DoD Chief Sustainability Officer Joe Bryan said last week that the department must plan for logistics to be part of a contested environment.

“We cannot expect a free pass to deliver the fuel we need, to where we need it, when we need it. So reducing the energy demand for our weapons platforms, and our forward-deployed forces is an imperative,” Bryan said on June 28 at the Federal Sustainability Forum, hosted by the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and the Digital Climate Alliance.

Bryan said that about 70% of DoD’s energy use comes from its operations, and that two-thirds of its operations energy use comes from its airplanes.

The Army, as part of its latest climate strategy, expects to put micro-grids on all its bases by 2023, and carbon-free by 2030.

Rachel Jacobson, the Army’s assistant secretary for installations, energy and environment, said the Army also seeks an all-electric non-tactical vehicle fleet by 2035, as well as progress in fielding some hybrid tactical vehicles. The Army is also looking to have a resilient supply chain by 2028.

Jacobson, said climate change is a “threat multiplier,” that can accelerate damage to DoD’s infrastructure, interrupt supply chains and interrupt personnel training because of extreme weather.

“There are going to be a lot of incremental approaches. It’s aggressive, but within a decade or so, we think we can achieve many of these goals,” Jacobson said.

The Army unveiled the DoD’s first floating solar array at Fort Bragg last month. The array is meant to provide backup power to Camp Mackall during electricity outages and provide supplemental energy to the local grid.

The Army in May also broke ground on a 100-acre solar-power project in Southern California and Joint Base Los Alamitos.

Jacobson said both projects utilize an electronic “recloser,” which can quickly reset the system and restore power during an outage.

“It will respond to events like tree limbs, falling on power lines, to reset the system to avoid what can be catastrophic when those kinds of things happen,” she said.

DoD funded the research behind the recloser in collaboration with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department.

The Army is also prototyping a hybrid Bradley fighting vehicle this summer at Yuma Proving Ground, where it will be tested against the conventional gas-powered Bradley.

Jacobson said hybrid vehicles are expected to reduce fuel consumption by 20% or more.

They’ll also require less maintenance, and will have a reduced heat and sound signature, making the vehicle harder to detect on the battlefield.

“It has these operational strategic benefits in addition to the greenhouse gas of benefits from it,” Jacobson said.

Jacobson said the Army is also looking to partner with the Energy Department on better measuring energy usage, as well as the impact of renewable energy projects and their cost savings.

“We have such a diversity among our bases. However many bases we have, that’s how many different kinds of measuring of programs we have, with respect to gathering this data. And ultimately, this has to be data-driven. This data has to be rock solid, because we keep having to make the case over and over again, that whatever investments we’re making now will pay off. The cost avoidance of not doing something is much worse than the investments we’re making now, but we have to show that,” Jacobson said.

Jacobson said DoD has set ambitious goals for bases to be carbon-free within about a decade, she said this work won’t happen overnight.

“We need energy independence and energy resilience, but the truth of the matter is that backup power is mostly diesel generators,” she said.

Jacobson said the Army still relies on an “ancient” a coal-fired power plant, at a base in Alaska.

“It’s a transition, and we’ll get there, but we can’t jettison the use of fossil fuels entirely at this time,” Jacobson said.

DoD is working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s  Lincoln Laboratory to evaluate backup power in the event of power failure on the local grid. Jacobson said the Army continues to rely on fossil fuels in combination with renewable energy to power bases.

The Army’s Office of Energy Initiatives manages its privately-financed, large-scale, energy projects Through this office, the Army has leveraged over $650 million through these projects so far.

“Obviously, if we just had to rely on appropriations, these projects would compete with other mission-critical projects, with other infrastructure projects, with just the array of investments that are needed on an Army base,” Jacobson said.

First off, the National Parks Service posted this on their Twitter account reminding everyone of all the monuments and parks that they manage. This evening, the National Mall, managed by NPS, will be host to fireworks in Washington, DC.

National parks are home to many of the nation’s most beloved monuments, historic sites, & landscapes. They tell stories from the road to revolution & creation of a new nation, to the journey of people continuing the fight for the freedom & liberty that our nation was founded on. pic.twitter.com/AG6T7Kf7ga

— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) July 4, 2022

The armed forces also wished everyone a great holiday:

Celebrating independence on watch around the globe, and at home. 🇺🇲⚓️ #HappyIndependenceDay #4thofJuly pic.twitter.com/dW3R9ljqwh

— U.S. Navy (@USNavy) July 4, 2022

Happy 4th of July from the world’s greatest Air Force 💥 pic.twitter.com/Mw6qxkidx2

— U.S. Air Force (@usairforce) July 4, 2022

We wish you all a very happy, but most importantly safe, 4th of July! 🇺🇸 🎆#coastguard #4thofJuly #semperparatus pic.twitter.com/vX0JowIACf

— U.S. Coast Guard (@USCG) July 4, 2022

#DYK
John Adams believed July 2nd was the correct date to celebrate and would reportedly turn down invitations to appear at July 4th events in protest.

Adams & Thomas Jefferson both died July 4, 1826 – the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. pic.twitter.com/MnVkqUnQdB

— U.S. Army (@USArmy) July 4, 2022

Elsewhere in the government, the National Archives and Records Administration celebrated in style. Pictured below is the Acting Archivist of the United States, Debra Steidel Wall standing with a few costumed colonists.

In Boston, the USS Constitution set sail in celebration of Independence Day.

In Poznan, Poland, U.S. soldiers celebrated with lunch and a cake.

In Asunción, Paraguay, Marines prepared for an Independence Day celebration at the U.S. Embassy.

Guard soldiers have until Thursday to get the vaccine. According to data obtained by The Associated Press, between 20% to 30% of the Guard soldiers in six states are not vaccinated, and more than 10% in 43 other states still need shots.

Guard leaders say states are doing all they can to encourage soldiers to get vaccinated by the time limit. And they said they will work with the roughly 7,000 who have sought exemptions, which are almost all for religious reasons.

“We’re going to give every soldier every opportunity to get vaccinated and continue their military career. Every soldier that is pending an exemption, we will continue to support them through their process,” said Lt. Gen. Jon Jensen, director of the Army National Guard, in an Associated Press interview. “We’re not giving up on anybody until the separation paperwork is signed and completed. There’s still time.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last year ordered all service members — active-duty, National Guard and Reserves — to get the vaccine, saying it is critical to maintaining the health and readiness of the force. The military services had varying deadlines for their forces, and the Army National Guard was given the longest amount of time to get the shots, mainly because it’s a large force of about 330,000 soldiers who are widely scattered around the country, many in remote locations.

The Army Guard’s vaccine percentage is the lowest among the U.S. military — with all the active-duty Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps at 97% or greater and the Air Guard at about 94%. The Army reported Friday that 90% of Army Reserve forces were partially or completely vaccinated.

The Pentagon has said that after June 30, Guard members won’t be paid by the federal government when they are activated on federal status, which includes their monthly drill weekends and their two-week annual training period. Guard troops mobilized on federal status and assigned to the southern border or on COVID-19 missions in various states also would have to be vaccinated or they would not be allowed to participate or be paid.

To make it more complicated, however, Guard soldiers on state activate duty may not have to be vaccinated — based on the requirements in their states. As long as they remain in state duty status, they can be paid by the state and used for state missions.

At least seven governors formally asked Austin to reconsider or not enforce the vaccine mandate for National Guard members, and some filed or signed on to lawsuits. In letters to the governors, Austin declined, and said that the coronavirus “takes our service members out of the fight, temporarily or permanently, and jeopardizes our ability to meet mission requirements.” He said Guard troops must either get the vaccine or lose their Guard status.

Jensen and Maj. Gen. Jill Faris, director of the Guard’s office of the Joint Surgeon General, said they are working with states adjutants general to get progress updates, including on the nearly 20,000 troops who are not flat refusals and haven’t submitted any type of exemption request. Some, they said, may just be a lag in self-reporting, while others may still be undecided.

“Part of those undefined are our soldiers who say, well, I have until 30 June and so I’ll take till 30 June,” said Jensen.

Others may have promised to bring in vaccine paperwork, and haven’t done it yet. Still others are on the books, but haven’t yet reported to basic training, so don’t have to be vaccinated until they get there. It’s not clear how many are in each category.

Jensen acknowledged that if the current numbers hold, there are concerns about possible impact on Guard readiness in the states, including whether it will affect any Guard units preparing to deploy.

“When you’re looking at, 40,000 soldiers that potentially are in that unvaccinated category, absolutely there’s readiness implications on that and concerns associated with that,” said Jensen. “That’s a significant chunk.”

Overall, according to the data obtained by the AP, about 85% of all Army Guard soldiers are fully vaccinated. Officials said that if those with one shot are counted, 87% are at least partially vaccinated.

Across the country, in all but one case, Guard soldiers are vaccinated at a higher rate that the general population in their state. Only in New Jersey is the percentage of vaccinated Guard solders very slightly lower than the state’s overall population, as of earlier this month when the data was collected.

The three U.S. territories — Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico — and the District of Columbia, all have more than 90% of their soldiers fully vaccinated. The highest percentage is in Hawaii, with nearly 97%, while the lowest is Oklahoma, at just under 70%.

Guard leaders in the states have run special shot programs, and provided as much information as possible to their forces in order to keep them on the job.

In Tennessee, they set up small teams in the east, west and central regions and did monthly events providing vaccines to troops who wanted them. And every Wednesday, Guard members could make appointments for shots in the middle Tennessee region, in Smyrna. In addition, in early June they called in all soldiers who have so far refused the vaccine.

“We held a big, mass event,” said Army Guard Col. Keith Evans. “We had all of our medical providers here. So if there were any questions to clear up, any misconceptions, any misinformation, we had all of our our data and were able to provide them all the information.”

Evans, who is commander of his Army Guard’s medical readiness command, said they also had recruiting and other leaders there who could explain what would happen if soldiers chose to not get the shot and ended up leaving the Guard.

“We wanted to let them know what benefits they had earned because these are soldiers that had had done their time, served their country,” said Evans.

Officials say they believe the information campaign has been working. Jensen said that about 1,500 soldiers a week around the country are moving into the vaccinated category. “We expect, as we approach the deadline, that we’ll see some some larger growth.”

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The Army is expecting fiscal 2023 to be a big year for its digital transformation efforts.

The question, as with most agency programs, is whether Congress will deliver on the Army’s budget request.

“Fiscal 2023, for us, is that year of inflection when it comes to our digital transformation journey,” said Raj Iyer, the Army’s chief information officer, during a press briefing on June 9. “We need to make sure that the investments that we have are appropriately aligned to the Army’s priorities and to the Defense Department priorities, quite honestly through the release of the National Defense Strategy.”

The Army will have to support those priorities, as Iyer and Lt. Gen. John Morrison, the Army’s G6, laid them out in the October digital transformation strategy, through mostly a flat budget request and buttressed by savings from IT modernization efforts.

