Washington will join Colorado in the coming months as the second state in the U.S. to open retail storefronts that sell marijuana. While Federal law still prohibits the sale, possession and use of the controlled substance, the Obama administration has made it clear that retailers and recreational users in those two states will not be prosecuted according to Federal statutes.
When it comes to servicemembers stationed in Washington, however, they are still prohibited from marijuana use, according to Military.com. An official from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Wash., said in an interview that the Armed Forces' policy on the substance has been made very clear to soldiers stationed at the installation. Regardless of the legality applied to civilians, troops are still prohibited from any indulgences.
No pot for soldiers
It may not come as a surprise to many that servicemembers will not be allowed to partake in Washington's progression toward legalized recreational marijuana use, and Lt. Gen. Stephen Lanza is taking care to make the military's policy clear to the troops under his command at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
"Our soldiers understand what's legal," Lanza said in an interview, as quoted by Military.com. "From our perspective, marijuana or any type of illegal drug is something that's not tolerated."
Lanza's comments join a similar prohibition on marijuana use for National Guardsmen in Washington. Moreover, the Armed Forces do not distinguish between medicinal and recreational uses of the substance. Even new recruits who enlist after Washington makes marijuana use fully legal for civilians are not grandfathered in to any kind of lax policy.
No smoke over the Rocky Mountains
Servicemembers in Washington will be similarly prohibited from marijuana use as their counterparts in Colorado, which is almost a year ahead of the former state in terms of an established retail market for the substance. In Colorado, it is not only legal to buy and sell marijuana, but individuals may also grow a small number of plants for their own personal use.
Rep. Mike Coffman, R.-Colo., told The Colorado Springs Gazette that servicemembers should be afforded the same rights as other citizens of the state.
"We're the first state to step out with legalization of marijuana, but the military isn't stepping out with us," Coffman told the paper in a telephone interview.
In conversations with military officials, Coffman was told that marijuana is banned on grounds that it could decrease the combat readiness of its troops, though off duty soldiers are prohibited from recreational use just the same.
Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 went missing in the early hours of Saturday, March 8, and other than satellite images of debris floating in the Indian Ocean, officials are still at a loss for what could have caused the airplane to disappear. For some, the hope now rests with locating the plane's black box, the indestructible object kept in cockpits that records hundreds of data parameters and flight conditions.
According to ABC News, however, black boxes only have enough battery life to transmit locator signals for about a month, which means that if MH370 did crash into the Indian Ocean several hundred miles off the western coast of Australia, only about two weeks remain before it loses the energy to ping its location. Malaysian authorities believe they have narrowed their efforts to a new area of open water, but the U.S. Navy is now stepping in to provide technical expertise in the search for the missing plane's black box.
A ping and a prayer
Cmdr. William Marks, spokesman for the 7th Fleet, said in a statement that one of Navy's Towed Pinger Locator machines was scheduled to arrive in the search area on March 26, Stars and Stripes reported. Along with another unmanned underwater vehicle, these two pieces of equipment may provide the best chance of finding the MH370 in the narrowed search area yet.
The Towed Pinger Locator 25 is dropped into the water behind a moving ship and listens for any underwater activity from submerged black boxes. The TPL can effectively pick up a signal of a black box at more than 20,000 feet.
The bla will also be joined by a Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle that features technology to map out the ocean floor. The Bluefin-21 AUV can travel at a maximum speed of 4.5 knots and can dive as low as 14,700 feet for 25 hours.
New search area
In tandem, these two pieces of equipment promise to find any answers that may be hidden in the multinational search effort's new area of focus 1,700 miles west of Perth, Australia, NBC News reported.
Thai satellite images may have found evidence of man-made debris floating on the water's surface, but analysts were unable to determine the objects' origin. Though no official word has come from Malaysian officials or any other country involved in the search efforts, this debris field is only 125 miles southwest of the predicted crash site.
The Pentagon's continuing efforts to cut costs associated with military spending have put many different possible sources of revenue in the spotlight. From cost of living adjustments to base closings, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is looking at any and all ways to recoup money from the Armed Forces' budget.
According to Stars and Stripes, commissaries are the latest focus of the Pentagon's efforts to tighten the military's purse strings. Despite earlier promises that the base outlets would remain safe from cuts and closures, Pentagon officials are now discussing eliminating and drawing back on commissaries at bases across the country.
