Tag: US military

Here is what we know about Travis King, the U.S. Soldier who ran across the DMZ to North Korea laughing earlier this week:

Officials say Pvt. 2nd Class King has been a cavalry scout with the U.S. Army since January 2021. 

The 23-year-old had been stationed in South Korea, but had recently served two months in a prison there on charges of assault, the Associated Press reported.

Several South Korean media outlets report that King had punched a South Korean national in a club last September. He had also been fined 5 million won ($3,942) for causing public damage and being uncooperative with police during his arrest.

According to an account from the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, citing legal sources, King yelled obscenities at South Korean police as he kicked the doors and interior of a police vehicle.

CBS News reports that King was released to U.S. officials at the military hub in the country about a week ago.

Before bolting into North Korea, King was being escorted to an airport outside of Seoul where he was expected to board a plane bound for Fort Bliss, Texas, to face military disciplinary action. 

Officials escorted him through airport security, but King somehow managed to ditch the escort and make his way out of the terminal and back to the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. 

That is where officials said King, who was dressed in civilian clothes, joined a tour of the Korean border village of Panmunjom.

NPR

You can read more at the link, but King had to have planned this out because here are the rules for going on a tour of Panmunjom on the DMZ:

According to the UNC rules the roster of the tourists to Panmunjum should be reported 48 hours (2 days) prior to the tour briefing time (13:45) in the camp Bonifas on the tour day. So person who is interested in this tour should send your name, passport number and nationality to us at least 3 days before.

KoreaDMZtour.com

The fact he claimed that he lost his passport to not board his flight is further evidence of how planned this was:

On Monday, the American solider was escorted by military police from Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, to Incheon International Airport. The solider then went through a security checkpoint alone because the military police officers were not allowed to accompany him.

King arrived at the boarding gate, but did not board the plane. 

“At the gate, he approached an American Airlines official and reported that his passport was missing, and was able to return out of the departure gate under the escort of an airline employee,” an official at Incheon International Airport told The Korea Times, adding that King appears to have lied about his missing passport.  

Once a passenger goes through the customs and immigration checkpoint at Incheon airport, he or she cannot go back to the terminal without a valid reason approved by an authorized personnel. 

Korea Times

So this was clearly not a drunken spur of the moment type of defection like we saw decades ago with Charles Robert Jenkins. King had this planned out at least three days in advance. The closest defection to this I can think of is PFC Joseph White who defected in 1982 likely because he was forbidden by his unit leadership from meeting his Korean girlfriend. So he got pissed off and crossed the DMZ into North Korea. In 1985 North Korea reported that White died in a river drowning. Will a similar fate await King?

The way I look at it is if strippers are not allowed to perform on base then it makes sense drag shows shouldn’t either:

Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, Thursday, May 18, 2023. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

President Joe Biden’s administration has stopped U.S. military bases from hosting drag shows after criticism from some Republicans, amid a broader push in conservative-led states targeting LGBTQ+ celebrations.

Hosting drag shows is “inconsistent with regulations regarding the use of (Defense Department) resources,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh in a statement Thursday.

At least one show in the U.S. was canceled as a result. Organizers of an event at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada canceled a drag show timed to Pride Month, which began Thursday, according to a Facebook post quoted by Fox News. A drag show that was scheduled for June 17 at the Brit Bar at Ramstein Air Base in Germany was also canceled.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Does anyone think offering accelerated citizenship to foreigners to join the military to make up for the recruiting shortage is a good idea?:

 The Air Force has graduated its first group of airmen who became American citizens during basic training as part of an accelerated naturalization process, which the service hopes will help solve recent difficulties in recruiting.

Fourteen foreign-born men and women who joined the Air Force were naturalized during several weeks of basic training this month at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas, the service said. They graduated from basic training and signed their U.S. Certificate of Citizenship on Wednesday.

“I will always be grateful for every opportunity I have here in the best country of the world,” said Airman 1st Class Natalia Laziuk, a member of the inaugural group and a native of Russia.

