Galen Fries

Floods in Washington, a brutal drone-and-missile strike in Ukraine, and a new UK intel superstructure all point to the same truth: when things go sideways, it’s the quiet professionals on watch, on shift, and on the ground who keep people alive. And on the Army National Guard’s 388th birthday, the message is simple: everyone loves the Guard the moment the mission gets real, because these citizen-soldiers show up, do the unsexy work, and hold the line.

A tired old NCO, explaining that Pvt. Joe Snuffy is both a real-deal WWII Medal of Honor badass and the eternal, cross-branch screwup whose chaos fuels every safety brief, empowers the E-4 Mafia, and keeps NCOs living on Motrin, Tums, and pure frustration.

Japan’s commitments to Taiwan may stay deliberately foggy, but every new missile battery on the Ryukyus and every long-range purchase order in Tokyo forces Beijing to price Japan into the opening moves, because the “Taiwan problem” stops looking like a solo raid and starts reading like an alliance-triggered brawl.

Pin-up art did not start in WWII, but the war turned it into a morale weapon. From magazine centerfolds to bomber noses, these images reminded troops what “home” looked like, gave crews unit identity, and rode shotgun as lucky charms. The women in the pictures and the women painting them were part of the wartime machine.

Grey Bull Rescue founder Bryan Stern exfiltrated Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado in a donor-backed operation that treated high risk like routine. Meanwhile, Peru is buying K2 tanks and K808 armored vehicles from South Korea, and Ukraine’s SBU Alpha is linked in open-source reporting to a long-range drone strike claim against Russia’s Filanovsky Caspian oil infrastructure.

Three quick hits this evening: Lockheed just fired up a new Huntsville hypersonics lab to speed Army strike programs, Benin swatted down a coup attempt when most of the army stayed loyal, and back in D.C. Pete Hegseth is catching shrapnel for allegedly pushing Yemen strike details over Signal like OPSEC is optional.

USTRANSCOM and the transportation troops behind it are the combat enablers who move SOF and conventional troops, plus their gear, fuel, ammo, and wounded across air, sea, and ground under real threat. Every infil, resupply, and exfil depends on them.

Ukraine is plugging more women into the drone fight on the front line, while back home Pete Hegseth is pushing U.S. industry to crank out weapons faster for the next war, and Poland is set to grab about 250 U.S. Strykers for a buck each to beef up NATO’s eastern flank.

Medal of Honor recipients just got their pension bumped finally putting real weight behind the nation’s highest award. Meanwhile, the Gaza ceasefire is barely holding as clashes flare around the unmarked Yellow Line, and a final Afghanistan watchdog report says the U.S. left billions of arms and equipment in the hands of the Taliban.

In December 1944, Hitler’s last gamble slammed into a “quiet” Ardennes sector, forcing green grunts and hard paratroopers to share frozen holes, man-handle 57s into ambush lanes, outlast Skorzeny’s chaos, and bleed the German offensive dry in the snow.

Russia is helping China sharpen its options for a potential Taiwan fight while U.S. lawmakers race to lock down advanced AI chips that could power Beijing’s next-generation weapons and surveillance tools. At the same time, a hammer fight in a Ranger compound at JBLM shows how insider threats and violent extremists can turn sensitive U.S. military gear into their own private arsenal, underscoring why physical security still matters as much as high-end tech.

Kayla Mueller, a young American aid worker kidnapped and killed by ISIS, became the namesake and moral reason behind the U.S. mission that hunted down al‑Baghdadi, reminding us that her suffering bound her to all Americans and left us with a lasting duty to honor her courage and memory.