Cutting down on commissaries
When the Pentagon submitted its 2015 fiscal year budget in early March, critics pored over its contents to find what branches of the military would be hit the hardest. Now, it appears that the current $1.4 million earmarked for subsidies to commissaries that are used to keep costs low for servicemembers would be decreased over a three-year period to only $400 million. Due to the loss of the subsidies, the current 30 percent level of savings enjoyed by military personnel would decrease to around 10 percent.
These cuts would not affect commissaries located at foreign bases, as Pentagon officials believe the cost of living for those soldiers is high enough to warrant the lower prices.
"We are not shutting down any commissaries. We recommend gradually phasing out some subsidies but only for domestic commissaries that are not in remote locations," Hagel told a group of senators in early March, as quoted by Stars and Stripes.
Hagel may have spoken too soon, however, as Frederick Vollrath, assistant secretary of defense for readiness and force management, told members of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel that closing commissaries is not out of the question just yet.
"It's a possibility [but] I don't know what the probability is," Vollrath told the committee Mar. 26.
Additional cuts to health care
The budget cuts and possible closures of commissaries at bases across the country are not the only changes servicemembers may have to stomach, as The Washington Post reported that the new budget would also increase fees associated with the military's Tricare health care coverage program.
Hagel said that the benefits and coverage of the Tricare program would not be affected, but that the enrollment and maintenance fees would be increased to cover gaps in the budget.
Life after military service can pose many difficulties for former servicemembers. The order and schedules they lived under for years are taken away all at once, and the stresses of their duties may have left them with psychological issues that often go undiagnosed and untreated. While some fortunate servicemembers have supportive families to return to, others end up living on the streets or, even worse, in prison.
While the subject of incarcerated veterans may be uncomfortable for some, social workers at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs have made it their mission to increase support programs available to servicemembers struggling with life after service. When it comes to former soldiers in prison, veterans benefits entitle them to transition programs that can help them get back on their feet and working to put their military skills to good use in positions of steady employment.
Getting a clear picture
The exact number of incarcerated veterans is difficult to identify. Some people in prison may falsify military service and others simply cannot be found by the current VA system. According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics that was compiled in 2004, 10 percent of prisoners at the state level reported past military service. Of that number 54 percent served during a wartime period, though only 20 percent reported experiencing combat duty.
Regardless of the nature of their time in the military, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration explained that veterans often experience complicated mental issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder that leads to high rates of unemployment and homelessness – almost 75 and 25 percent, respectively, among incarcerated veterans.
The most common offenses include misdemeanors of driving under the influence, assault, possession of an illegal substance, theft and other minor traffic violations.
Connecting veterans with help
The picture may seem bleak for incarcerated veterans, but various programs seek to match veterans struggling with life after military service, such as the one that Jim Haskell, Veteran Reentry Specialist for the VA, works for. Haskell works to identify veterans in the Maryland prison system and advocates for their rehabilitation and release from incarceration, Stars and Stripes reported.
"Because so many people with mental health conditions and substance abuse conditions are winding up in the judicial system, it's really incumbent upon us to reach out to them and make sure that they're getting the proper services that they need," Haskell told Stars and Stripes. "Basically, that's what we do, is connect veterans to those services."
Haskell travels into prisons across the state to meet with different veterans serving time for past criminal offenses. Rather than providing them with pamphlets of information, Haskell sets up mental health evaluations and presents the results to judges and parole officers to lobby for more lenient forms of treatment. The hope, Haskell said, is that veterans are removed from the punitive justice system and placed into programs that can give them a better chance at rehabilitating their lives.
Former Air Force nuclear missile mechanic Williams Ames remembered meeting Haskell for the first time upon his most recent arrest in 2011.
"Just hearing somebody from the VA, I was like, 'Damn, I'm glad now,'" Ames told Stars and Stripes. "I figured this was maybe an opportunity to get my life back in order."
With Haskell's help, that is exactly what Ames did. In 2012, the former servicemember was moved into a veterans re-entry group at the Maryland VA Medical Center and then a residential treatment facility in Baltimore. Ames now works as a cook in the same facility where he began his journey toward rehabilitation and has plans to find full-time employment as a line cook after he completes his program.
