Tough year for the U.S. Navy:

The U.S. Navy has named the three sailors lost in Wednesday’s C-2A aircraft crash southeast of Okinawa, Japan in the Philippine Sea.

In a statement, the Navy identified Lt. Steven Combs, of Florida; Matthew Chialastri, an aviation boatswain’s mate airman from Louisiana and Bryan Grosso, an aviation ordnanceman airman apprentice, also from Florida.

Over the course of his service, Combs won the National Defense Service Medal and the Navy Battle “E” Ribbon, the Navy said. The Berkshire Eagle reports he was 28 years-old and a graduate of St. Joseph Central High School in Pittsfield, Mass.

Chialastri was the 2013 valedictorian of his graduating high school class in Baton Rouge, The New York Times reports. “He was dependable, he was loyal,” said Sgt. First Class Jill Pearl who taught him at Woodlawn High School’s Junior R.O.T.C. program. “He could handle any situation that you put him in. And it just looked like he did it with such ease,” she told the Times.

Grosso enlisted in the Navy soon after graduating from West Florida High School in 2017. “He was a really good kid,” his lacrosse coach Justin Luciano told The Pensacola News Journal. “Every time I saw him in the hallways, he was laughing, joking, having fun. There was always a smile on his face.”

With help from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, the Navy spent two days looking for the sailors over some 1,000 square nautical miles, using ships, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, before calling off the search on Friday…

…The C2-A Greyhound was bringing cargo and passengers to the USS Ronald Reagan from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni when it went down some 500 nautical miles southeast of Okinawa Wednesday afternoon.

Eight other sailors on board were rescued the day of the crash and reported to be in good condition.”

Follow me on Twitter so you can be prepared to deal with your disgusting co-workers:

https://twitter.com/BKactual/status/934268852233420800

Science Fiction is becoming a reality:

The Army is testing an exoskeleton technology which uses AI to analyze and replicate individual walk patterns, provide additional torque, power and mobility for combat infantry and enable heavier load-carrying, industry officials said.

Army evaluators have been assessing a Lockheed-built FORTIS knee-stress-release-device exoskeleton with soldiers at Fort A.P. Hill as part of a focus on fielding new performance enhancing soldier technologies.

Using independent actuators, motors and lightweight conformal structures, lithium ion battery powered FORTIS allows soldiers to carry 180 pounds up five flights of stairs while expending less energy.

“We’ve had this on some of the Army’s elite forces, and they were able to run with high agility carrying full loads,” Keith Maxwell, senior program manager, exoskeleton technology, Lockheed Martin..said.

Lockheed engineers say FORTIS could prove particularly impactful in close-quarters urban combat because it  enhances soldier mobility, speed and power.”

Rest in Peace:

What is going on at the FBI???:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI failed to notify scores of U.S. officials that Russian hackers were trying to break into their personal Gmail accounts despite having evidence for at least a year that the targets were in the Kremlin’s crosshairs, The Associated Press has found.

Nearly 80 interviews with Americans targeted by Fancy Bear, a Russian government-aligned cyberespionage group, turned up only two cases in which the FBI had provided a heads-up. Even senior policymakers discovered they were targets only when the AP told them, a situation some described as bizarre and dispiriting.

“It’s utterly confounding,” said Philip Reiner, a former senior director at the National Security Council, who was notified by the AP that he was targeted in 2015. “You’ve got to tell your people. You’ve got to protect your people.”

The FBI declined to answer most questions from AP about how it had responded to the spying campaign. The bureau provided a statement that said in part: “The FBI routinely notifies individuals and organizations of potential threat information.”

Three people familiar with the matter — including a current and a former government official — said the FBI has known for more than a year the details of Fancy Bear’s attempts to break into Gmail inboxes. A senior FBI official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the hacking operation because of its sensitivity, declined to comment on timing but said that the bureau was overwhelmed by the sheer number of attempted hacks.”

You’re the safety violator and you know it:

Stop crashing our planes:

Even before the Navy cargo plane crash Wednesday, the number of U.S. troops killed in plane crashes had skyrocketed this year along with the total number of crashes overall compared to this point a year ago, a Fox News investigation has uncovered.

So far this year, there have been 22 U.S. military non-combat plane crashes flying routine operations. That’s up 38 percent from this time last year.

The number of American troops killed in these plane crashes has more than doubled. Following the announcement by the 7th Fleet Thursday night that it has ended its search for three missing American sailors hundreds of miles off the coast of Japan, the number of U.S. service members lost to plane crashes in 2017 stands at 37. That is more than 130 percent higher than the number killed in non-combat plane crashes at this point in 2016.

Many on Capitol Hill say years of budget cuts are taking a toll.

“Perhaps the greatest harm to our national security and our military is self-inflicted. I repeat self-inflicted,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and former naval aviator, said on the senate floor. “We are killing more of our own people in training than our enemies are in combat.”

The Navy cargo plane crash this week was the deadliest crash for the U.S. military since an Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed off the coast of Hawaii killing five soldiers in August.