Iyer said the Army’s IT and cybersecurity budget request is $16.6 billion in 2023, which is the largest of all DoD services. The request makes up slightly less than 10% of the Army’s total budget request of $180 billion.

This was the first time the Army detailed its 2023 IT and cyber budget request since President Joe Biden sent his spending wish list to Congress in March.

Inside that $16.6 billion request is $2 billion for cybersecurity, including offensive and defensive operations, network operations and research and development.

Iyer said the bulk of their IT and cyber investment will go to network support and modernization.

“This is about $9.8 billion. This is clearly supporting all the way from the tactical edge, including the support of current operations, all the way to investments we’re making the cloud,” Iyer said. “Gen. Morrison has spoken about the unified network at a number of events…but 2023 really is also our opportunity to scale our cloud efforts that we have made some tremendous progress in 2021 and 2022. We’re seeing about a $290 million investment in cloud in 2023 to continue to further our cloud migration journey. There’s some tremendous activity across the Army right now in terms of operationalizing the cloud that we’ve established in what we call c-Army.”

Spending less on legacy technology

The Army also is asking for about $220 million for artificial intelligence and data related initiatives.

Iyer said he expects his operations and maintenance (O&M) budget to support current and legacy IT to be slightly lower in 2023 compared to this year as well.

Over the last few years, the Army has been on a path to reduce reliance on old technology and consolidate tools.

Iyer said by moving to Office 365 and through other consolidation efforts, his office has found money to reinvest in modernization.

“One is the convergence of our networks as part of our unified network strategy. We’re looking at converging 42 networks across the Army into that single, unified network. What that will do really is start to consolidate all of the tools into a common service catalog, get us to a common set of processes and to standardization across the network. That will inherently result in in cost savings into 2023,” Iyer said. “Beyond that, there’s some other things that we have done in terms of reducing our bills for 2023 based on our current spending. One of them really is the recent decision to complete or finish out our enterprise IT-as-a-service pilots. We had three contracts in place at three pilot locations that we had selected. Most recently, based on the results and the lessons learned, we have come to a conclusion that we have good data in order to be able to deploy some common services that are cloud enabled across all Army locations worldwide.”

He said O365 is one example of those services. He said his office deploy a standard virtual desktop infrastructure as well in the coming years.

Morrison added that some of the decisions to find savings means getting rid of technology altogether like video teleconferencing hardware and software since the Army can use the capabilities through O365.

“As enterprise capabilities come online, we just need to be ruthless in our governance of it to make sure that we did keep the best of legacy capabilities and we don’t hang on to something just to hang on to it,” Morrison said. “I think we are putting the mechanisms in place to really start getting after that. We’re continuing to shut data centers. We are continuing to leverage the great capabilities that come with c-Army. We’re not doing it at the speed and tempo that we probably can. And quite frankly, Dr. Iyer and I had a discussion just earlier [on June 9] about reinvigorating those efforts because even though we’re past what the goals that had been set for the Army from an efficiency perspective, but I would submit to you more importantly from an operational effectiveness perspective, we need to move a little bit faster and harmonize with this hybrid cloud operational environments. That will only drive us faster toward data centricity. It will only drive us toward a unified network that can support multi-domain operations.”

5 ERPs, 150 support systems

One of Iyer’s biggest and boldest priorities for 2023 that, over the long term, should result in significant cost savings is modernizing the Army’s business systems.

The Army plans to spend $1.4 billion on maintaining five enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for financial management, human resources and the like as well as 150 support systems.

Iyer said many of these ERP and related systems are more than 20 years old and ready to be updated and moved the cloud.

The Army has been focused on reducing and modernizing its business systems for the last decade. In 2017, the service reported it cut the number of business systems to 400 from 800. In 2020, it upgraded the General Fund Enterprise Business System to be more of a shared service for other Defense agencies and had plans to take the system to the cloud.

“Our marquee effort in 2023 is going to be our implementation or initial prototyping for our new enterprise business systems convergence,” he said. “We’re trying to converge them into a single architecture or into a single system if we can. If we have one integrated capability, then, more importantly, the data that we can pass across that spectrum of operations for analytics. It is a massive, multi-year modernization effort. We fully expect that it will be as high as 10 years for us to get to that modernization effort. But the approach that we’re taking isn’t a big bang approach that we’ve typically used in the past. This is going to meet be more of an evolutionary modernization approach.”

Along with the budget request, Iyer said the Army will take another key step this summer when the Program Executive Office-Enterprise Information Systems (PEO-EIS) will release a call for white papers under an other transaction agreement (OTA) approach to better understand what industry has to offer.

“Since we are going to use an OTA process for this acquisition, there is going to be a lot of interaction with the industry to figure out what’s out there that the Army can adopt rapidly, as well as, ensure we have a future proof architecture,” Iyer said. “We expect to award multiple prototypes in early 2023. These would run anywhere from 12-to-18 months. Then at the end of that effort, just like any OTA, we will get to a production contract by down selecting one of those prototypes to be our production solution.”

Iyer said while the OTA will not be prescriptive, the Army wants to see how industry responds with ideas that include using a modular architecture, supports data exchange through application programming interfaces (APIs) and micro services and is cloud native.

“We’ll be looking at how flexible the solution will be in terms of its ability to implement Army unique processes wherever we have them, without the need to customize commercial off the shelf products,” he said. “This is going to be evolutionary modernization as we are doing this in an agile approach. We will let the functional priorities define what those increments will be, and then we will look at the risk profile to look at how quickly we can get those turned on. That will determine the level of funding and the timeline for implementation. From an implementation perspective, one of the things that we’re going to we’re going to be pushing an industry for is to truly do this using dev/sec/ops and in an agile manner, which means that we are looking for functionality to be available or released to users on rapid sprints, not taking years to do this. This is all about getting functionality in the hands of the user rapidly through agile development.”

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There’s yet another lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The latest class action targets the Air Force’s religious accommodation process, arguing that process is set up in such a way that getting a religious exemption to the vaccine is almost impossible. The plaintiffs argue that violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment. Mike Barry is senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit legal group that focuses on religious liberty issues. He’s one of the attorneys representing the airmen challenging the mandate, and he spoke more to Jared Serbu on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Jared Serbu: Mike, thanks for being here. And let’s start by talking a bit about your clients, where they are in the Air Force vaccine exemption process and what led you to file the suit?

Mike Barry: Well, First Liberty Institute represents nine Air Force members who are challenging the Air Force’s enforcement of its vaccine mandate. And our clients are, they’re stationed in various locations, quite a few of them are here in Texas. And they have different ranks, different different job responsibilities in the Air Force, a number of them are actually pilots in the Air Force. And so all of them have requested religious accommodations from the vaccine mandate, which is, of course, something that DoD regulations and even federal law, clearly permit and allow. And, in fact, the Department of Defense allows medical exemptions and administrative exemptions from the vaccine. But although the Air Force has approved hundreds of medical and administrative exemptions, they have only approved a very small handful of religious exemptions and even the ones that they’ve approved by their own admission, they are only for Air Force members who are basically already separating or are already on their way out. So our lawsuit is really predicated on on the argument that this is all a sham, that the Air Force is not following the Constitution. They’re not following federal law. They’re not following their own regulations. And they’re discriminating against people in the military.

Jared Serbu: This case seems remarkably similar to another case that I think First Liberty was also counsel on with a group of Navy SEALs before the very same judge, I believe too. You got a preliminary injunction in that case and a favorable ruling from the Fifth Circuit. Are there major differences here? The story seems pretty similar to what’s going on with these airmen.

Mike Barry: No, really, I mean, this is happening across the entire Department of Defense. The only difference is really is that each branch of the military has their own internal regulations and policies for how they adjudicate these things. And so of course, that means you have to bring different lawsuits on behalf of people, depending on what branch of the military that they’re in. But in terms of the underlying legal issues that are raised, no, they’re exactly the same. The military across the board is discriminating discriminating against people of faith. They are, they’re ignoring the law, they’re ignoring the Constitution. And really, the greatest harm here is not just to our members of the military who are suffering under this, but it’s actually to our nation. Our military, I mean, you can open any news feed that you want. And you’ll see headline after headline talking about the recruiting and retention woes that plague our military right now. We are hemorrhaging people like crazy, and we’re having a really hard time recruiting capable people to join our military. That means that this is quickly becoming a national security concern. We are kicking out people by the thousands. And yet we’re short, we’re saying that we’re having a hard time recruiting people. And in one instance, I saw one of the head people for recruiting in the military said, “We’re having a really hard time identifying, basically people who are eligible to serve in the military. And one of the reasons for that is if they if they’re between the ages of 17 and 23, and they’re not vaccinated, we’re not even willing to talk to them.” And so they’re basically closing off an entire segment of society in a discriminatory manner. Because of those people’s religious beliefs and religious convictions. I mean, this is quickly becoming a national security issue for our nation.

Jared Serbu: I want to go back to what you said earlier about the process being a sham, because I want to try and draw how much of an issue that actually is, in these cases. In a hypothetical alternate universe where it were the Navy and the Air Force, the rest of the services had an exemption process or a waiver process that did look more credible to you and to the court, do you lose these cases?

Mike Barry: No, I think what happens is they become much smaller cases, right? They become the exception and not the norm. I think that a process that is not a sham looks a little bit something like the military regardless of what branch we’re talking about, takes an honest look and says okay, what is this person’s job or their function? And is there somewhere else we can assign them where maybe they’re at less risk of of COVID transmission or they start looking at the data, right, the actual CDC data and the COVID day they start look kicking it around and saying, You know what? Starbucks, for example, doesn’t have a vaccine requirement. And yet people who work and – I mean, you’re coming in very close proximity with thousands of people per day, hundreds of people per hour. And at least in the Starbucks is that I’ve been in recently where they’ve been packed in like sardines. And yet they say, you know what, we now believe that it’s okay, for our employees to not be vaccinated, it’s okay for our customers to not be vaccinated. And I haven’t heard of a single Starbucks shutting down. Same thing on airplanes, right? Commercial airlines has said, you know what, we’re gonna lift the mask mandate. Of course, that came because of a federal judge’s ruling. But nevertheless, how many, I fly almost on a weekly basis for my job. And I have yet to hear of a single flight being canceled because there was a COVID outbreak at 30,000 feet. So everywhere else in society has been able to figure this out, but our military hasn’t because they take such an iron fisted, draconian approach to everything. And to say, basically, no, you will do this because we said so and if you don’t, we’re gonna kick you out. And then if you come back and you say, oh, no, but my exemption is a medical exemption [see Contraindications and Precautions] not a religious exemption, then the military says, Oh, well, in that case, we welcome you with open arms. And that is textbook discrimination, right? When you treat people who have a medical exemption for more favorably than you treat somebody who has a religious exemption, that is textbook discrimination, and that’s what’s happening. And that’s why this is a sham.Jared Serbu: The Air Force case is a putative class action. If the court certifies the class does the class become all unvaccinated airmen or everyone who’s been denied a religious exemption? How large is the class?