For Haskell, Ames' journey is all in a day's work.
Each soldier has his or her own way to relax in between drilling and other duties. Some may chat with friends, while others play video games to unwind after a long day. However, a large majority of soldiers supplement these relaxation activities with tobacco use.
According to statistics from the American Lung Association, 30 percent of members of the Armed Forces smoke, with 9.5 percent of those qualified as "heavy smokers." In the Navy, the overall rate for smokers is 31.2 percent. Due to these high numbers, Navy officials are now considering a branch-wide ban on tobacco use while on bases or ships, the Navy Times reported. Though no official policies have been made public yet, a prohibition on cigarettes and chew would be the latest move by the Navy to cut down on tobacco use by its sailors.
Orders from on high
According to the Navy Times, Lt. Cmdr. Sarah Flaherty indicated that high-level discussions had taken place regarding top officials' opinions on ways to combat high rates of tobacco use among sailors in the Navy. Cmdr. Tamara Lawrence, a spokeswoman for Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, said that the potential drawback on the prevalence of smoking and smokeless tobacco would be the latest in a long line of initiatives aimed at improving the physical fitness of sailors.
"Tobacco use is the most avoidable public health hazard in the Navy and Marine Corps," Mabus wrote in a statement to the Navy following the revocation of subsidies for tobacco products on base commissaries in 2012.
While the Marine Corps is not expected to be affected by any subsequent decision on tobacco products, neither Mabus nor his spokeswoman would confirm their exemption.
Fighting against tobacco use
Stars and Stripes outlined the vast number of steps the Navy has taken over the years to discourage the use of tobacco by sailors. In the 1990s, smoking breaks were eliminated for troops and separate areas were established apart from non-smoking sailors on ships and submarines. Smoking in the latter was abolished outright in 2010.
The Navy has also fought a back-and-forth battle with Congress over the sale of tobacco on its ships and bases. After Capt. Stanley W. Bryant of the USS Theodore Roosevelt banned all tobacco sales on his ship, a group of Congressmen legally required the commissaries restocked with products and moved the authority on smoking to the Morale, Welfare and Recreation department.
Mabus' most recent efforts may see similar pushback from Congress and the tobacco lobby.
Adm. WIlliam McRaven, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, made waves with recent comments that the number of the most elite members of the U.S. fighting force should be drawn back so that these individuals are reserved for a more specialized role. By focusing on missions of smaller scales and not functioning as accessories to larger fighting forces, McRaven believed that Special Forces could ultimately operate as a more effective unit.
After a recent order concerning the Special Forces, McRaven's strategic comments seem to not have fallen on deaf ears. According to The Washington Post, 150 soldiers from the Air Force Special Operations units and a contingent of supporting airmen will be deployed to central Africa to aid in the search for Joseph Kony, the warlord at the head of the notorious Lord's Resistance Army. The Special Operations forces will bring several CV-22 Osprey multi-purpose aircraft to aid in their operations that are expected to take place throughout the dense jungles of several countries in the heart of the African continent.
Renewed efforts
By order of President Barack Obama under the War Powers Act, the contingent of Special Operations forces and at least four of the Air Force's versatile CV-22 Osprey aircrafts have been deployed to U.S. military bases in Uganda, The Washington Post reported. Though Kony's whereabouts remain unknown, the new troop strength is expected to search an area that comprises regions of Uganda, the largely lawless Central African Republic, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
With the arrival of this contingent of soldiers, the approximate number of U.S. forces stationed in Uganda is expected to reach 300.
While soldiers dispatched in 2011 have disrupted LRA operations, they have not yet located Kony himself.
The Air Force outlined several key operational features of the CV-22 Osprey aircrafts the troops will be bringing with them, most notably its movable rotor design that allows both vertical landings and takeoffs, as well as high speeds at fixed-wing flight. This functionality will allow Special Operations soldiers to move more effectively through the dense jungles of central Africa where it is believed that Kony has evaded U.S. and Ugandan forces for years.
