when you’ve been holding it together for too long. Honest about what happens when the ridiculousness finally outweighs the rules. SpongeBob’s meltdown is a stand-in for the veteran who doesn’t drink to party, but to forget. It’s the laugh-before-you-snap moment familiar to anyone who’s ever been “fine” until they weren’t.

The song “I’m a Goofy Goober” isn’t just silly. It’s defiant. When SpongeBob shouts, “I’m a kid, you say? When you say I’m a kid, I say: Say it again!” he’s rejecting the labels people assign to him. He’s rejecting the structure. He’s saying, “I’m still me, even if I don’t fit what you think I should be.”

That hits hard when you’ve gone from commanding missions to being told to use the kiosk at the DMV. When you’ve gone from decision-making in high-pressure scenarios to being passed over for jobs because “you don’t have corporate experience.” When you’ve buried friends, you get asked to “tone it down” in staff meetings.

It’s easy to laugh at SpongeBob’s dramatics. But a lot of veterans would tell you it’s the closest thing to what their emotional breakdown might look like — if they ever let themselves have one.

NICHOLAS SLAYTON Task & Purpose

UPDATED JAN 1, 2026 12:53 PM ESTIn the 1950s the Navy and Army worked on small VTOL machines to make troops go airborne. They worked, just not well enough.

For decades the United States military has dreamed of developing jetpacks to ferry troops around. Personalized flying machines could turn an infantryman into an airborne fighter. But alongside rocket-propelled soldiers, the U.S. military also once gave personal vertical take-off and landing machines a shot.

They are better described, and are classified as flying platforms. Soldiers would stand on a small platform, which itself was over a large fan that would generate lift and get troops airborne. Steering itself would actually be simple: soldiers would lean, tilting the platform and directing it where they wanted to go, almost like a surfboard. 

In the mid-1950s the Office of Naval Research, in a joint project with the Army, began to see if flying platforms would be both feasible and practical. And it turns out, the personal VTOL machines worked. Troops did fly on them

According to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, the idea for flying platforms started in earnest in the late 1940s. In 1953 the Army began its flying platform projects, contracting with Hiller Aircraft and de Lackner Helicopters. The Office of Naval Research was already working with Hiller, so a joint-service venture started. De Lackner created its DH-4 Aerocycle (designated the HZ-1), which had a smaller platform right above spinning rotors. It worked but was shelved due to the risk. 

More success came with the Hiller projects. The Office of Naval Research got Hiller’s first design, the 1031-A-1 flying platform. It stood 7-feet tall, with an 8-foot-in-diameter platform, with the fan almost as wide. With two engines, it could hit a top speed of 16 miles per hour. The flying platforms were meant to be stable enough and easy enough to control that soldiers on them could still aim and fire small arms while airborne. Photos from some of the tests of the 1031-A-1 show service members aiming and firing rifles while in the sky

The Army, after giving up on the Aerocycle, turned to Hiller, getting a larger version of the 1031-A-1 with more thrust. The Hiller VZ-1 Pawnee began testing in 1957, with three engines. However the increased size made the idea of kinesthetic control impractical. Soldiers could not easily steer or maneuver on the Pawnee. Attempts to adjust the power and size didn’t resolve the issue.

WILD BATS WITH NAPALM,

WHAT COULD GO WRONG????

 by Joshua Skovlund, Task & Purpose

Bats use echolocation to find food and places to rest. Add in an incendiary device glued to their chest, and you now have a firestorm that can wreak havoc on any enemy. Or so Pennsylvania dental surgeon Dr. Lytle S. Adams thought during World War II. 

The problem is that you don’t know where they will go once released. Add to it that it’s generally a bad idea to mix explosives, adhesives, and wildlife.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Adams made a fateful trip to the Carlsbad Caverns National Parkduring a vacation to New Mexico. He was awed by the hundreds of thousands of bats that nested in the caves.

The bats were still on his mind later in day as he drove away when news came across the car’s radio of the attack on Pearl Harbor. According to the National Institute of Health, he was “outraged over this travesty, [Adams] began to mentally construct a plan for U.S. retaliation.

The idea Adams came up with — a ‘bat bomb,’ with 1,000 bats carrying napalm into a city full of wooden buildings — led to one of the U.S.’s most bizarre weapons development programs of all time, one that Adams believed could bring about a quick end of the war but did little more than burn down a flight training base in the U.S.