Mike Barry: It would be everyone who is requested and been denied a religious accommodation from the vaccine mandates, specifically the COVID vaccine mandate. So that, right now that number is several thousand. I know, off the top of my head, the number in the Navy is somewhere near 4,100. It’s just under 4,100. The Air Force number is probably in the same ballpark.

Jared Serbu: Got it. I think one of the military’s concerns is what’s the limiting principle here? Because how do you avoid getting to the point where anyone can deny or refuse any lawful order by claiming that they have a sincerely held religious belief that would be encumbered by it?

Mike Barry: Well, I mean, that’s the beauty of the way that the law works, right? The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), it doesn’t, the sincerity issue is what everybody seems to be concerned with, right? Well, what if somebody’s not really sincere? And what if this is political ideology masquerading as as religious piety? Right? Well, the good news is the law is set up so that the government actually can win those cases, when all they have to do is demonstrate that they have a compelling interest. And the way that they are accomplishing their compelling interest is the least restrictive means on the person’s religious beliefs. So if you can find a way to accommodate somebody’s religious beliefs, in a less burdensome way right, a way that’s less obstructive or cumbersome on their religious exercise, then if the person is really sincere in their religious beliefs, they’ll usually accept that. They’ll accept that alternative and say, okay, you know, I’m willing to do that instead. So for example, in a different context, somebody who says that they’re a Sabbath observer, and they cannot work on the Sabbath, but that they’re willing to trade ships with somebody, most of the cases I’ve seen, they’re actually willing to take, what most people consider be a less favorable shift. Right? So if they work Sunday afternoon, or if they’re scheduled to work a particular Sunday afternoon, they say, “Well, I’m a Sabbath observer on Sundays. Hey you have the Friday night shift, right? I’m happy to take that one from you. If you want to swap with me,” and they do that through the employer, or their employer offers that. They’re usually willing to accept that and say, look, yeah, I’m happy to. Night shifts aren’t popular, especially on Friday night, and things like that. But I’m willing to do that. It’s really the same thing in the military context with this vaccine, where they’re saying, Look, teleworking or, doing a lot of these other measures, right, social distancing, masking, testing, whatever the case might be. They’re not pleasant. They’re burdensome, but the person says, “But you know what, at the end of the day, I’m not have to inject something in my body that violates my religious beliefs. I’m willing to go through that.” And usually when somebody is willing to go through those measures, that demonstrates a degree of sincerity. The problem here is that the government is simply unwilling to offer any compromises. They’re basically saying, “Nope, the vaccine is the only way that we’re going to allow you to continue to remain in the service.” And one of the things I forgot to mention was the whole concept of natural immunity. Why is the DoD ignoring natural immunity when the CDC and other epidemiologists and medical experts have all generally agreed natural immunity is a real thing. And in some cases, according to some reports, it’s even more durable than the vaccine and you don’t have to get boosters and things like that. But the DoD is just saying “Nope, we won’t even recognize that we won’t even consider it,” even though they consider natural immunity for other communicable diseases and infections and things like that.

Jared Serbu: Last thing, there’s a lot of these vaccine cases, even just military vaccine cases floating around in various district courts and circuits the moment.

Mike Barry: I think there’s almost 30 now.

Jared Serbu: Yeah, there’s a ton. Assuming, maybe I’m assuming too much. But if they eventually get consolidated in the Supreme Court grants cert [writs of certiorari] on something that considers the issue more broadly, would you expect that we’ll get a case or a ruling that goes beyond the narrow issue of vaccines and gives the military some guidance as to how RFRA and broader religious accommodation issues apply to the military?

Mike Barry: Probably not at the Supreme Court level. The Supreme Court is historically, they only address the legal issues that are brought before them, right. They don’t offer what are, in the legal speak, we call advisory opinions. In other words, it’s usually ill-advised to take an opinion on one subject or one issue, and then try to extrapolate and say and that and say, Well, that should apply across the board to all issues. So that’s usually unwise, and so practitioners who are in front of the Supreme Court frequently like us, we usually know not to do that. So I think that if one of these cases does end up in front of the Supreme Court, it will probably be addressed just on the narrow vaccine issue. And now people will be able to take the analysis Supreme Court used and say, “Okay, the way that they analyzed this issue, that might give us some indication of how they would analyze other issues,” right. But what we can’t do is say, well, because they ruled this way, in this case, this is how they’re going to rule in all cases.

The Army told lawmakers during a hearing earlier this month that it is opening an inquiry into Balfour Beatty Communities (BBC) in response to an April 26 report by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

“I take very seriously any report of substandard conditions that compromise the life, health and safety of soldiers and families,” Rachel Jacobson, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment, said. “The day after the report was released, I wrote to Balfour Beatty indicating that I directed an immediate investigation at Fort Gordon to be overseen by the commanding general of the Army Materiel Command.”

The Army is suspending performance bonuses for BBC at Ft. Gordon in Georgia.

However, Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) want to know what the other services are doing too. The duo wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asking if further investigations would take place and if the services needed any further legal authorities to improve oversight of housing companies.

BBC has already pleaded guilty to defrauding the military. The company was ordered to pay $33.6 million in criminal fines and entered into a $31.8 million restitution civil settlement. That fraud took place prior to 2019.

The Senate investigation found that BBC continues to be derelict in its duties to report repair requests.

“The inquiry found numerous examples since late 2019 of poor conditions in Balfour’s military housing and disregard of safety concerns and environmental hazards that put military families at risk,” the report states. “These poor conditions persisted well after Richard Taylor, one of Balfour’s two co-presidents, publicly pledged in testimony before Congress on December 5, 2019, to improve Balfour’s ability to monitor repairs and responses to conditions such as mold, to prioritize the health and safety of residents, and to prepare homes for move-ins.”

However, families are the ones feeling the biggest brunt of the issues.

Families are becoming increasingly frustrated. Repeated investigations and inquiries find the privatized housing companies to be bad actors, yet families are not seeing substantial positive changes on their level,”  Armed Forces Housing Advocates (AFHA) co-founder Sarah Kline told Federal News Network. “AFHA believes that until the housing contracts are renegotiated that allow true third party oversight and the levying of fines on the installation level, no true changes will occur.”

Kline said AFHA supports a public-facing housing tool proposed by the Veterans of Foreign Wars and legislation that would support international code council training for maintenance personnel.

Lawmakers have not tipped their hands on what new legislation they might introduce to further mitigate the issue. Congress and DoD already implemented a tenant bill of rights and pledged more inspectors for properties.

CAMBRIDGE, Md. — The Army’s digital transformation strategy was initially about getting the service to a unity of vision.

Seven months after releasing the strategy, it’s delivering new capabilities to warfighters.

Raj Iyer, the Army’s chief information officer, said the three separate implementation plans around cloud, data and unifying the network are all bearing fruit to improve warfighter effectiveness and capabilities.

“These three efforts are now being tracked with quantifiable metrics and milestones to see what progress we’re making. I’m happy to report good progress are all around and all three efforts,” Iyer said after his speech at the ACT-IAC Emerging Technology and Innovation Conference. “We’re probably, in my opinion, about halfway there with the goals that we set out …”

One of the foundational elements of the Army’s digital transformation effort is the move to Microsoft Office 365.

Iyer said almost a million soldiers and civilians moved into the Office 365 environment, which includes email, Teams and other collaboration capabilities.

“I think where we’re headed now is really moving into SharePoint online. That will enable us to sunset probably about 200-plus instances of SharePoint across the Army,” he said. “That is just a foundation because we are now looking at how we can leverage tools like Power BI and Power Apps that come with the O365 environment. We’re integrating video conferencing into our conference rooms, leveraging O365 so that way we can divest off of some of the old video teleconferencing (VTC) equipment that we have on our conference rooms. We’re integrating voice capability into O365 so you get a number that goes with your O365 accounts.”

Many of these capabilities will come to the Army a little at a time. Iyer said the service is using an agile development approach, starting many times with the National Guard and Reserve.

“We felt was the National Guard and Reserve didn’t have the right technologies in place to be able to work in a remote work environment. Before COVID they were able to go to an armory or to a reserve center to be able to check emails and do certain things. Post COVID, it became much harder for them to actually go to an office location to do things. So we’re really focusing on improving the user experience for our reserve and guard,” he said. “Every one of these efforts, whether it’s bring-your-own-device (BYOD), or whether it’s virtual desktop infrastructure, we’re starting with National Guard and Reserve first, and essentially, that will be the first rollout. We start to roll it out across other parts of the Army over the next 12-to-18 months when you’re going to see all of these initiatives fully implemented across the Army.”

Iyer is especially excited about the BYOD initiative.

After a successful pilot with the National Guard and Reserve in 2021, Iyer said he is ready to implement the BYOD technology to about 20,000 users this year — 10,000 in the guard and reserve and 10,000 across the rest of the Army.

“We’re trying to make this as global as we can to start with because you want a good idea as to you know how well it works across a broad cross section of our users around the world,” he said. “We are just finishing out some of the early testing. I expect to start onboarding users probably in the next 60 days or so.”

The challenge for the Army was finding the right technology that would be secure enough, but also respect the privacy of soldiers and civilians.

Iyer said through a service-disabled veteran-owned small business, the Army is using a BYOD technology that can work securely on “unmanaged” devices.

“We found a company that were in the early stages of prototyping, but they had an implementation at Special Operations Command (SOCOM). It was, however, in a much smaller, narrower context than what the Army wants to do at scale,” he said. “But we worked with the vendor to get them through the cybersecurity processes and we made sure that we did a full vulnerability testing, pen testing on it. It came back with flying colors and so we’re now on a path to get that implemented across the Army.”

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has started releasing a series of data sheets for the public. They show the delineations of wetland, a crucial piece of information in land and resource management. Joining the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with details about the program, research soil scientist Jacob Berkowitz.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Mr. Berkowitz, good to have you on.

Jacob Berkowitz: Thank you for having me, Tom, I’m happy to get the word out there about what is really a good news story for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the American public.

Tom Temin: All right, so these data sheets that you are releasing, tell us what they depict, and who they’re intended to be received by?

Jacob Berkowitz: Yes, so the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as part of our mission is administration of the Clean Water Act. And under that responsibility, the Corps of Engineers reviews and makes permit decisions regarding over 70,000 proposed actions across the nation every year. And the vast majority of those actions require completion of a wetland delineation. As part of that delineation, the public or private sector practitioners collect data about soils, hydrology and vegetation to determine the presence of wetlands and the extent of those wetlands on the landscape. And so we’ve developed the tool, automated data forms, that expedite that process, increasing efficiency and accuracy for those 70,000 determinations every year.

Tom Temin: In other words, there are people out there that are trying to find this out already for purposes of projects, for example. And so they have measurements, I mean, what are some of the measurements you take, I can see a stream going by or the shore of lake, but it sounds like there’s more to determining what’s a wetland than simply visual?

