The “Summer Surge Incentive,” announced this week with other recruiting reforms, is open to current members who reenlist and airmen transferring from active duty or the Air Force Reserve.

The incentive, first reported by Task & Purpose, comes as other services are offering large bonuses to retain talent. The Army is offering bonuses exceeding $200,000 to keep aviation warrant officers in the ranks, and the Navy is offering up to $150,000 for select aviation roles.

In addition to the bonus, the Guard said that it is now sending its highest-performing recruiters to wings struggling to meet recruiting goals, rather than limiting them to their home states. Other initiatives include a 179% increase in local market funding and a social media collaborator program.

U.S. Air Force Col. Mark Williams, director of Recruiting and Retention for the Air National Guard, said the changes are meant to modernize the force.

“It is all part of an effort to continue reaching individuals seeking purpose, growth and the opportunity to make a lasting impact,” he said.

The Guard also instituted a policy allowing wings that maintain at least 90% manning strength to temporarily fill positions above their authorized numbers.

The change, according to Chief Master Sgt. James Chubb, chief of the Air National Guard Recruiting and Retention Accessions Branch, said was designed to prevent recruiting momentum from stalling once units reach their prescribed limits.

“One of our greatest challenges is balancing recruiting success with limited authorized vacancies,” Chubb said in the announcement. “As recruiters successfully fill formations, available positions naturally become scarce, creating an artificial ceiling on continued growth.”

For fiscal year 2026, the Air National Guard is looking to recruit 8,842 enlisted airmen, 1,123 line officers, 68 chaplains and 53 warrant officers.

The event, scheduled for Oct. 26-30 at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, will bring together military personnel, government employees, industry and academic partners and contractors supporting the government. Participants will choose one of two tracks: developing AI agents on the Defense Department’s GenAI.mil platform or advanced AI development using the service and school’s resources.

The hackathon’s intent, according to the message, is to “generate practical, digital solutions that solve registered requirements while accelerating the Marine Corps’ ability to integrate AI-enabled capabilities into operations.”

Participants will spend at least two full days hacking — at the unclassified level — before final presentations and judging on the fourth day.

Those interested must apply by Oct. 9. Chosen attendees will be notified by Oct. 16.

The military’s push toward AI and automation is being driven in part by the sheer volume of information expected on a future battlefield. During an exercise earlier this year, the Army found that a large-scale conflict could require troops to process as many as 1,500 targets a day, which is a workload far beyond what a headquarters staff could manage without automation.

The Army recently established the 08H Army Equestrian military occupational specialty and Staff Sgt. Shawn Tabor and Sgt. Daimien Copeland, both assigned to the Caisson Detachment at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, are among the first soldiers to qualify for the new role after completing an 18-week horsemanship program.

“When the 08H opportunity came around, there was no hesitation; I immediately jumped on it. There was no second thought or doubt about doing it,” said Tabor, who has served in the detachment for eight years as an infantryman.

The 08H specialty replaced the “military horseman” identifier and, according to an Army release, is open to infantry soldiers in the grades of E5 to E9. It is a role the Army says contributes to recruiting, public outreach and military funeral honors.

During the initial 12-week program, soldiers learn grooming, groundwork and communication with horses in the Basic Horsemanship Course before moving on to horse driving and the Caisson Detachment’s distinctive postilion riding method during the Advanced Horsemanship Course for six more weeks.

Copeland, who has served in the detachment for four years, said that when he was in-processing, he was excited to learn about the opportunity to work with horses.

“During my time at Caisson, we had our first state funeral in more than 20 years for former President Jimmy Carter. Taking part in that funeral reinforced the importance of our mission and the honor of serving in a role that very few soldiers have the opportunity to experience,” he said in the release.

Previously scheduled to end, the Army in Dec. 2025 announced it was retaining military working equid programs — which include Defense Department horses, mules and donkeys — in Texas and Kansas.

The designation comes after the Army resumed limited use of horse-drawn caissons at Arlington National Cemetery in mid-2025 following a two-year suspension prompted by concerns over the welfare of the horses. The service halted the program in 2023 after two horses — Mickey and Tony — died in 2022 from colon impactions linked to substandard feed and living conditions.

