Wednesday, Dec 17th
Last update09:36:22 AM GMT
Military Glance
The U.S. Navy's new destroyer -- the USS Zumwalt -- has been sidelined in the Panama Canal after engineering problems.
"The timeline for repairs is being determined now," US Navy Cmdr. Ryan Perry said in a statement to CNN.
USS Zumwalt, which cost $4.4 billion to build, was on its way Monday to San Diego by the end of the year where it was to join the U.S. Third Fleet in the Pacific Ocean. It was projected to be fully operational in 2018.
Following the devastating British inquiry into the 2003 invasion of Iraq, American veterans and their families have warned that the US is liable to repeat the mistakes without a similarly comprehensive investigation.
The UK’s Chilcot inquiry was released on Wednesday, and while it is no secret in the US that the invasion was a failure, nothing so damning as the 2.6m-word British inquiry has been released by an independent US government body.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Thursday that the military will no longer discriminate against transgender troops, knocking down one of the last barriers to service based on sex.
The move, nearly a year in the making, came despite last-minute concerns were raised by top brass about how to deal with the medical, housing and uniform issues for troops who are transitioning to the other sex.
The Air Force announced on Friday that it has lost thousands of records belonging to the service's inspector general due to a database crash.
"We estimate we've lost information for 100,000 cases dating back to 2004," Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told The Hill in an email.
Malvin Greston Whitfield, a Tuskegee airman and three-time Olympic gold medalist who went by the moniker Marvelous Mal, was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday.
Whitfield died in November at age 91. He joined the military in World War II and served as a tail gunner during bombing missions in the Korean War. He flew 27 missions in both wars.
A Chinese fighter jet carried out an "unsafe" intercept of a U.S. spy plane on routine patrol on Tuesday in international airspace over the East China Sea, the U.S. Pacific Command said, as China again demanded an end to U.S. surveillance flights.
The intercept involved two Chinese J-10 fighter planes and a U.S. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance plane, U.S. Pacific Command said in a statement.
TVNL Comment: Would the US intercept Chinese spy planes carrying out surveillance flights over its territory? Just asking...
The investigation that led CIA Director David Petraeus to resign and ultimately plead guilty to a criminal charge of mishandling classified information also uncovered evidence that he discussed highly classified information with journalists, according to a court document obtained Tuesday by POLITICO.
Requesting a search warrant for Petraeus' Arlington, Virginia home in 2013, an FBI agent told a federal magistrate the agency had two audio recordings in which the retired four-star Army general spoke with reporters about matters that authorities believed were "top secret."
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