The enhanced process lets foreign-born recruits settle legal citizenship requirements immediately upon entering basic training. During seven and a half weeks, they can supply all the needed paperwork, take the citizenship test and satisfy other requirements to become naturalized Americans by the time that they graduate.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but I think if the recruits are already in the process of getting their citizenship I don’t have any issues with it. However, I think what we do need to be careful of is offering citizenship to foreigners to join the military that are not even eligible for citizenship. If a country can’t recruit its own citizens to defend it, is it still a country still worth defending? With that said I believe the current recruiting shortages are caused by self inflicted issues that can be fixed.

By the way I recommend everyone read what happened to the Roman military when it allowed large masses of foreigners to fill their ranks to make up for their recruiting shortages. It did not end well. Fortunately the U.S. military is no where near the issues Rome had, but what will it be like a hundred years from now if cutting military benefits and increasingly using foreigners to fill recruiting shortages becomes a popular way to fill the military?

Nothing new here, but probably good to occasionally repeat this so the Kim regime continues to understand that using new nukes will immediately end their rule over North Korea:

Any use of nuclear weapons by North Korea will be the end of the reclusive regime in Pyongyang, a U.S. Department of Defense spokesperson said Tuesday, amid concerns of a nuclear test by the reclusive country.

Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder also reiterated that the U.S. remains committed to deterring aggression.

“I think we have been very clear that were North Korea to employ a nuclear weapon, it would be the end of the North Korean regime,” the department press secretary told a daily press briefing.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The three nations have done this trilateral missile defense exercises in the past, but they were scrapped during the prior Moon administration:

South Korea, the United States and Japan held a trilateral missile defense exercise in the international waters of the East Sea on Wednesday, Seoul’s military said, amid heightened tensions caused by North Korea’s recent missile launches.

The exercise took place in waters east of South Korea’s Ulleung Island, mobilizing three Aegis-equipped destroyers — the South’s Sejong the Great, the U.S.’ USS Barry and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s JS Atago — according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

The exercise, which lasted for some five hours from 9 a.m., focused on practicing procedures to detect, track and intercept computer-simulated targets, and share related information, it said.

Of the three destroyers, only the U.S. vessel was involved in the interception segment, while the rest joined other parts of the drills, such as the detection of virtual targets, a Seoul official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Cutting “woke” may make for good politics in Republican right, but it is going to little to save money in the Defense budget:

A variety of social issues can fall under the “woke” umbrella, including diversity, equity and inclusion training, funding for women’s reproductive health and support for gender identity initiatives. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., Jordan and other Republicans have argued the military’s attention to “the left’s social agenda” has hurt readiness.

“If we’d focus on getting rid of all the ‘woke’ in our military, we’d have the money we need to make sure our troops get the pay raise they deserve, we’d have the weapons systems and training that needs to be done so that we’re ready to deal with our adversaries around the planet,” Jordan said Sunday on Fox News.

Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., insinuated last month that transgender service members were taking financial advantage of the Pentagon’s policy to provide hormone therapy, mental health care and surgeries for troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria. She said a cadet at Fort Sill, Okla., had told her that he enlisted in the military because he wanted the government to pay for gender reassignment surgery.

“It was shocking that he would actually verbalize that in front of all those officers and other cadets standing there,” Bice said in December during a House Armed Services committee hearing. “This is an issue, and I do think we should be looking at it.”

The cost of transgender care is minuscule when compared to the overall size of the defense budget. The Pentagon spent $15 million treating transgender troops from 2016 to 2021, including about $3 million for surgery, according to the Defense Health Agency. The parts of the spending plan dealing with personnel are so vast and expensive that carving out items targeting “woke” culture will have a negligible impact, said Michael Herson, president of the lobbying firm American Defense International and a former Defense Department official.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but if Congress wants to save money than look at wasteful military acquisitions programs which they probably won’t because they produce jobs in influential voting districts.

It is official, the COVID vaccine mandate has been repealed for all U.S. service members:

But the bill also ends one of Biden’s former top priorities in making the coronavirus mandatory for U.S. service members. Republican lawmakers successfully included the measure that rescinds Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s August 2021 order requiring troops to receive the coronavirus inoculation or face punishment, including dismissal from the military. Some 8,200 service members were discharged from the military this year for refusing the vaccine. 

Republicans also tried to include a measure in the NDAA that would force the military services to reinstate those service members who were discharged because of the mandate, but that effort failed. 

The Pentagon has not said what it plans to do now that the vaccine requirement has been ended. Defense Department spokespeople this week said they could not yet comment on the issue.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.