According to the Defense Department, the Army upgraded equipment to replace wooden saddles with lighter, custom leather saddles. The service also decreased the caisson’s weight by over 1,000 pounds and made other adjustments to lessen the strain on the horses.

A 2025 release also said the soldiers’ training had “shifted from impromptu methods to a structured pipeline,” with the basic course — launched in 2024 — held at a private stable in Virginia and then a six-week camp located at an equestrian sports facility in Florida.

“We don’t get soldiers from horse backgrounds anymore,” said Army Maj. Wes Strickland, the 3rd Infantry Regiment public affairs officer at the time, said in the 2025 statement. “So, we teach everything — how to walk up to a horse, saddle it, clean a stall.”

The skill tab will join the likes of the Sapper Tab, Ranger Tab and Special Forces Tab as “an official skill tab,” spokesperson Christopher Surridge said, adding that the Army is in the midst of codifying official policy and procedures for the tab’s wear and approval in the upcoming iterations of the service’s regulations.

“We will officially publish and distribute formal implementation guidance to all commands upon publishing these regulations,” he said.

The update was first reported by Task & Purpose after a related memorandum circulated on social media. Last week, U.S. Army Pacific Command on X said the Army had approved the tab and asked followers to tag or submit photos of themselves wearing it.

The move builds on an effort to revive jungle warfare expertise and experience, as the Army earlier this year tapped the newly-redesignated Army Security Cooperation Group-South to oversee the Combined Jungle Operations Training Center in Panama. Candidates at the Base Aeronaval Cristóbal Colón school complete the grueling course in what the Army calls “Green Hell,” where suffocating heat and humidity pair with heavy foliage to make basic soldiering tasks even harder.

The first phase of the course — which is conducted jointly with Panamanian forces — covers “jungle survival fundamentals,” according to the Army, including learning to use machetes, kindling fires, purifying water and constructing basic shelters. In the second phase, students learn small-unit tactics, ambushes, waterborne operations and how to move in dense terrain.

The course culminates in phase three, where students are sent on simulated missions and evaluated on teamwork and leadership.

The Army formerly operated a jungle warfare training course for decades before it was shut down in 1999.

Its rebirth comes as the Army has made sweeping changes to its force structure as it prepares for conflict with peer and near-peer competitors, shifting the advisory force created by the Global War on Terror to a new mission and overhauling command structure under the Western Hemisphere Command, created last year.

The program is open to Army aviation warrant officers who meet specific career requirements and agree to remain on active duty for three to six additional years.

The move, first reported by Task & Purpose, comes as the Navy and Air Force are also offering hefty bonuses to keep select experienced aviators in the service.

Warrant officers with 12 to 14 years of active federal service can pocket up to $75,600 by committing to three more years on active duty. Those with at least 18 years of service can qualify for bonuses ranging from $120,000 to $209,880 in exchange for four- to six-year commitments.

The incentives are available to regular Army warrant officers in certain specialties who are medically qualified for flight duty and serve as pilots in command, among other requirements. Those seeking the bonuses must assent via written agreement. If they fail to stay eligible during the term of their service, aviators may be required to repay the bonuses.

The payments will be made in monthly installments — instead of a lump sum — and are taxable, though they’re tax-exempt when the payee qualifies for combat zone tax exclusion.

The program has an obligation ceiling of $17.1 million, but Army headquarters can suspend the bonus payments if funding becomes unavailable, according to the memorandum.

Effective immediately, the directive says bonus agreements will be processed on a first-come, first-serve basis. The directive expires Sept. 30, 2026.

The exercise brought Army aviators and experts together in May at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, to test virtual versions of the MV-75’s cockpit, according to a Thursday release, which said the feedback will be incorporated into the aircraft’s design ahead of its first flight and ultimate delivery to the 101st Airborne Division.

The service’s new tiltrotor aircraft — named in honor of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe — was designed for use in the Pacific theater. The Army has sped up its development timeline and announced in April that the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, is expected to field the MV-75 in 2027.