Jacob Berkowitz: Yes, sir. Yes, there are specific characteristics that dictate the distribution of vegetation species that change the way the soil looks, and that provide evidence that wetland hydrology is present. That’s how we delineate wetlands. We look at those three factors. Now, the automated data sheets help to expedite that process by essentially automating the data collection and reporting process. And so that allows the Corps of Engineers to review permits faster and to get those permits out to the American public so they can move forward with building their projects as expediently as possible,

Tom Temin: Well give us a sample, an example of the type of project that might require knowing this and being able to get a determination from the Army Corps that might want to go in place somewhere.

Jacob Berkowitz: Yes, so the Corps of Engineers permits are required for any activities that result in the placement of fill within waters of the United States, including wetlands. So for example, if a developer wanted to expand the footprint of a neighborhood, and there was a possibility that that would have implications for wetlands or other aquatic resources, they’d be required to complete these wetland delineation activities in order to receive a permit and move forward with that project. And Tom, the take home message is that because there are so many of these actions that occur every year, anything that we can do to make those actions more expedient, and importantly, more accurate, helps the American public build the projects that they need to build, while ensuring that the Corps of Engineers are completing our mission and protecting natural resources.

Tom Temin: So it sounds like you’re trying to create a more objective reference for everybody as to where the wetlands begin and end?

Jacob Berkowitz: That certainly helps to accomplish that. Yes, it does. The automation that we’ve included with these data sheets really does help the public and private sector practitioners provide accurate information to the Corps of Engineers. And when we receive more accurate information, then we can turn those permits around more expeditiously to get the public what they need in terms of building these types of projects.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Jacob Berkowitz. He’s a research soil scientist in the environmental lab at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and you’re speaking with us out of Vicksburg, Mississippi. And you collaborated with one of the other offices in developing this capability?

Jacob Berkowitz: That is correct, sir. Yes, the gentleman named Nathan Schulz, who works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Detroit district was instrumental in developing some of the coating that lies beneath the automated data sheets. So his work in particular really allowed us to develop a technology that had been elusive for a number of years in terms of doing the type of calculations that are required in these wetland delineation scenarios.

Tom Temin: And what is the source of the measurements? That is to say, is the automation in the creation of the data sheets? Or are there sensors throughout the country that are generating data all the time? How does that work?

Jacob Berkowitz: So this data is generated by folks who actually go out on site to a project site and complete evaluations. Historically, that was done on hard paper forms. And those paper forms had to be translated into an electronic format, and then submitted to the Corps for review. With the new automated data forms, what we’re hearing from the public as well as the private sector practitioners is that they’re able to complete those forms more quickly and more accurately, expediting the entire wetland delineation review process.

Tom Temin: Well, are there specific instruments, for example, to test the hydrology of a soil zone that you stick in the ground? And then what happens it measures something. And then how does that data get transmitted?

Jacob Berkowitz: We do use things like automated water table monitoring well, we also have things like chemical dyes that we can use in the soil. But in a typical context, Tom, it’s really just measurements of what plant community is there? What soil morphologies are we observing? And what signs of wetland hydrology can we physically see on the ground? So this isn’t a highly technical approach, because we do need it to be expedient. But we have found these methods over the years through a variety of research to be extremely reliable when appropriately applied.

Tom Temin: So these are observations, generally then, visual observations that are then recorded in some manner?

Jacob Berkowitz: That is correct. In a typical case, we collect these observations, and the automated data forms really help us to ensure the accuracy of that information. And ultimately, to expedite getting that information to the Corps in the appropriate fashion so that they can issue the permit and get them done. And just to give you an idea of the timelines associated with this, our goal is to try and get these permits turned around within 60 days. And for the general permits, we’re hitting that target more than 90% of the time. But if we can further expedite that process and get that number closer to 100%, that’s a benefit for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And it’s a benefit for the American public.

Tom Temin: And what happens when there’s a dispute? For example, suppose there’s a certain bush or shrub that it’s growing, that indicates a wetland and the party, that’s the applicant can say, well, we also have this bush growing on dry grounds, it’s not wetlands. So how do we know what’s really wetlands? This kind of question, does that come up?

Jacob Berkowitz: Yes, Tom, that certainly comes up. And we have a very robust program where we try and work with applicants to get to the right technical answer to make sure that we’re in compliance with the regulations while also serving the public to the best of our ability. But there is a formal dispute resolution process that people can go through if there’s a disagreement about where those wetlands lie.

Tom Temin: And do you get a lot of cases of third parties trying to stop a development process? Because everybody has NIMBY (not in my backyard) in their lexicon.

Jacob Berkowitz: Certainly, you know, public access and public comment periods are a part of the permit process. And we welcome that feedback from the public to hear what they think about projects, so that we can make sure that we are administrating our responsibility under the Clean Water Act in efficient and responsible and expedient way.

Tom Temin: Now, once these automatic data sheets are determined for a given project, do they have any usefulness beyond that?

Jacob Berkowitz: Yes, they do. I mean, Tom we’re researchers here who develop these types of materials. And so we’ve used these automated data sheets extensively to conduct research across the country to help us get a better understanding of where wetlands are on the landscape. How those wetlands are changing over time? And what to expect to our natural resources, including wetlands, as we look forward to the challenges ahead of us, including the challenge of sea level rise and climate change.

Tom Temin: All right, Jacob Berkowitz is a research soil scientist in the environmental lab at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Thanks so much for joining me.

Jacob Berkowitz: Thank you, Tom. It’s my pleasure to share this good news story with you and the public.

It’s the only military academy, so far, where cadets may face such penalties. The Army and Navy said that as of now, none of their seniors are being prevented from graduating at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., or the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, due to vaccine refusals. The graduations are in about two weeks.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last year made the COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for service members, including those at the military academies, saying the vaccine is critical to maintaining military readiness and the health of the force.

Military leaders have argued that troops for decades have been required to get as many as 17 vaccines in order to maintain the health of the force, particularly those deploying overseas. Students arriving at the military academies get a regimen of shots on their first day, such as measles, mumps and Rubella, if they aren’t already vaccinated. And they routinely get regular flu shots in the fall.

Members of Congress, the military and the public have questioned if the exemption reviews by the military services have been fair. And there have been multiple lawsuits filed against the mandate, mainly centering on the fact that very few service members have been granted religious exemptions from the shots.

Until the COVID-19 vaccine, very few military members sought religious exemptions to any vaccines.

Lt. Col. Brian Maguire, Air Force Academy spokesman said that while vaccination status may hinder the four seniors’ graduation, “there are still two weeks until graduation, so their status could change as the cadets weigh their options.”

According to Maguire, the four cadets, who are not named, have been informed of the potential consequences, and have met with the academy’s superintendent. In addition to those four, there are two juniors, one sophomore and six freshmen at the academy who have also refused the vaccine.

The military academies for years have required students under certain circumstances to repay tuition costs if they leave during their junior or senior year. Often those involve students with disciplinary issues or similar problems. The costs can be as much as $200,000, or more, and any final decision on repayment is made by the service secretary.

West Point said that there are no members of the Class of 2022 who have refused to get the vaccine.

Across the military, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps have discharged nearly 4,000 active duty service members for refusing the vaccine. According to recent data released by the services, more than 2,100 Marines, 900 sailors, 500 Army soldiers and 360 airmen have been thrown out of the military, and at least 50 were discharged during entry level training, before they moved into active duty service.

Those who flatly refuse the vaccine without seeking an exemption are still being discharged. But the courts have stalled additional discharges of service members who sought religious exemptions.

Last month, a federal judge in Texas barred the Navy from taking action for now against sailors who have objected to being vaccinated on religious grounds.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor had, in January, issued a preliminary injunction preventing the Navy from disciplining or discharging 35 sailors who sued over the Navy’s vaccine policy while their case played out. In April, O’Connor agreed the case could go forward as a class action lawsuit and issued a preliminary injunction covering about 4,000 sailors who have objected on religious grounds to being vaccinated.

Also last month, a federal judge in Ohio granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Air Force from disciplining a dozen officers and some additional airmen and reservists who were seeking religious exemptions. The officers, mostly from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, filed a lawsuit in February after their exemption requests were denied.

According to the military, as many as 20,000 service members have asked for religious exemptions. Thousands have been denied.

As of recent data, the Air Force has approved 73 religious exemptions, the Marine Corps has approved seven, and the Army has approved eight. Prior to the injunction, the Navy conditionally approved one reservist and 26 active duty requests for religious exemptions, and 10 requests from members of the Individual Ready Reserve. The IRR approvals mean that those sailors don’t have to be vaccinated until they are actually called to serve.

About 99% of the active duty Navy and 98% of the Air Force, Marine Corps and Army have gotten at least one shot.

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When the Defense Department buys high-dollar items under negotiated procurement rules it’s supposed to negotiate. The Army awarded a major contract without talking to any of five bidders. The Government Accountability Office dismissed the protests so the company went to court and there it got interesting. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin got details from Smith Pachter McWhorter procurement attorney Joe Petrillo.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: And Joe, first of all, tell us what was the Army buying here? And what was the rough dollar value of this whole deal?

Joseph Petrillo: Sure, the Army was buying operations and maintenance services, or its communication and information systems needed by the Central Command in nation locations like Iraq, the Emirates, Qatar, places like that. But a contract would be cost plus fixed fee for up to five years. And if all the options were exercised, and the five-year term, were realized the estimated value of the contract was going to be about $1 billion. And that’s what the award was.

Tom Temin: And what was the contracting rule or system under which they were buying this? Pretty standard stuff, right?

Joseph Petrillo: Yes, very standard. That’s a really good point. This is being done under contracting by negotiation in FAR Part 15, which is the normal way the government awards very large dollar value contracts, where they want to be able to do things like a best value trade off of cost versus technical factors. And they did that here. Technical factors were more important than the cost of the contract.

Tom Temin: All right, and they awarded a single bidder and they had no discussions. I mean, what happened that touched off this protest?

Joseph Petrillo: There were five competitors. The award went to the incumbent contractor, Ventress. One of the losers, IAP Worldwide, protested with GAO and lost there, then went to the Court of Federal Claims, and the public version of that ruling came out this month. There were two main types of issues in this protest: IAP Worldwide attacked the evaluation. And under the evaluation, it had been found unacceptable in one of the four technical sub factors and therefore for the technical factor itself, which of course meant it couldn’t get the contract. It attacked that evaluation and failed to convince either GAO or the court that it was wrong. However, it also complained that the army hadn’t conducted negotiations. Now, usually, whether or not to conduct discussions is in the discretion of the contracting officer. And the government has pretty wide discretion in whether to do so. But in 2011, the Department of Defense decided that there weren’t enough negotiated contracts with actual negotiations. And that at least in the high dollar ones, it was worth conducting those discussions and clearing up misunderstandings getting better and more targeted proposals from contractors. So they issued a regulation that said for acquisitions over $100 million the contracting officer should conduct discussions. And this protest basically revolved around the question of what does that mean? Fortunately for us, the court could look at the FAR’s definition of those terms.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Joe Petrillo. He’s a procurement attorney with Smith Pachter McWhorter. So GAO turned down the protest?