The crash of the C-2 Greyhound occurred 575 miles out to sea while flying from Japan to the USS Ronald Reagan. A former C-2 pilot says it’s a miracle eight sailors survived and compared the pilots’ actions in the crash to Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger landing a US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009.”

Females in the DPRK army have it rough, man: 

A former soldier says life as a woman in the world’s fourth-largest army was so tough that most soon stopped menstruating. And rape, she says, was a fact of life for many of those she served with.

For almost 10 years Lee So Yeon slept on the bottom bunk bed, in a room she shared with more than two dozen women. Every woman was given a small set of drawers in which to store their uniforms. On top of those drawers each kept two framed photographs. One was of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung. The second was of his now deceased heir, Kim Jong-il.

It was more than a decade ago that she left, but she retains vivid memories of the smell of the concrete barracks.

“We sweat quite a bit.

“The mattress we sleep on, it’s made of the rice hull. So all the body odour seeps into the mattress. It’s not made of cotton. Because it’s rice hull, all the odour from sweat and other smells are there. It’s not pleasant.”

 To understand the damaged mind of the SoCal progressive, watch this video:

By this logic, anyone being discharged for any medical reason has a right to remain in service:

WASHINGTON — A second federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s proposed ban on transgender troops Tuesday, saying President Trump’s announcement of the ban in a series of tweets this summer was “capricious, arbitrary, and unqualified.”

In a preliminary injunction, Judge Marvin J. Garbis of the Federal District Court for Maryland halted a policy that would have discharged all current transgender troops and barred prospective ones from enlisting, saying it likely violated equal protection provisions of the Constitution.

Judge Garbis’s 53-page order went further than a similar ruling last month by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, which also said the ban likely violated the Constitution. “There is absolutely no support for the claim that the ongoing service of transgender people would have any negative effective on the military at all,” the ruling said.

But while Judge Kollar-Kotelly did not specifically block a Trump administration policy prohibiting gender-reassignment surgery for service members at the government’s expense, Judge Garbis’s order does.

The ruling leaves in place an Obama-era policy, announced in 2016, that allows transgender troops to serve openly and receive the required medical care for their gender transition through the military. Shortly after the ruling the Trump administration appealed last month’s decision, signaling it would continue to press for the removal of transgender troops…

…In siding with the plaintiffs, Judge Garbis, who was nominated to the court by President George Bush, said the troops had shown they were “already suffering harmful consequences such as the cancellation and postponements of surgeries, the stigma of being set apart as inherently unfit, facing the prospect of discharge and inability to commission as an officer, the inability to move forward with long-term medical plans, and the threat to their prospects of obtaining long-term assignments.”

Dude was multitasking:

A man is behind bars and a woman in the hospital after the car they were driving in went off the road and hit a tree of Wednesday – allegedly while they were having sex. 

Washington State Patrol arrived at the scene shortly after 6pm and found the couple – Michael G Tonkin and Daisy L Laroque – both fully naked with the woman’s three-month-old child in the backseat.

Tonkin, who had three prior DUI arrests, was brought to the Pierce County Jail, according to WSP spokeswoman Brooke Bova, while Laroque was taken to the hospital with broken bones.

The newborn in the backseat was not injured in the crash.

It was a bystander who gave a witness account to WSP officers who reported that the couple exited the car naked on Wednesday.

Tonkin is now being held on a number of charges including DUI and child endangerment.

He is also likely to be charged with vehicular assault for the incident.”

That is the best wrestling ref anyone has ever seen:

https://twitter.com/memeprovider/status/931639635742162949

DOJ is dropping the hammer:

Fox EXCLUSIVE: The Department of Justice on Tuesday filed lawsuits to revoke the U.S. citizenship of five immigrants who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing minors in incidents determined to have taken place before they became naturalized, Fox News has learned.

These individuals, according to the Justice Department, “unlawfully procured their U.S. citizenship by concealing sexual abuse of minor victims during the naturalization process.”

“Committing fraud in any immigration matter undermines the integrity of our immigration system, and is a betrayal of the American people’s generosity,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “It is especially appalling when it also involves the sexual abuse of children.”

The lawsuits were filed in the Southern District of Florida, the Northern District of Illinois, the Northern District of Texas and the Southern District of Texas.”

Just kill yourself and leave the kids out of it:

Greek police say an air force non-commissioned officer has set fire to his apartment, killing himself and his 8-year-old twin boys.

Greece‘s fire service said Saturday that the father and his children were found unresponsive because of the smoke that overwhelmed them and declared dead upon arriving at a hospital.

Police who searched the apartment said they found a note scrawled on the wall with a felt pen, reading “I’m tired of you all” as well as several post-it notes, including a rant against the man’s stepfather-in-law.

The 43-year-old man had been divorced from his wife, who recently had been granted custody of the twins. The children were on scheduled visit with their father.

Police say the man had locked the door to the children’s bedroom so they couldn’t escape.”