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Julian Dilg, a UH-60 pilot who participated in the weeklong exercise, said there was a noticeable cockpit change from current aircraft.

“The displays are inherently different, so we were able to work together and bounce ideas off of each other and gain insight,” he said in the release.

The collaboration was critical for the participants to “find enough common ground to work with in order to decide what changes needed to be made to display the information needed to fly it most effectively,” Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jordan Brooks, a CH-47 pilot, said in the release.

Army and Bell engineers have begun incorporating the feedback into the aircraft’s cockpit design by adjusting display symbols, improving menu navigation and improving alerting. One recommendation prompted by the exercise was the push to group power and performance data together, a change they said would make decisions easier, per the release.

The evaluation comes as militaries prepare for future battlespaces defined by drones and inundated with data. Future pilots may be expected to contend with fleets of unmanned aircraft and sensors in a crowded airspace, meaning they will have to process unprecedented amounts of information.

Maj. Collin L. Welch, 40, pleaded guilty to unlawfully introducing aliens to enter and remain in the U.S. and the theft of around $54,000 in government money, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, D.C. He is scheduled for sentencing in December.

As a married man, Welch was posted in 2019 to the U.S. Embassy in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where he kindled a relationship with a Mongolian woman. By creating a fake divorce decree, he convinced the woman he was single and in 2022, he married her in Mongolia, federal prosecutors said.

In 2024, Welch brought the woman and her minor daughter to the U.S. on tourist visas and in October of that year, he married the woman for a second time in Virginia, according to the attorney’s office. Welch was still legally married to his initial wife at each of his subsequent nuptials.

When his guests’ tourist visas expired in early 2025, Welch continued to house and financially support them and he, once again, took to fabricating documents, creating permanent residency approvals, Social Security cards and a letter showing military health benefits for dependents, the office said. He never filed any paperwork with any government agency.

To fund the travel and living expenses of his new bride and her daughter, Welch racked up tens of thousands of dollars on his government travel card, creating fraudulent travel vouchers using fake hotel and rental card receipts.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division, with help from the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Criminal Investigations Unit.

Welch, who is from Arlington, Virginia, previously served in the Alaska and D.C. National Guard, and he deployed to Afghanistan and Djibouti.

The D.C. National Guard has not responded to a request for comment.

With the acceptance of the 359th — and final — tiltrotor aircraft, the Marine Corps marked the end of the MV-22B Osprey program of record, a milestone that will now shift efforts towards “sustaining and modernizing the fleet for decades to come,” the V-22 Joint Program Office, which manages the Osprey program, said in a statement.

“The MV-22B … fundamentally changed the way the Marine Air-Ground Task Force generates combat power,” Lt. Gen. William Swan, the Marine Corps’ deputy commandant for aviation, said in the statement. “It provides commanders with decision space that only speed and reach can provide, connecting ships, bases and distributed forces in ways previous generations could only imagine. Today, Marine commanders build operations around the assumption that the MV-22B will be there.”

Though the Navy and Air Force also use variants of the Osprey, the Marine Corps maintains the majority of the fleet.

The Corps intends to keep the Osprey operational through 2055 with efforts that include improving wiring, working towards pro-rotor gear boxes, standardizing the fleet and redesigning parts of the aircraft for better safety.

The aircraft has a history of safety issues and accidents that have led to the deaths of over 60 service members since 2000, according to prior Military Times reporting, and in 2023, the Defense Department grounded the aircraft after eight service members were killed when an Air Force Osprey crashed.

A 2025 government watchdog report found that the services had not appropriately shared information about Osprey issues amongst each other.

The Osprey was developed to reduce the gap between rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft. Since going operational in 2007, the platform has been involved in 114 deployments and flown more than 683,300 hours, according to the program’s office, which also said the Osprey represents three quarters of all Marine Corps rotary wing support.

The Osprey is produced jointly by Bell and Boeing and according to a Wednesday release from the companies, has been involved in various high-profile missions, including the ongoing Venezuela earthquake response, the 2022 earthquake response in Haiti, operations to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips in 2009 after his ship was hijacked by Somali pirates.