Joseph Petrillo: Right. They said no, this was within the Army’s proper discretion, didn’t have to conduct discussions here. The court said, well, not so fast. What is does “should” mean? as I mentioned, the Federal Acquisition Regulation defines the terms. “Should” is neither permissive like “may” nor imperative like “shall.” It means that there’s an expected course of action or policy that’s to be followed, unless it’s inappropriate for a particular circumstance. So the default position in these defense procurements is to conduct discussions. And the question is, why didn’t the Army do that here?

Tom Temin: So the idea is that the Army could have looked at that technical factor with the losing bidder and said, Well, can you do better here? And then perhaps they might have had a better shot of the contract, is that the basic premise?

Joseph Petrillo: Well, one of the arguments that government had was that IAP couldn’t insist on discussions because its proposal was unacceptable. But as you point out, one of the objectives and purposes of discussion is to tell offerors about which parts of their proposal are deficient or have significant weaknesses. And the reason for doing that is so they can address it in a revised proposal. So the fact that it was unacceptable really doesn’t negate the possibility of discussion.

Tom Temin: That is to say the government has the discretion to discuss things with individual offers, and give those offers a chance to resubmit before they make a decision, provided they don’t share all of this information across the offerors.

Joseph Petrillo: Exactly. And in this particular DoD regulation, at least for these high dollar procurements, that the default position should be yes, we’re going to go ahead and have those discussions. So the court then did what it needs to do, which is to look at the record and see what justification the Army had for its decision. And the Army concluded that discussions wouldn’t benefit the government or change the outcome. But it didn’t really give any reasons for that. And that kind of thing can be fatal in a decision issued by a court on a protest. You’re looking at the record. The court needs reasons for conclusions, and here there weren’t any.

Tom Temin: Right, you could almost sense that the Army was just trying to stick with the incumbent because that’s maybe the most convenient way to proceed operationally. There’s no evidence of that but that’s what someone could infer.

Joseph Petrillo: When the incumbent’s doing a good job sometimes the government’s loath to try the risk of another vendor, even if it means saving money. They don’t want to risk mission failure.

Tom Temin: The court raised that question. And then what did they say actually? Did they tell the Army to go back and start over or what’s the status now?

Joseph Petrillo 6:02
The status of the procurement is that the court finds the Army’s decision not to conduct discussions, a decision that can’t be sustained here. They have to go back and do something about it. The question is what. And the court is sort of confused as to what it should do, given the facts of this particular procurement. It isn’t clear that IAP really is in a good position to insist upon a review of this decision not to conduct discussions. And even if discussions are conducted, it isn’t clear that I AAP is going to be in the competitive range. So it wants more briefing by the parties on what the remedy is, is there going to be an injunction? What will that injunction say? If there isn’t going to be an injunction, then IAP is probably just going to get its bid and proposal preparation costs.

Tom Temin: Is the implication then what the court did is not overturn the Army’s decision. So it’s the whole thing in limbo at this point?

Joseph Petrillo: Well, it’s in limbo in the sense that the Army has violated the regulation. But the consequence of that in terms of what remedy IP gets is still up in the air. I think the interesting thing to take away from this decision is that the court did not follow GAO’s jurisprudence on this question. As I mentioned earlier, GAO did not rule in IAP’s favor on this discussions point. And the court pointed out that the test that GAO is applying here is a test that had it been applying before the regulation was changed in 2011? The court said wait a minute, that’s changed, means that the presumption is you’re going to have discussions and the exception is that you don’t. So how can you possibly use the same legal tests that were applied when there was no such presumption? And right there, that’s kind of an interesting situation where the court is going in a different direction than GAO on an important legal issue.

Tom Temin: So this is a case where we have yet more to see what the Army does and what the court eventually decides in finality?

Joseph Petrillo: I think that’s right. And you know, perhaps GAO will start reconsidering the way it looks at these cases as well. Even if it doesn’t, this issue may get up to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and they will resolve, I hope the inconsistency between the legal tests now.

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• House staffers may have a pay raise coming their way in 2023. That’s if Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) get their way. They’ve proposed a 4.6% automatic cost-of-living adjustment as well as accommodations such as child care subsidies, a first-time homebuyer’s assistance benefit and making staff eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. These benefits would apply to House members’ staffers as well as staff serving on committees. The proposed increase in benefits is meant to make these positions more competitive and to attract better talent.

• Industry groups makes the case for more funding for IT modernization. Nine industry groups representing nearly every major technology contractor from the defense and civilian sectors make the case for why Congress should invest more money in the Technology Modernization Fund and similar programs. The groups ranging from the IT Industry Council to the Professional Services Council to the Alliance for Digital Innovation to the National Defense Industrial Association told House and Senate appropriation committee leaders that as they begin work on the fiscal 2023 budget, they should provide predictable, sustained and appropriately robust investment. They ask the committees to meet or exceed the president’s request of $300 million for the TMF and provide additional funding for cybersecurity efforts.

• The Biden administration is giving agencies a playbook to make the best use of $1 trillion in infrastructure spending. New guidance from the Office of Management and Budget directs each agency to name a senior official to oversee implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. OMB is also directing agency equity teams to ensure funding helps support under-served and rural communities. The memo also outlines agencies how agencies should avoid improper payments.

• Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, public health agencies did not have procedures for reporting and addressing political interference in their scientific decisions. The Government Accountability Office reports that many employees at the Department of Health and Human Services feared retaliation for speaking up. Often, those workers were also unsure how to report issues or they believed agency leaders were already aware of the problems. GAO said HHS should develop better procedures and appropriately train staff to help improve scientific integrity.

• The Social Security Administration did not fare well in the latest iteration of governmentwide pulse surveys. SSA employees have one of the lowest scores among agencies surveyed about their thoughts on re-entry plans, with 26.7% saying they disagreed or strongly disagreed that senior leaders were clearly communicating return-to-work timelines. A reported 31.9% of SSA respondents also disagreed that agency leaders were protecting employees’ health, safety and wellbeing. Those three-to-four-question pulse surveys are distributed by the Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration.

• The Drug Enforcement Administration is settling a class action lawsuit brought to court by female special agents who were passed over for overseas assignments in the early 1990s. DEA announced it would pay $12 million to compensate 71 current and former employees who presented individual claims for damages. An administrative judge still must approve the settlement agreement. DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said the settlement builds upon DEA’s continuing efforts to promote the advancement of women in their workforce.

• Veterans are suing the Army for refusing to give soldiers with alcohol and drug addictions honorable discharges. The lawsuit states that the Army is not recognizing substance abuse disorders as mental health conditions that could lead to soldier misconduct. The lawsuit notes that some soldiers turn to substances after experience traumatic events in the military.

• The Space Force wants to take a unique approach to its reserve and Guard components. The Space Force wants to create a hybrid structure that will encompass both its reserve and National Guard needs, according to the service’s highest-ranking officer. Named the Space Component, the mixed organization would merge full-time and part-time guardians. Space Force officials say the component could make it so service members don’t have to pick between their personal lives and their careers. The Space Force is putting particular emphasis on work-life balance as it continues to grow its ranks.

• The Defense Department’s suicide prevention director is now the Biden administration’s chief statistician. The Office of Management and Budget names Karin Orvis as its chief statistician, as well as branch chief for statistical and science policy at its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. OMB hasn’t had a permanent official to lead these efforts in more than two years. Orvis previously served as the director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, which leads suicide prevention programs across the Defense Department. As OMB’s chief statistician, she will oversee a decentralized network of statistical agencies. (Federal News Network)

• After more than a decade, the head of the National Archives and Records Administration retires. April 30 was David Ferreiro’s last day as archivist of the United States. He led NARA since being confirmed in late 2009 during President Barack Obama’s first term. During his 12 years in charge, Ferreiro oversaw a major shift from paper to electronic recordkeeping. Ferreiro also led the establishment of the Citizen Archivist program that allows volunteers to transcribe and tag records. Deputy Archivist Debra Wall will serve as the acting archivist of the United States until the White House selects a permanent replacement.

• The CIA picks a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur as its first chief technology officer. Nand Mulchandani is the CIA’s first ever CTO. His job is to stay on top of cutting-edge innovations, and he’ll report to Director William Burns. Mulchandani previously served as acting director of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. He has also co-founded several technology startups. Last year, the CIA created a new Transnational and Technology Mission Center to focus on emerging foreign technologies, along with climate change and global health.

The service is working on the governance of its Unified Network, it is also directing personnel to important areas of the program and establishing milestones to do a final push on the barrier between strategic and tactical networks.

“Last week, we briefed the undersecretary of the Army on that approach and he has endorsed it and, quite frankly, is building it into his day-to day-governance,” Lt. Gen. John Morrison, deputy chief of staff for the Army, Tuesday at the AFCEA TechNet Cyber conference. “We are well on our way in execution. We will guide it through the Army’s orders process, so that we can align resources and people in organizations and establish accountability.”

Federal News Network reported last year that the Army will start implementing concepts that are meant to unify its enterprise and tactical networks in 2022, these newest actions are some of the first steps in doing that.

The Army has been working on the Unified Network since October 2021, when it released a strategic plan for the program.

The Army’s Unified Network plan has five lines of effort it says are critical to shaping the future of the Army. That include establishing the network to enable multi-domain operations, posturing the force for those multi-domain operations, and sustaining the network.

The other two lines of effort include reforming processes and policies and securing freedom of action in cyberspace.

The Army wants to have a multi-domain operational force by 2028.

The strategy highlights a three-phased plan, the first of which ends in 2024. That phase will establish a security architecture built on zero-trust principles, synchronization with 5G and move capabilities to the cloud.

The other phases move out to 2028 and focus on completing the Defense Department Information Network Ops structure and then implementing the Unified Network for things like robust computers, edge sensors, robotics and cybersecurity.

Senior leaders are planning to finalize a new Army Network Plan in the next several months. That document will help to define what the common network architecture will look like in which the Unified Network will operate.

Also yet to be determined is how the plan for a unified network will play into the service’s plan to largely outsource day-to-day network operations on its garrisons. The Army is still piloting the Enterprise-IT-as-a-Service (EITaaS) approach on three of its installations, and doesn’t expect to make any final decisions on the way ahead for the rest of its bases until 2023.

“We’re working through all of that, but the notion of the unified network merely would fit under that [EITaas] umbrella, or it would be a component of how we provide the unified network,” Morrison said last year. “The hope is we can be more effective and efficient by working with our industry partners, but the notion of the unified network in support of multi-domain operations is they have to be mutually supporting.”

The military in general is putting a huge emphasis on multi-domain efforts. One of its current flagship programs is Joint All Domain Command and Control.

That concept will bring together many different weapons and systems throughout domains so decision makers can see and share data quickly to take fast action.

