Army

The Washington and California National Guards surged forces to manage flooding and mudslide threats as atmospheric rivers hit the West Coast during the holidays. In separate incidents, two officers were critically wounded in a North Carolina custody exchange shootout, and a Washington State Patrol trooper was assaulted and had her cruiser stolen during an I-5 stop before the suspect was captured.

In the thin, hard air of Fort Carson, two 10th Group Originals reminded everyone watching that heroism does not need an enemy, only a moment where a man chooses to risk everything so someone else gets to live.

The M7 and M250 were not selected to look good on a briefing slide; they were built to make sure the rifleman and the gunner are hitting the enemy with the same kind of authority when the fight turns ugly and the squad has to carry the weight together.

The Army is cutting hundreds of hours of mandatory training, the Marine Corps is doubling down on Force Design for a Pacific fight, and Los Angeles is moving to tighten rules on LAPD less-lethal weapons at protests. Today’s brief breaks down what changed, why it matters, and what critics are already warning about.

After a deadly ambush near Palmyra, US forces hit more than 70 ISIS targets across central Syria in a heavy retaliation strike meant to keep ISIS cells from regrouping. Russia is pounding Odesa while massing forces near Pokrovsk, and back home a Bellevue officer-involved shooting is under review by King County’s independent investigators as both the officer and suspect recover.

The SIG Sauer M250 is the Army admitting that the next fight is farther out, tougher targets are the baseline, and the squad needs a belt-fed gun that brings real overmatch instead of hoping 5.56 and good intentions will carry the day.

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.

Gunfire cracked a routine engagement into chaos outside Palmyra, killing two U.S. soldiers and a civilian interpreter and proving that even stripped of territory, ISIS still knows how to reach out and draw blood.

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.

The M7 started life as the heavy new kid in the squad, but once soldiers had their say and engineers listened, it grew into a rifle worth carrying.

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.