The service on June 30 awarded firm-fixed-price Other Transaction Agreements to Ford, GM Defense and BC Customs, the Army confirmed Tuesday. Each company will deliver three Infantry Squad Vehicle-Heavy, or ISV-H, models, with the first expected by March 30, 2027. The six-seat platforms will then be tested with the Army Test and Evaluation Command.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the awards on Monday.

Military Times requested the dollar amounts of the contracts, but the Army did not specify the cost.

In a Commercial Solutions Opening, or CSO, published in April, the Army posted that it was looking for vehicles capable of carrying a 4,000-pound payload, towing a 6,500-pound trailer and supporting large power requirements. The service wants its new ISV-H able to export 60 kW of continuous high-voltage DC power — an immense load — so soldiers can operate counter drone systems, electronic warfare, directed energy weapons and more.

The Army also wants the vehicle to be rechargeable — able to replenish its power to 90% within six hours — in conditions ranging from extreme cold that dips to -25 degrees Fahrenheit to intense heat climbing to 130 degrees.

The Army is preparing for autonomous operations, with desired specifications like architecture already in place for “drive-by-wire.” It also wants rotating rear seats and “ergonomic mobile workstations,” as well as rear seating that can be quickly configured — without tools — to hold a litter for evacuations.

The current Infantry Squad Vehicle, built by GM Defense, was designed to quickly move nine soldiers through landscapes that were dangerous or impractical to use other military vehicles.

The Army’s fiscal 2027 budget request, released in April, calls for purchasing an initial 34 ISV-H vehicles at an estimated cost of $463,000 per truck, with a long-term goal to buy 606 vehicles.

In a June Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Jess Tolleson, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology, said the ISV-H needs to fill a power-generation shortfall.

“One of the things that we do have a critical capability gap on right now is power generation at that mobile brigade combat team level,” he said.

GM Defense had not responded to a Military Times inquiry at the time of publication but previously said on social media that it was optimizing a Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD truck.

Ford, in a Tuesday statement regarding the contract, said its Super Duty trucks are well suited for military applications but did not provide further details on the specifications. Breaking Defense on Monday reported Ford would be using its F-Series pickup truck.

In a call on Tuesday, BC Customs chief operating officer, Dave Baringer, said the company was uniquely able to create an endlessly modify-able, “purpose-driven, ground-up vehicle.” He also said BC Customs was working in cooperation with Raglan, a company that will handle the electronic infrastructure of the prototypes. Baringer declined to discuss the timeline or contract amount.

The Army’s quest for a vehicle that can produce powerful amounts of energy comes amid its push to field more energy-directed weapons on lighter tactical vehicles.

The service has already operationally tested AeroVironment’s 20-kilowatt LOCUST laser aboard both the Infantry Squad Vehicle and Joint Light Tactical Vehicle through its Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser effort.

A now-viral video of the pests scuttled across the internet last week, prompting the closure of a Texas Army dining facility that seemingly served up hot meals to two- and six-legged bellies alike.

“We are aware of the video depicting our dining facility. Effective immediately, we are closing the Operation Iraqi Freedom facility to correct the situation. The DFAC will remain closed until the problem is remediated,” Lt. Col. Joey Payton, the director of public affairs for III Armored Corps, said in a statement to Military Times.

Payton said the Army was investigating how the Fort Hood facility became infested with the crawling creatures. While the building remains closed, he said, the base is providing food trucks with options for soldiers who hold meal cards to use.

Many junior enlisted soldiers who live in barracks automatically have part of their pay deducted to cover food at base dining facilities.

The video was posted anonymously on U.S. Army W.T.F. moments, an unofficial social media account that frequently shares soldier-submitted material.

Troops have long bemoaned the quality of dining facility food, but it is unlikely that insects were the intended answer to those seeking more diverse protein options.

The most recent roach-ma-geddon follows years of other complaints at the installation. In 2024, soldiers at the base, then called Fort Cavazos, said money was being deducted from their accounts even when dining facilities could not accommodate their religious dietary requirements.

Nearly 40,000 soldiers are currently stationed at Fort Hood, according to the service.