Editor’s note: This article contains explicit language and references to sexual situations and abuse.

“It is simply too early in the goddamn morning for unsolicited dick pics.”

That tweet, sent around 8 a.m. on Dec. 30, 2021, was an impassioned stance from a woman working for the military who had reached her limit with online harassers, shortly after a Marine allegedly sent her a picture of his genitals without her consent. 

The tweet started a maelstrom of discussion about online harassment of and by military service members. Women service members quickly began talking about their experiences with cyberharassment from fellow troops. The picture is just a snippet of what many people in the military community, especially women service members, face every day when they pick up their phones or get on their computers. 

Social media and text messaging are now a way of life for people in the military — they use the services to keep in contact with friends, for recruiting, to do their jobs, to find like-minded people or just to show their mom what they did today. Those platforms are also wrought with sexual harassment, bullying, hazing and intimidation directed at troops and perpetrated by them.  

Sexual advances, crude jabs, attacks and even doxxing — a practice where a person’s personal information is leaked publicly on the internet — bombard service members, especially women, daily on the internet. 

The Defense Department and the military services promise to reinforce a positive command “free of misconduct or the appearance of condoning misconduct,” as one letter regarding social media signed by the top Army officials in 2017 explains. But in reality, as seen through Federal News Network’s years-long investigation, service members see a disconnected leadership bloc that only pays lip service to caring about internet intimidation. 

Meanwhile, troops are feeling the weight of attacks from peers, veterans and civilians through direct messages, texts, calls, video chats, public posts and internet forums. Equally, service members are harassing their peers, often without consequences, through those platforms, troops, veterans and advocacy organizations tell Federal News Network. Those attacks have an effect on recruitment, retention and the mental health of troops, according to studies funded by DoD, and private organizations following the issue.

However, the Pentagon does not have any active data on cyberharassment or who is doing it.

“A pattern of denigration”

Tammy Smith, who formerly served as the Army’s top military personnel official, said the online harassment women service members face is nearly endless.

“You are subject to a pattern of denigration of what it means to be a woman in the military, and a constant pattern of people who come in there specifically to put down or talk poorly about women in the military and minorities in the military,” she said. 

The Pentagon refused multiple requests to talk on-the-record with Federal News Network about online sexual harassment. Federal News Network then sent written questions to DoD and three more emails requesting information over a course of weeks, but the department did not respond. 

While the Biden administration recently signed an executive order making sexual harassment explicitly punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice  in the military, currently the Pentagon and military services keep very little data on online harassment such as how often it’s happening, in what ways, what ranks and services harass the most or even how many online forums there are sharing offensive material. Analysts familiar with the issue told Federal News Network that the military has minimal insight into who is committing online harassment and rarely goes after offenders of the military services’ social media policies.

What it took to sniff out the Marine who allegedly sent the picture of his penis and get his command’s attention was at least 30 women, the second highest military official in the Minnesota National Guard, along with contact from the Marine’s former command.

A painful bond between women

After the woman tweeted about the unsolicited picture, and named the Marine who sent it, other women — civilians, veterans, active duty military and even ROTC cadets — came forward with their own stories about the Marine.

Federal News Network tried multiple times through Twitter and Linkedin to contact the Marine for comment and received no response. 

“We decided to form this group chat,” said Sarah, one of the women in the chat. Federal News Network has changed her name to protect her identity due to the nature of online harassment. “We had, at one point, about 30 different women in this group chat, plus at least 10 others who had commented and expressed that he had either made them uncomfortable, that he had flirted with them or he had, in some way, tried to insert himself into their lives.”

The Marine Corps confirmed that the Marine in question  is under investigation and could not comment further due to privacy rights afforded to uniformed members. The Marine Corps refused an interview to talk generally about online harassment, but did send a statement.

“Harassment of any kind has no place in the Marine Corps. Incidents of harassment weaken trust within the ranks, erode unit cohesion, jeopardize combat readiness and mission accomplishment, and will not be tolerated, condoned, or ignored,” Capt. Ryan Bruce, a Marine Corps spokesman said.

The Marine, who went by the now defunct Twitter handle @usemcee, would frequently groom women by offering to be a mentor to them on military matters — giving tips, mental health support and other guidance, according to people who were in contact with him online. 

“It started with him presenting himself as a mentor and experienced staff sergeant, noncommissioned officer in the Marine Corps willing to offer advice, willing to listen to them and hear what was going on and give them a helping hand as they needed it,” Sarah said. “And then for every single one of these women, he then turns it into flirtation and making sexually aggressive comments toward them. The 18-, 19- and 20-year-old junior service women who are college ROTC cadets, those were the ones that were most concerning to me; to find out that he had pursued sexual relationships with them.”

@usemcee would offer to get “blackout drunk” with them, Sarah said. The woman who tweeted about the explicit picture also tweeted about his tendency to ask women to get overly intoxicated with him.

The cost of stepping forward

“Y’all have no idea how hard this was for me. It took me two days to finally post it, bc i hate confrontation,” the woman who received the picture tweeted. “I hate having to explain to men in their mid-30s that their predatory behavior isn’t okay, so.”

It’s especially hard when resources seem to be absent from the discussion around online harassment. While @usemcee’s command reached out to the women, they still needed to file a report, and that can be a scary and daunting task for women concerned about their status in the military.

There’s a stigma for women who come forward with sexual harassment and assault reports, Sarah said.

 “There were still several women who said, ‘I’m really sorry, but I can’t report this to my command because they already don’t like me, and they’re going to treat me like I’m creating a problem,’” Sarah said. “These younger, junior ranking women don’t have power in these situations. They don’t have the power to even get justice for themselves. The Department of Defense doesn’t seem to have a good answer for it.”

A RAND Corporation study published last year found that only 27% of sexual assault victims reported their assault. A total of 31% of men and 28% of women assaulted said they experienced retaliation even if they didn’t report what happened to them. For those who do report, 52% say they experienced retaliation. There are no retaliation numbers for harassment, let alone for online harassment. RAND said that DoD’s recordkeeping of retaliation for assault is dubious, and the numbers are likely higher than what is reported.

DoD has put a heavy emphasis on sexual assault and harassment in the past years. However, numbers remain high. A survey of active duty service members conducted by the Defense Department in 2018 — the last known count of harassments — found that about 119,000 individuals in the military experienced sexual harassment in the previous year. That is roughly 1 in every 10 active duty service members.

Despite the emphasis, congressional hearings, new policies and leadership’s promise to crack down, only one general out of the hundreds in the military attempted to step in to address an issue that was blowing up the Twittersphere known as #miltwitter, where leaders, service members, veterans and policy wonks frequently banter.

A day in the life online

On Jan. 1, Maj. Gen. Jo Clyborne, the assistant adjutant general of the Minnesota National Guard, tweeted about the @usemcee incident, “If you know the identity of the NCO who was DMing inappropriate pictures please DM me that individual’s information and unit if known.”

Clyborne told Federal News Network she was just doing her job in reaching out.

“I can’t say I’ve received any classes or training on social media harassment from the military, but you know what ‘right’ looks like, and you know what ‘wrong’ looks like,” she said. “I don’t worry about what other leaders do. I worry about doing what I’m supposed to do in order to lead the formations that I lead with my actions and reactions. At that time, I felt that was the best course of action. My job isn’t to go digging into the facts or to investigate. I’m a couple of levels removed from that. But we teach our junior people from the very day they enter our military, that if you see something, to say something.”

Clyborne is familiar with what wrong looks like; even in her high-ranking position she is harassed online.

Clyborne maintains three jobs: She runs a law firm; she’s the assistant adjutant general of Minnesota; and she’s the deputy commanding general of the Army Cyber Center of Excellence at Ft. Gordon, Georgia.

Recently, Clyborne had her nails done as part of an event she attended as a lawyer — something she rarely does — and sent out a tweet about how she was sad she had to take off the polish before she can get into uniform the next day because the color was not up to code.

Why the Army thinks a French Manicure is an “obnoxious” color compared to the civilian world which views it as an understated yet professional look is beyond me. But I have to be in uniform tomorrow, so here we are. It looked nice while it lasted. pic.twitter.com/GOxjDHbROR

— Maj. Gen. Jo Clyborne (@joclyborne) October 15, 2021

“I was absolutely drug through the mud for that tweet,” she said.

One commenter wrote, “At least 51% of the population believes Major General Jo Clyborne is an atrocity to the entire USA, with or without nail polish.”

Another wrote, “I bet your cookies are delicious!!!! How are your vacuuming skills?”

But Clyborne also knows that what she gets is light compared to the threats and harassment more junior service members, especially women, get every day and sometimes with nearly every post they put online.

“I don’t hear our male leaders having similar experiences,” she said. “They do get threats; they do get obvious comments that are inappropriate. But usually not to the extent that our female leaders do.”

A troubling trend

Federal News Network watched social media over a course of two years to see how women service members are treated by frequently checking #miltwitter, browsing forums maintained by service members for service members, sorting through comments on Facebook groups and monitoring TikToks service members created. Federal News Network also worked with military sexual trauma groups to review documented examples of online harassment and interviewed multiple service members about their experiences.

“If you’re a woman in any regard and you post in uniform, other service members will comment that you are a walking Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention case,” said Emily, an active duty service member who has more than 220,000 followers on TikTok. “There are statements about women only being in the service only to orally satisfy the male soldiers.”

After watching social media, speaking to victims and listening to experts, Federal News Network learned that the experience women service members have online can often be hostile. They are harassed daily about being pregnant, not being pregnant, being too pretty, not being pretty enough. They are talked down to, called sweetie. Women service members are explicitly threatened with rape, with murder and with torture. They are told to stay in the kitchen, to make sandwiches. They are called barrack bunnies. Their home addresses are posted online and people drive by their house. Forums and groups are created to share naked pictures, sexist memes and to gang up on women.

The service member who tweeted about receiving a lewd picture on Dec. 30, 2021, got a harassing comment on the very post where she called out the behavior. The commenter wrote, “You sure you don’t want some foreskin with your coffee? Lmao.”

“When it comes to degrading women online, it’s incredibly common,” said Don Christensen, president of Protect our Defenders and former chief prosecutor for the Air Force. “Any woman who identifies herself as either currently serving or as a veteran is opening themselves up to a barrage of harassment, things like — women shouldn’t be in the military, you’re not a real soldier, you haven’t deployed or if you have deployed then you haven’t seen combat. If you were to talk to women who have accounts that have a lot of followers, they would verify that that is an all too common problem with them being subjected to misogynistic attacks.”

Erin Kirk-Cuomo, co-founder of Not In My Marine Corps, former Marine and photographer to the commandant of the Marine Corps, said online harassment and retaliation are simply a fact of being a woman in the military.

“When I say 99.9% of women service members, or people who identify as women, have been sexually harassed online or inappropriately sexually contacted online by superior officers or enlisted members, that’s not an exaggeration,” she said. “Almost every single woman has had to go through this.”

And when they call it out, service members often do not come to their aid.

