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Castries, St. Lucia. (February 26, 2024): The U.S. Air Force is lending its medical expertise to the tiny Caribbean island of St. Lucia as part of Southern Command’s humanitarian assistance campaign. In this photo by Staff Sergeant Madeline Herzog, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Devin Watson performs arteriovenous graft surgery at St. Lucia’s Owen King European Union Hospital. Officially called the Lesser Antilles Medical Team mission, the Air Force dispatched seventeen professionals including surgeons, nurses, and surgical technicians to work alongside St. Lucia’s overstretched medical staff. From February through March, the Southern Command will hold these events in the islands of Suriname, St. Kitts, and St. Vincent to build partnerships and to improve the regions ability to respond to medical emergencies.
Southern Command (Southcom) sponsors these medical readiness exercises involving teams consisting of doctors, nurses, and dentists to host nation citizens requiring care. This is part of Southcom’s annual humanitarian and civic assistance exercises that include building schools, establishing medical clinics, and digging water wells in countries throughout the region.
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Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. (February 26, 2024): “I don’t want them here or there.” These lines by Dr. Seuss have entertained a generation of children. In this photo by Lance Corporal Kayla LeClaire, Marine Colonel Michael L. Brooks reads to second grade students to celebrate Read Across America Day, an annual event to celebrate Dr. Suess’ birthday. Launched in 1998 by the National Education Association, Read Across America focuses on motivating children and teens to read “anywhere they are” through civic events, school partnerships, and by providing reading resources.
Getting the children of America’s armed forces interested in reading is pretty easy as they perform at levels that are the envy of public schools. With roughly 66,000 students, military kids outscored every U.S. jurisdiction in math and reading last year on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, considered the gold standard for comparing school districts. Military schools also had the highest outcomes for Black and Hispanic students whose eighth grade reading scores outpaced the national average for White students. Even low performing military students have improved their scores in fourth grade math and eighth grade reading. Education experts attribute these gains in part to the tight knit nature of military communities.
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Camp Shelby, Mississippi. (February 21, 2024): In the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster, law and order breaks down and authorities must contain large, unruly crowds of sometimes desperate citizens. This duty falls to America’s National Guard and their civilian counterparts in police, firefighting, and medical services. In this photo by Airman 1st Class Shardae McAfee, an Air National Guard Security Forces Defender uses his shield during a simulated protest during PATRIOT 24, a domestic operations disaster-response training exercise held here.
Working with federal, state, and local emergency management agencies, military police units trained in the type of scenarios they will encounter when responding to a humanitarian crisis. National Guard troops practiced using a variety of non-lethal techniques and movement strategies to control or quell large crowds.
This year’s Patriot 24 exercise involved more than three hundred civilians, volunteers, and National Guard troops from twenty states who responded to a mock natural disaster featuring high winds, storm surges, collapsed buildings, and mass casualties. The training also addressed protest types and actions, legal considerations, and the responsibilities of mobile field force teams when using crowd-control methods.
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Pacific Ocean. (February 23, 2024): It is said that militaries “travel on their stomachs” and this is especially true for American Sailors at sea. What is also true is the enormous impact chow has on troop morale. In this photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Evan Diaz, Culinary Specialist 2nd Class Nathan Bradley cuts jalapenos in the galley aboard the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship USS Somerset.
Navy Culinary Specialists are responsible for preparing menus, operating shipboard dining facilities, and ordering supplies. Most importantly, they are the unofficial hosts for Sailors who congregate at dining facility to play games and enjoy social interaction. Exhaustive studies by the armed forces have concluded that the quality of chow is among the most important factors in boosting morale of the crew. That is why the Navy takes extra steps to provide quality and variety for its forces serving aboard warships around the world.
To become a Navy Culinary Specialist, candidates must pass Basic Training and a five-week technical school at Fort Lee, Virginia. Here Sailors learn how to operate a Navy mess afloat, estimate quantities and types of foods needed, and the cooking skills to provide high quality meals on a massive scale.
Upon graduation, these Culinary Specialists are a vital asset to a Navy that “sails on its stomach.”
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Pacific Ocean. (February 27, 2024): In this photo by MC2 Connor Burns, Sailors assigned to the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship USS San Diego lower a rigid hull inflatable boat over the side. The San Diego is participating in NASA’s Underway Recovery Test 11 in preparation for the Artemis II crewed mission. Heralded as the first step to Mars, Artemis II will send four astronauts to orbit the moon aboard the first crewed Orion spacecraft. NASA and the Department of Defense will conduct a series of tests to prepare for eventually establishing a permanent base on the moon, and crewed mission to Mars.
A vital part of this historic effort falls to the U.S. Navy.
Amphibious transport docks, like USS San Diego, have unique capabilities that make them an ideal partner for NASA by providing helicopters, launching, and recovering small boats, and providing advanced medical facilities.
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Atlantic Ocean. (February 21, 2024): This photo by MC3 August Clawson expertly captures the eerie scene inside the Combat Information Center, or CIC, aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George Washington. Launching fifth generation fighters and support aircraft while at sea is a tricky and dangerous business. Sailors must maintain air traffic control while constantly scanning the skies for incoming enemy aircraft, missiles, or drones.
To accomplish this, aircraft carriers operate in flying “cycles” or packages of planes dispatched for missions at various times each day. Cyclic operations refers to the launch and recovery cycle for these various groups of aircraft aboard aircraft carriers. The shorter the cycle, the fewer aircraft can be launched and recovered. A longer cycle can include up to twenty aircraft. Flight operations go on twenty-four hours a day and in all-weather as planes are fueled, serviced, and sent back into the air.
Organized into “events,” planes are prepared for launch, spotted on the flight deck, and launched in as little as fifteen minutes. The departing cycle leaves room on the deck to recover the past cycle and the rotation continues around the clock.
Making this happen is the highly skilled Sailors aboard the Washington who keep these cycles going safely, and on time.