Adams knew that buildings in Japanese cities were predominantly built of wood. His idea was to develop an empty bomb case that, rather than hold explosives, would hold 1,040 bats toting napalm-like incendiary gel with timed fuses. Dropped over Tokyo, the bats would create a hellish cyclone with incendiary devices throughout Tokyo, hopefully bringing about an end to World War II

Adams put his idea in a letter to the White House, where he had professional contacts who got the letter to President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was interested, if cautious, telling staffers, “This man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea but is worth looking into,” according to author Jack Couffer’s book, “Bat Bomb: World War II’s Other Secret Weapon.”

Couffer was a young filmmaker who had grown up studying bats and other birds as a teenager. He would go on to a career making dozens of nature documentaries, but he was drafted into the Army early in World War II and assigned to the bat bomb project and witnessed much of its three-year development.

The development and testing, dubbed Project X-Ray, was based in New Mexico. The program developed a metal bomb casing with three horizontal layers, similar to upside-down ice cube trays, where bats would nest. To keep them docile — or as docile as a bat strapped with a bomb can be — they would be placed in an artificial cold-induced hibernation. The “bat bomb” was designed to be released from high altitudes just before dawn, when bats naturally seek out a place to sleep during the daylight hours. 

Sarah Sicard MilitaryTimes

The Navy may have the most complicated rank structure when it comes to its ratings system, but there is another, much more uncouth method for establishing hierarchy among sailors: Filthy coffee mugs.

It is a commonly-held truth in the seafaring service that one can tell a higher-up from a newbie based on the amount of sludge that lives in the bottom of one’s coffee cup.

So, in the interest of salt, here are some professional tips, from Navy veterans, to get an optimally seasoned mug.

1. Always drink black coffee. Milk or creamer curdles and introduces bacteria into the mix. Sour lactose creates a hostile environment — not ideal for going years without washing your mug.

2. Drink the whole cup of coffee. Don’t leave even a drop behind. You want to season the mug with a faint film, not swigging day-old coffee every morning.

3. For extra flavoring, take the leftover coffee grounds from the filter and let them rest in the cup for a few days before dumping it out. Treat your mug like a cast iron skillet.

4. If you need to, rinse it lightly with just a little water. This is only to be done in cases where the buildup is starting to become untenable.

5. Don’t wash the mug with the soap. Ever. You might be tempted every now and again to give it a good soak. Don’t. You will lose all the flavoring, respect from your near-peers and any chance at an honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) released in January an updated Department of Defense (DOD) list of locations outside of Vietnam where tactical herbicides were used, tested or stored by the United States military.

“This update was necessary to improve accuracy and communication of information,” said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie. “VA depends on DOD to provide information regarding in-service environmental exposure for disability claims based on exposure to herbicides outside of Vietnam."

DOD conducted a thorough review of research, reports and government publications in response to a November 2018 Government Accountability Office report.

“DOD will continue to be responsive to the needs of our interagency partners in all matters related to taking care of both current and former service members,” said Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper. “The updated list includes Agents Orange, Pink, Green, Purple, Blue and White and other chemicals and will be updated as verifiable information becomes available.”

Veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange or other herbicides during service may be eligible for a variety of VA benefits, including an Agent Orange Registry health exam, health care and disability compensation for diseases associated with exposure. Their dependents and survivors also may be eligible for benefits.

 by Sarah Sicard, Observation Post

Is there anything sweeter — literally or figuratively — than biting into the plastic-wrapped chemical compound of luxuriously spongey cake with vanilla cream that is a Twinkie?

Perhaps not. But the original Hostess delicacy was once something else entirely. The preservative-filled dessert that many once believed could withstand nuclear war got its start as a banana cream shortcake, until World War II changed everything.

In 1930, a baker named James Dewar began experimenting while serving as manager of Continental Baking Company’s Chicago area plant in River Forest, according to the Chicago Tribune. He wanted to prove that shortbread could serve a purpose outside strawberry shortcake.

“The economy was getting tight, and the company needed to come out with another low-priced item,” he told the paper. “We were already selling these little finger cakes during the strawberry season for shortcake, but the pans we baked them in sat idle except for that six-week season.”

While in St. Louis on a work trip, Dewar saw a billboard for “Twinkle Toe Shoes,” and thus found the name for his compact confections.