“Throughout that whole week of the @usemcee incident you still continued to see active duty members, men, coming to this guy’s defense saying ‘Oh, you’re just blowing this situation out of proportion. This is ridiculous. This is why women in the military have a bad name. This is why they don’t want women serving in the military. This is why you’re all drama.’” Kirk-Cuomo said. “Basically gaslighting every single one of those women and trying to make them feel that they were overreacting to their personal experiences of sexual harassment.”

The effects of harassment run deep

When it comes to the effects of online attacks, harassment in general can be devastating to those on the receiving end.

Another RAND study from 2021 found that women service members in environments with high sexual harassment had a 1.5 times higher risk of being sexual assaulted; it was 1.8 times higher for men who were harassed.

Terry Schell, lead author of the report, said it was already established that sexual harassment and assault in the military were closely linked, but that the study was the first to factor in environment as well.

The Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military said in its report to DoD that subcultures of misogyny thrive online.

According to an extensive compilation of multiple studies by the National Institutes of Health, cyber harassment has traumatic consequences for mental health, including depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and panic attacks.

“For a lot of people it could definitely be what sends them off the edge,” Emily said. “Some people don’t even make it to the end of their end of service date. They just freaking kill themselves because it gets that bad. Women join the Army to be an asset to the country. They intend to be someone that contributes greatly, but being treated as someone who’s dispensable and not valuable at all.”

Finding tragedy in the midst of military harassment isn’t hard. One of the most high-profile cases is that of Spc. Vanessa Guillén. The military dismissed multiple reports of Guillén’s harasser before she went missing. At 20-years-old, she was bludgeoned to death with a hammer by a fellow service member, Spc. Aaron Robinson. Her body was moved off base, dismembered, burned and then buried at three different sites.

What DoD is doing, and what it isn’t

“Why wasn’t I talking about this?” former Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller asked himself in front of the press at the Pentagon in March 2017. “I don’t have a Facebook page, OK? I don’t do social media, all right? And that’s maybe my mistake.”

Neller said that after it was discovered that more than 30,000 active duty and retired members of the Armed Forces were sharing nude photos of female service members online without their consent.

It was a wakeup call for the military, and the services rushed to put out social media policies that promised they were taking a tough stance on online harassment.

But, despite all the evidence that online harassment is still alive and well, DoD doesn’t have much to show for its policies when it comes to documenting the issue.

Data on online harassment, investigations, prosecutions and reprimands is not available. After being given more than a month to answer questions about online harassment and being asked to provide any data on it, the Pentagon has not answered Federal News Network’s request.

Still, according to the aforementioned sources’ testimony and evidence Federal News Network reviewed, online harassment is witnessed by commanders, service members, civilians and vets every day.

Kirk-Cuomo and Christensen confirmed that numbers on online sexual harassment in the military likely don’t exist. While DoD is capable of tracking nearly every object in orbit around the earth the size of a softball or larger, it is unable or unwilling to catalog cases of online harassment.  

In 2017, the personnel chiefs of each military service took questions for the record from lawmakers on how many people had been punished for violating social media policies. Each service answered by saying social media is an emergent issue and there is no centralized system of records or database that captures all allegations of misconduct of this nature, nor is there any system that captures the full range of judicial, non-judicial and administrative actions that may have been exercised by individual commanders, commanding officers and officers in charge. The Marine Corps did provide the number of troops under investigation for sharing photos at the time: at least 116.

There is no evidence of any updates or further attempts by DoD to improve its recordkeeping on the issue. The closest is a voluntary, self-reported survey of service members in which 30% of women who said they were sexually harassed noted that they had been specifically sexually harassed online. That excludes other types of harassment.

The independent commission on military sexual assault noted that cyber harassment is prone to underreporting because individuals do not trust that the system will meaningfully address their case.

“I don’t think DoD wants to keep statistics because it’s going make them look bad,” Kirk-Cuomo said. “There’s really no statistics on this. It’s been really hard to track, especially online. If you’ve lived it, you know that everybody goes through it.”

Not In My Marine Corps is forwarded links every day to whisper networks sharing nude photos without consent, just like in the Marines United case, plus instances of doxxing, physical threats, racist taunts and everything in between.

“I haven’t seen anything that indicates to me that any of the investigative agencies are proactively looking on the internet to try to find these things,” Christensen said.

Confusion at top levels

Part of the issue is that DoD and the military services’ guides just aren’t up to date with the constantly changing dynamics and trends of social media.

“There’s no real solid, clear definitions or policies around what service members should or shouldn’t, or can and can’t do with regards to online activity,” Kyleanne Hunter, a member of DoD’s independent review commission on sexual assault in the military. “The focus of social media training and online activity training is really focused on sharing classified information, don’t share things that are sensitive or classified, don’t get people in trouble.”

Before the executive order on sexual harassment in the military from President Joe Biden in January, harassment was lumped in with other charges like behavior unbecoming of an officer or failure to follow an order. Only unlawful distribution of photos had its own category. That makes it hard for data on harassment or online harassment to track.

Kirk-Cuomo, of Not in My Marine Corps, said if someone were to request records of all the general charges harassment might be prosecuted under, then they would have to sift through a landfill of other behaviors like DUIs and vaccine refusals. The article is legally broad and encompasses everything from cruel and immoral actions to being dishonest.

The new executive order brings some hope to sifting through prosecutorial data. Sean Timmons, a managing partner at the law firm Tully Rinckey, who specializes in military law, said the order creates a specific charge for sexual harassment.

“It’s just basically semantics, in all honesty, because sexual harassment has been criminalized in the military for more than 30 years, they just didn’t specifically identify it as an enumerated offense,” Timmons said.

The change could broaden the scope of what the military is willing to prosecute. The Pentagon has more violations to put on paper when charging someone and that puts the defense in more of a bind. Timmons said the new classification could be one way to increase online harassment prosecutions.

The independent commission on sexual assault noted in their recommendations that DoD needs to collect data to measure the problem of online harassment and its related harms.

“DoD and the services lack the ability to track the prevalence of cyberharassment, online stalking and retaliation, and other technology-facilitated abuse, such as the non-consensual distribution of intimate digital images,” the commission wrote. “Without a systematic, targeted approach to collecting data on harassing and harmful behaviors in the cyber domain, DoD and the services will lack information critical to informing prevention measures.”

Accountability is scarce

Outside of collecting the data, the Pentagon has to actually prosecute these cases and most signs, at this point without solid data, show that it’s not happening often. Of course, DoD can only prosecute service members who are harassing other service members due to the scope of its authority.

The commission authors state in their report that, “While DoD and the services address the online environment in their harassment policies, accountability remains scarce.”

Actually finding the harassers is one of the most complex issues for DoD, according to Christensen. Perpetrators can create anonymous burner accounts that make it hard to figure out who is behind the avatar.

“Who is this person that is doing these things? How do we find out who this person is?” Christensen said. 

Before the 2022 defense authorization act, investigations were handed off from a command to whoever had time to do the work, leading to shoddy detective work, Christensen said. That is changing now with the new law creating a special investigations unit for sexual assault and harassment in the military. That law will move that work out of the chain of command, where an officer who specializes in assault and harassment and has no ties to the command and people being investigated will handle the case. 

DoD set a timeline for some of its sexual assault reforms laid out by Congress and the review commission on sexual assault. Many won’t be finished until 2027, a schedule that is under scrutiny by lawmakers like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)

However, investigators also need the cooperation of the command. If the command isn’t willing to look into details of who the poster might be — like identifying factors in messages — the offender would be able to stay under the guise of anonymity. 

Outside of that, Christensen said, if the harasser doesn’t make it clear who they are, “I don’t know how you would ever identify them short of subpoenaing Twitter to find out who the person is, which can be problematic.”

Kirk-Cuomo described DoD as an ostrich with its head in the sand when it comes to online harassment, and often leadership is still causing controversy on how it’s handled.

A TikTok story of culture divide

One particular incident gained traction on MilTok, the section of TikTok used by service members, when an Army specialist at Ft. Hood, who goes by @dont_mindg, posted a video of a soldier’s fatigue pants around his ankles stating that a woman was trying to climb the ranks.

Emily, the active duty service member who has hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok, posted a response to the video, calling out the soldier for harassing women.

@savannahglembin happened to me while I was active and to so many other women I know, I’m so sorry @_the_joel_ #military#militarywomen#army#marine#feminist#strongwomen ♬ original sound – Savannah Glembin

“I said ‘Hey, if you have a female soldier working under you how protected and mentored and safe is she going to feel in a work environment where her boss is posting stuff like this? Or expecting stuff like this out of his female soldiers?’” Emily said.

A soldier from a completely different base saw Emily’s TikTok critiquing the TikTok and complained to her command about her videos; Emily’s videos do not violate any military codes or TikTok terms. While many other soldiers thought Emily’s post was constructive and added to the discussion of harassment, her leadership took the complaint to heart. Emily’s command made her take down all of her videos with her in uniform and forbade her from posting further in uniform.

“She did the right thing in calling him out. She kept it tactful and professional,” one post on the Army Reddit with hundreds of comments said. “She was told to take all her videos in uniform down and to not post in it anymore. All because she did the right thing. Is this the Army we are part of? How we supposed to trust our leaders when they do BS like this? This is not okay. We need to do better.”

While this was happening, @dont_mindg had not been reprimanded or investigated; the Army later said it began an investigation immediately after learning about the video on Jan. 7.

Eventually, Emily’s command reversed its decision.

Hunter, the member of the independent review on sexual assault, said most leaders are out of touch with the internet culture of their subordinates.

“There’s quite frequently a large generational divide as to how the more junior members, both enlisted and officers, view the digital world and how most of the senior leaders do,” Hunter said.

Since the Marines United incident, leaders are making more of an effort to engage online, but they are still largely insulated from what junior officers are doing.

“There is a lack of understanding about the social media realm by senior leaders,” Smith, the former Army major general, said. “We didn’t grow up in social media; some of us adopted it later on. We don’t understand the experiences of young people who grew up with it. Social media was the place that they went, that was as familiar as going to ballet lessons or going to the playground.”

Congress asked former Marine Corps Commandant Neller in the wake of the Marines United scandal how to hold offenders accountable. He said he didn’t have a good answer.

The sexual assault commission noted that senior leaders’ limited digital literacy keeps them from fully understanding their junior members and the impact of online harassment.

What DoD needs to change

The expectation from the Pentagon is to uphold the positive command structure it promises to keep service members from preying on each other, Kirk-Cuomo said. 

“What really needs to happen is now that we have this specific UCMJ article on harassment, they need to utilize it, these people need to be held accountable,” she said. “If you want to act like this, you want to destroy our morals and our values that we stand for and the good order and discipline, then you don’t belong in the military. Goodbye.” 

The independent review commission outlined three recommendations that DoD should follow to begin clamping down on online harassment. One of those is exactly what Kirk-Cuomo said: actually holding people accountable and an easy way for victims to report the issues. 