Standing orders
While U.S. troop numbers in central Africa will rise sharply as a result of this deployment, The New York Times reported that American soldiers do not have authorization to engage members of the LRA on sight. The objective of their mission is to aid Ugandan and other soldiers from central African nations in their search for the warlord, but they do have orders to fight back in self defense.
The international community was outspoken in its denouncement of Russia's annexation of the souther portion of Ukraine known as Crimea. A subsequent vote by the Crimean people to join the Russian Federation followed, and Russian President Vladimir Putin gained the valuable Black Sea port city Sevastopol.
However, according to some officials, the Russian military may not be content to halt its actions with Crimea alone. According to U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russian forces have amassed on the Ukrainian border and could quickly mobilize to seize more territory from Ukraine or perhaps the neighboring nation of Moldova, Military.com reported.
Surveilling Moscow
Breedlove made the comments during a speech at the German Marshall Fund think tank event. While Ukraine is not a member of NATO, several adjacent states, such as Poland and Romania, have signed the bi-lateral defense treaty.
"The [Russian] force that is at the Ukrainian border now to the east is very, very sizable and very, very ready," Breedlove said at the conference, as quoted by Military.com.
While he did not state that Russia would march into Ukrainian territory again, Breedlove also mentioned that Russia may have set its sights on a traditionally Russian-speaking portion of Moldova known as Transdniestria.
"There is absolutely sufficient force postured on the eastern border of Ukraine to run to Transdniestria if the decision was made to do that, and that is very worrisome," Breedlove said.
Russian officials have denied any accusations of a military buildup for territorial gains, insisting that any troop movements can be explained by simple exercises.
Foreign intervention
While some critics call for the U.S. military to intervene in Russia's continued military movements, President Barack Obama told NBC 7 San Diego that he would not authorize any such plan. Military action in the Ukraine is not on his agenda, Obama told the TV station, though he admitted that he would be utilizing all the economic and diplomatic tools at his disposal to deter Moscow from any further aggressive actions.
The U.S. has provided the Ukrainian military with 25,000 Meals, Ready to Eat, Military.com reported, but no other assistance to date. Some representatives from Congress have pushed to send small arms and communications equipment to U.S. allies in the region, but doing so could be seen as an act of equal aggression by Russian officials.
With Russia's official annexation of the strategically significant Crimea region of Ukraine, Western powers led by the U.S. are now turning their military attention toward combating what they see as illegal incursions into the sovereign territory of Eastern European nations.
The most vocal instance of that attention came from Vice President Joe Biden during a Mar. 18 meeting with Poland's President Bronislaw Komorowski, according to The Washington Post. Despite Russia's military might and unofficial occupation of the seaside region of Ukraine, Biden said that all North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations have nothing to fear with the U.S. military at their backs.
Carrying a big stick
"You have an ally whose [defense] budget is larger than the next 10 nations in the world combined, so don't worry about where we are," Biden told Bronislaw at a meeting on Tuesday, as quoted by The Washington Post. The Polish president had raised concerns that all of Europe seemed to be slashing military funding, while Russia had been operating under an opposite strategy.
Crimea's recent vote to join the Russian Federation raised fears among former Eastern bloc nations that Moscow was not necessarily finished with incursions into other territories. Crimea marks the second sovereign nation with which Russia has engaged in hostilities. In 2008, Russia and Georgia fought a shortened several-day war over contended territories in the South Ossetia region.
The NATO agreement states that any member nation that comes under attack from a non-NATO party is due the protection of all other member states. While closely allied with many NATO countries, Ukraine is not part of the agreement.
Analyzing European defense
According to Reuters, Russia's actions may be prompting some U.S. military policy officials to rethink their overall strategy on the European stage.
The general trend in recent years has been to reposition troop strength and equipment capabilities to the Pacific region in response to a more militarily and politically potent China, but President Vladimir Putin's actions may necessitate a new strategy.
"This requires a complete reappraisal of how we approach Russia," Fiona Hill, U.S. national intelligence officer for Russia from 2006 to 2009 and current head of the Europe program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told Reuters. "Putin has made it very clear he intends to reassert Russia's sphere of influence … We don't have a strategy to deal with that."
Serving in the military is often a full-time job for servicemembers and their families. Between daily training for the soldier and caring for children for the spouse, there may be so many things to take care of for parents in a military family that all they can do to make it through the day is keep their heads down and soldier on.