I am fascinated with mad geniuses:

In the early hours of September 4, Alex Handrick awoke to the sound of gunfire. Having served in the U.S. Army for eight years, the private security guard recognized the noise immediately. Realizing the shots were coming from above his basement bedroom, 28-year-old Handrick grabbed his assault rifle and rushed upstairs.

There, naked but for an ammunition belt, was 71-year-old tech tycoon and former fugitive John McAfee, spraying bullets into the wall and ceiling of the living room. Seeing Handrick, he stopped firing: “There’s an intruder,” he said…

…The incident marks only the latest twist in a five-year saga for the cybersecurity pioneer, whose eponymous antivirus software made him a household name in the 1990s, and, when he sold the company for a reported $100 million, a very rich man. But in the years since, McAfee has more often been associated with scandal—not least when, in 2012, he was caught up in the investigation of the murder of his neighbor in Belize, the Central American country where he had moved four years earlier.

He denies any involvement in the murder and instead claims it was part of an underworld plot that involves government corruption at the highest levels, drug cartels, pimps, prostitutes, his own paranoia, and even his wife. “It’s a complicated morass of a spider’s web,” McAfee tells Newsweek. “I am the fly and the spider has more than eight legs.”

Dude you had one job:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEjag-a7TyU

Veteran kills Texas DPS Trooper:

Dabrett Black, the suspected killer of a DPS trooper, spent several years in the U.S. Army including deployments in Iraq, according to three individuals who say they served with him. Black’s formers peers told Fox 4 that he was funny, and a good leader, until a sudden shift marked by a high-profile breakdown.

Law enforcement officials arrested Black in Waller County late Thursday after an hours-long manhunt. The Texas Department of Public Safety said he fatally shot Trooper Damon Allen during a traffic stop Thursday afternoon along I-45 in Freestone County.

Matthew Chappell was stunned to see Black’s face in a news article Friday. “I was taken aback by it,” he said.

Chappell said around 2010 and 2011 the two were both deployed to Al-Asad in Iraq. The two didn’t work alongside each other but hung out on base.

“He was funny, he would get you motivated, he had a lot of energy, good leader all around,” said Chappell. “All around good soldier.”

Jessica Vinson was with Black while in on base at Fort Stewart, Ga. and later deployed with him to Iraq. The two were part of the same platoon.”

This seems like it would be covered on like day zero of flight school:

The US Air Force (USAF) has urged its UK-based pilots to keep cockpit windows clean to avoid mid-air collisions with civilian aircraft.

RAF Lakenheath-based USAF F-15 jets were involved in 19 near-misses with UK aircraft in the past five years.

An F-15 pilot from the Suffolk base was recently praised after spotting a glider by eyesight rather than radar and avoiding a collision.

The USAF said its pilots were trained to fly in a “vigilant state”.

The near-miss in April happened when a pair of low-flying F-15s came close to a glider over the Black Mountains near Hereford.

The UK Airprox Board found the glider, which was not picked up on radar, was spotted by one of the pilots and the F-15s manoeuvred out of the way.

The British Glider Association commended the F15 pilot’s look-out skills.

More than 1,000 near-misses have been reported to the UK Airprox Board in the past five years, of which about 360 have involved U.K. or U.S. military aircraft.”

We’ve finally found the crowd control horse’s weakness:

https://twitter.com/Copvids911/status/932941960737902592

Nice “Pastor” ya got there:

A Thanksgiving dinner turned deadly after a Virginia pastor shot and killed his wife her daughter, and the daughter’s boyfriend at their Virginia home on Thursday evening, police said.

Christopher Gattis, 58, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, reported WTVR.

His victims were Jeanett Gattis, 58, her daughter, 30-year-old Candice Kunze, and Kunze’s boyfriend, 36-year-old Andrew Buthorn. All three victims died from gunshot wounds.

Police described the scene in a 911 call obtained by the outlet.

“I have one detained; be advised he shot three people … I got one male subject on the ground. He’s got two gunshots to the stomach … Sir, we have two females down in the kitchen.”

Authorities said this was a domestic dispute that turned violent. Gattis is being held without bond at the Chesterfield County jail.

Gattis was a youth pastor at Grace Lutheran Church located in Chester, Virginia, according to NBC12.”

Just give him the damn truck: 

Baton Rouge police arrested a man Tuesday who was naked when he punched another man and stole his truck from the parking lot of a Baton Rouge motel, according to an arrest report.

Police said the victim was sitting in his white work truck around 9:30 p.m. in the 6400 block of Greenwell Springs Road when 41-year-old Terrance King walked up, punched him in the forehead and pulled him out of the vehicle.

 King then got into the truck and drove it to the back of the motel, according to the report.”

When the officer found King, he was naked, sitting in the truck, police said. After an officer twice asked him to get out of the truck, King jumped out the truck’s window, but was caught by the officer and handcuffed, according to the report.

King’s address is listed on one police document as 6434 Greenwell Springs Road, which is the motel’s address. A jail booking document, however, lists King as homeless. King was booked into Parish Prison on carjacking, second-degree battery and obscenity.”

@BKactual

Featured image courtesy of U.S. Navy