To get there though, the commission says DoD needs a systematic approach to actually combating cyberharassment. That includes collecting data on the size of the problem and its harms. 

“DoD and the services lack the ability to track the prevalence of cyberharassment, online stalking, retaliation and other technology-facilitated abuse, such as the non-consensual distribution of intimate digital images,” the commissioners wrote in the report. “Without a systematic, targeted approach to collecting data on harassing and harmful behaviors in the cyber domain, DoD and the service will lack information critical to informing prevention measures.”

The commission said DoD should develop its own cyberharassment survey to distribute to troops. 

Finally, the commission said leaders need to be better educated. Kirk-Cuomo agreed that digital literacy is still an issue within leadership. 

“The leadership has to realize that this is an issue that is impacting the daily lives of their service members and not turn a blind eye to it,” she said.  

Many critical tweeters questioned why people like Maj. Gen. Clyborne got involved in an “online squabble.”

“That’s the problem, because that’s how the majority of the leadership thinks at the moment,” Kirk-Cuomo said. “There’s got to be some kind of training for leadership for general officers to be like, ‘Hey, you have this tool in your toolbox to go after online harassment. Now you use it, and you need to address it when you see it.’”

What this means for women in the military

The military needs women. They have been serving since Deborah Sampson joined the Army in 1781 and sustained a saber wound to the head and a musket ball to the thigh.

DoD has made it abundantly clear it wants more women and more diversity in its ranks. In February, the Pentagon released its Women, Peace and Security Framework and Implementation Plan — a way for the department to encourage meaningful participation, development and employment in the joint force for all ranks and occupations in the defense and security sectors.

Elizabeth Phu, DoD’s principal director of cyber policy, stated upon the release of the strategy that DoD needs the top talent and bringing in all aspects of gender and race are key to developing that workforce.

“When you ignore any segment of the population, you run the risk of not grabbing the best talent available for critical missions. And so, in some sectors, the progress is a lot slower than others, but I do see progress overall,” she said.

Multiple studies from the RAND Corporation studies commissioned by DoD show women contributed to the military’s readiness and are beneficial to the services.

On top of that, DoD is pulling from a shrinking pool of potential recruits — about 25% of 17- to 24-year-olds are eligible to serve — to do more complex and skilled jobs relating to near-peer competition, space, cyber, data, artificial intelligence and coding.

Navy personnel chief Vice Adm. John Nowell recently told Congress that in the past three years the propensity of those eligible to serve dropped from 13% to 10%.

“Women are 51% of the population,” Clyborne, the assistant adjutant general of the Minnesota National Guard said. “Why would you exclude 51% of the talent pool? We know also from studies that diverse teams do better, they are more creative, and they provide better problem solving. We have women in our formation who need to know that they can achieve the greatest levels of success.”

Current service members, leaders, policy experts, retired generals and academics all told Federal News Network that online harassment is a major deterrent to women serving in the military. 

“There’s a huge recruitment and retention issue regarding online harassment,” Hunter said. Hunter recently published research in the Marine Corps University Press’ Journal of Advanced Military Studies connecting online misogyny to a decrease in recruitment and retention of women in the military.

“The net result is women leaving the service due to feeling a lack of belonging and a lack of belief that their concerns will be adequately addressed,” the study found. Women were two to one more likely to say they were planning on leaving the military as soon as possible and cited online harassment as a primary reason.

Hunter described online harassment as death by a thousand cuts.

“DoD has invested an exorbitant amount of money in studies to figure out how to retain more women,” Kirk-Cuomo said.

However, at least one of the answers has been under the military’s nose the whole time.

“The vast majority of women I know who served in the military and gotten out. All of them say, they would never tell their daughter to join,” Sarah, one of the 30 women in the chat about @usemcee said. “Every single female service member I know has experienced online harassment. I cannot imagine that does anything positive in terms of retaining the best and brightest in the military. These wonderful, strong, intelligent, brave women don’t feel like they’re being treated as human beings by their peers.”

“I ended up asking my doctor, ‘Hey, can I get a little more time? You know, I just lost my child. My whole life just changed before my eyes. Can I have a little more time?’” Pierce told reporters Thursday during a roundtable.

Her request was denied. Pierce ended up taking two weeks of chargeable leave to “mourn the loss of my family and the future that I thought I was going to have.”

Now, six years later, thanks in part to a grassroots effort from soldiers around the country, the Army is issuing a sweeping directive that gives new privileges to soldiers who are parents, pregnant or postpartum.

“Pregnancy is not a unhealthy negative malady,” said Amy Kramer, special assistant to the undersecretary of the Army. “It is a healthy natural life event that should be celebrated. That’s part of our effort to normalize parenthood – expanding one’s family is natural; it is healthy. When our female warriors undergo such a life event, they shouldn’t be treated like they’re sick. They should be celebrated as we have one more member of the Army team, and what can we do to ensure that she is supported and can continue to fulfill the oath that she pledged years earlier? The same applies to adoptive parents and all parents.”

The directive brings together a group of decentralized policies that were either de facto implemented or were only applicable in certain areas of the Army. It also adds in six new policies for soldiers, five of which come from soldier feedback.

The policies include benefits for soldiers like Pierce after losing a child. Those soldiers will be given convalescent leave for emotional and physical recovery. That leave will be non-chargeable. Soldiers whose spouses went through a miscarriage will also be granted convalescent leave.

The leave can vary from seven to 42 days depending on when in the pregnancy the child was lost.

The policy also removes a requirement for soldiers to get pre-approved leave to terminate a pregnancy and grants those soldiers convalescent leave as well.

The directive changes training and education requirements for expecting soldiers and new parents. Postpartum soldiers will have a year to defer professional military education without effecting their promotions.

Lactation accommodations will be provided in education facilities and all soldiers will be exempt from physical fitness standards at educational facilities for a year.

Pregnancy will not disqualify a soldier from graduating a school and schools will be more accommodating to absences for soldiers who get pregnant during a course.

One area of contention in the service was the body composition test, postpartum soldiers will be exempt from that test for a year as well.

The concern is that women were forced to change their bodies in ways that were not healthy for the production of breastmilk or for recovery.

Another large change is that the Army is allowing birth parents and non-birth parents from any component to defer operational training for a year. That helps keep at least one parent home with the child at all times.

“We recognize that traditional male/father, female/mother – that’s not so traditional anymore,” said Lt. Col. Kelly Bell, an Army nurse who advocated for changes to policies. “You have single parents, you have single mothers, single dads, but you also have same gender couples who use fertility treatment if they’re female, or on the male side adopting. You have transgender soldiers, so this directive really is all inclusive of all parents seeing, and that is super exciting.”

The policy allows soldiers to wear maternity clothes up to a year after giving birth as well.

Kramer said the changes will have minimal negative effects on readiness and that only 0.6% of the Army is pregnant at any given time.

“But for the 180,000 women in uniform and for the 400,000 parents in the Army at some point in their careers, they will be affected by one or more of the policies in this directive,” she said. “That’s the long term investment in readiness.”

Advocates for sexual assault prevention in the military got some major wins last year with legislation taking sex crimes out of the direct chain of command and extra funds for response measures. However, a new campaign backed by some prominent groups are still pushing the Defense Department and Congress to go farther in how it protects service members from harassment, assault, retaliation, domestic violence and other issues.

The #RedWhiteandBruised campaign is encouraging service members to share their stories on social media of how the military leaders failed to go after alleged assailants and the effects it had on them.

“We’re launching this campaign to really to bring awareness to this issue and mobilize our service member and our veterans to make sure that they know that their voice is heard, get them to speak up, stand up, speak out, reach out to the congressional leaders,” said Lindsey Knapp, executive director of Combat Sexual Assault. “We are the minority and the majority is holding the power, in sweeping sexual assault under the rug not holding their senior leaders accountable when they do that. Until we can get enough support and get enough attention on this issue, we’re just not going to make any progress.”

Congress gets the same kind of redacted reports- if anything at all. Because we gotta make sure privacy of the accused is protected while victims are ignored, retaliated against, or obstructed in their pursuit of justice. @redwhitebruised #redwhiteandbruised #TikTok @usarmy pic.twitter.com/yHWrnqS0Mo

— Joanna (@JoannaIsBack16) April 18, 2022

The campaign has a list of seven demands, the first of which calls for Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. James McConville and Army Forces Command chief Gen. Michael Garrett to resign for “willfully failing to ensure proper investigations into sexual and domestic violence.”

Other demands include opening an investigation into Ft. Bragg, Army Forces Command, Army Reserve Command, Army Africa and the National Guard Bureau to look into incidents of retaliation and ignorance of sex crimes.

The campaign wants the Pentagon to create a policy barring the employment of anyone who has been credibly accused of domestic violence, child abuse or sexual assault crimes and it wants to charge people with obstruction of justice for interfering with assault and abuse reporting.

The demands also include full passage of the Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention bill. That legislation was originally in the 2022 Defense Authorization Act, but was watered down in conference.

It originally would have taken all nonmilitary crimes out of the chain of command and not just sex crimes. Keeping crimes in the chain of command gives commanders discretion on what to prosecute instead of legal experts.

“How can the military police itself? What we’re saying is that they can’t. There are no checks and balances, there’s no accountability mechanism,” said Amy Braley-Franck, founder of Never Alone Advocacy. “Until we rally the troops and make the public aware of it, they’re just going to continue to operate under this veil of accountability.”

The #RedWhiteandBruised campaign is already garnering attention on social media. Service members are sharing their stories by video, Twitter threads and other means.

“The retaliation got so severe that I ended up having a mental health crisis. When it got to that point, I was like, okay, this is rock bottom. This is the worst it’s gonna get.” A #RedWhiteAndBruised Air Force vet shares her story of military assault and retaliation: pic.twitter.com/S1qxTTsaga

— Red White and Bruised (@redwhitebruised) April 19, 2022

Knapp and Braley-Franck say the campaign will continue until they see results.

Meanwhile, DoD is pledging major resources to combat sexual assault and harassment.

DoD announced its roadmap to changing its sexual assault policies in last September. An independent review commission gave the Pentagon 82 recommendations.

The recommendations range from changing how assaults and harassment are prosecuted to taking better account of data through climate surveys.

“Our recommendations are really designed as a comprehensive and complimentary package to one another, these are not designed to be one standalone recommendation and forget the other ones,” Kayla Williams, one of the commissioners, said in 2021. “There’s a lot more meat on the bones than just changing the legal structure.”

However, lawmakers are concerned DoD isn’t working fast enough.

Eight lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, including Sens. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last fall with concerns that DoD’s plan will take too long to implement.

“We write to express our disappointment and concern with the vague approach and lax timeline the Department of Defense has laid out,” the senators wrote. “This approach does not rise to the challenge of addressing the crippling and endemic sexual assault crisis afflicting our nation’s military. Instead, the memo lays out four tiers of priorities with a deadline of 2027 at the earliest, and 2030 at the latest.”