However, when the time comes for a spouse in the military to transition to life after service, that routine can be turned on its head. Roles that each parent has grown comfortable in will no longer work in civilian life, and the sometimes troubling question of employment now looms large in both adults' minds. Millions of families have made the switch to life after the military, though, so keeping calm and thinking over options is often the best way to approach one of the biggest transitions of a military family's time together.
Thinking about relocation
When a spouse is active duty, military families are normally used to moving around. Children adapt to making friends in new cities and spouses find ways to connect with each initially unfamiliar community they find themselves members of. When the time comes to leave the a military installation, however, most families fail to think about life after service outside of the Armed Forces bubble, according to Military.com.
"We weren't going to move back to the middle of Iowa, so we just stayed [in North Carolina]," Melanie, the wife of a soldier stationed at Camp Lejeune, told Military.com.
Melanie believed that her family would only be compensated to move back to her hometown where her husband was initially recruited. When she and her husband compared employment opportunities between North Carolina and Iowa, the former seemed like an easy choice for them.
But with so many other military families choosing the same path, Melanie's family found the job market around Camp Lejeune clogged with job seekers with the same skills as her husband. Moreover, local businesses only seemed interested in hiring people from the area.
Rather than stay attached to the network of bases, Military.com recommended taking advantage of the service's willingness to pay a fraction of a family's relocation costs. A common misconception is that the military will only pay to move a family back to where the servicemember was originally recruited, but anyone interested in moving to a different locale – one where their job skills are in high demand – can have the mileage from their current location to their hometown applied to a different location instead. Families merely have to pay the remainder of travel expenses.
While that balance may still be a hefty sum, the overall economic benefit for a family may be a net positive if the move brings them to a city rife with job opportunities.
Networking with military skills
Even if a family moves to a new city for life after service, simply hoping for employment often is not enough. Military OneSource recommended working on networking skills through transition assistance programs. Talking to other recently transitioned families can lead to job opportunities that are not advertised through normal means, and putting a face to a name usually results in job placement at a higher rate than sending out resumes over the Internet.
However, it can be easy for a former military spouse to grow discouraged when he or she finds out that skills gained in the military are not as highly valued in the private sector as they were in the Armed Forces. On the contrary, companies prize leadership and teamwork skills just as much as technical ones, and former military members have those traits in spades.
Many soldiers enlist in the Armed Forces with the expressed knowledge that they would receive a certain veterans benefits package for life after service. Some soldiers seek pension payments to sustain their quality of life once they leave active duty, while others seek financial help from the military for other endeavors.
One of those endeavors is tuition assistance for continuing education credits. According to Stars and Stripes, despite discussions to reduce or even eliminate the Navy's budget to provide financial assistance to soldiers who are interested in furthering their education, a top official announced that the Navy would not be cutting the level of support from its current 100 percent mark.
Cutting back on budget cuts
The announcement that the Navy would not be scaling back it's tuition assistance program came March 18 at a forum in Mayport, Fla., that was broadcasted to sailors across the globe via the Internet. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert told soldiers that while the possibility of a shared assistance program that would split costs 75-25 may be implemented someday, the Navy would continue to provide full coverage for the time being.
"I want educated sailors; I want you to leave with all the certifications you can so that you can get a job immediately," Greenert told the assembled soldiers, according to Stars and Stripes.
The Navy last operated their tuition assistance program at a 75-25 split in 2002, when officials decided to increase financial support to a full 100 percent. Critics speculated that the discussions surrounding the cuts may be related to the budget reduction mandated by the Pentagon and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel in recent months.
Paying for a Naval education
For any sailor interested in taking advantage of the Navy's full tuition assistance program before any future drawbacks are instituted, Military.com outlined the financial and eligibility details of the program. Sailors on active duty and reservists ordered to 120 days active service or reservist officers to 2 or more years of service are immediately eligible for tuition assistance.
For financial support, the Navy pays a maximum of $250 per credit hour or $166 per quarter hour, depending on the academic system employed by the chosen institution. No program is to exceed 16 semester hours, 24 quarter hours or 240 clock hours over the course of a fiscal year.
Sailors interested in taking advantage of these military benefits should contact their nearest Navy College Office.