The new Government Accountability Office (GAO) study also says that the skilled sailors it does have regularly lack the parts they need to make repairs and upgrades. This has led many ships, including submarines, to cannibalize other vessels.

The report comes six months after the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer had to return to San Diego shortly after its deployment began due to ongoing maintenance and repair problems. The Navy also is struggling to maintain its littoral combat ships, 17 of which are based in San Diego.

In making its findings, the GAO surveyed the executive officers of 232 ships and met with leaders and sailors on 25 vessels, including four ships that are homeported in San Diego, the largest Navy installation on the West Coast.

The GAO said the sailor shortage mostly stems from the Navy’s efforts to reduce costs by closing Navy ship repair facilities and reducing the size of crews. The agency referred to an earlier report in which it found that 70,705 enlisted sailors were available to collectively operate aircraft carriers, surface ships and submarines in November 2023. That was 13,674 sailors below what the Navy said was needed. The problem is being exacerbated by the difficulty the Navy is having meeting recruiting goals.

The report added that some types of ships — including Ticonderoga-class missile cruisers – did not have enough sailors to operate safety. The GAO did not specify whether any of the three “Tico” cruisers based in San Diego fell into that category. The Cold War-era cruisers are being phased out but are still helpful in protecting aircraft carriers.

The GAO further said that some of the Navy’s maintenance guidelines are inaccurate and some are written in ways that are not easily understood. The agency said many younger sailors are not taught how to troubleshoot maintenance problems.

The chronic shortage of parts was an issue mentioned by executives and sailors on all 25 ships that the GAO visited.

“Sailors aboard a submarine we visited provided a list of 222 items removed from the submarine during a maintenance cycle and given to 17 other submarines to enable those ships to continue operations,” the report says.

The agency didn’t indicate whether it was talking about one of the four submarines that were homeported in San Diego.

The new report arrives at a time of upheaval in the Navy, which is trying to modernize its fleet and become better able to deal with evolving threats, especially in the Middle East and Indo-Pacific. The GAO has scrutinized much of this and found many problems.

In particular, the agency reported that the Navy hasn’t been designing and building ships in an optimal way, especially when it comes to the new Constellation-frigate program, which is over budget and behind schedule. These so-called small combatants are needed to replace littoral combat ships, which have proved to have very limited capabilities and are more expensive to maintain than forecast.

The GAO also found that the Navy has failed to fully upgrade its public shipyards, which affects its ability to service ships. That problem has been compounded by the fact that the Navy is temporarily reducing the number of ships in the fleet so that it can put together enough money to build newer ships with a greater ability to work worldwide.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Marine Corps in a ceremony at the commandant’s headquarters on Monday presented their highest noncombat medal to the parents of Cpl. Spencer Collart, who died last year after his V-22 Osprey crashed in Australia.

Collart, 21, survived the crash but went back into the burning aircraft to try to save the pilots, who were trapped.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith spoke with emotion in addressing the fallen Marine’s parents, Bart and Alexia Collart, who are from Arlington, Virginia. “You raised a Marine who in the final moments of his life thought not of himself but of this fellow Marines,” Smith said. “He didn’t stop to think of the fire or the danger.”

During the ceremony, Smith, who is the Marine Corps’ top military officer, cried twice.

The crash in August 2023 was one of four fatal accidents since 2022 that have drawn increased scrutiny of the Osprey, which flies both like a helicopter and an airplane. The Associated Press has reported on the mechanical and safety issues the program has faced, and there are multiple reviews underway to see if the complex aircraft has the resources needed to improve its reliability.

Bart Collart called his son “one of the best knuckleheads you ever wanted to hang out with.” He said the pilots and Spencer “lost their lives while managing to save the lives of every Marine they were transporting,” and he credited the pilots with leveling out the Osprey before it hit the ground, to give the troops they were transporting a better chance of surviving.

Collart’s Osprey was participating in an Australian military exercise when it ended up following too closely behind the lead aircraft and maneuvered to avoid it, ultimately putting it in an unrecoverable fall.

Seconds after the Osprey hit the ground, the aircraft filled with smoke and flames. According to witness reports in the crash investigation. Collart, the crew chief, had been standing in the tunnel even as the aircraft was going down. Most of the 23 troops on board escaped out the back, including a commander who told investigators he saw Collart escape out a side door.

A site team later found Collart’s tether — what he’d use to latch onto the Osprey to move around during flight — undamaged outside the aircraft.

Collart escaped the burning aircraft “and immediately began ensuring the safety of the Marines around him,” Smith said. But Capt. Eleanor LeBeau and aircraft commander Maj. Tobin Lewis were still trapped inside, and Collart went back in to try to save them.

Investigators believe he may have unbuckled Lewis from his restraints before he succumbed to the smoke and flames.

One of the Marines who was riding in the back and survived is the son of Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Ben Watson, who most recently served as the commanding general of the First Marine Division. Watson attended the ceremony to honor Collart’s service.

“Every nation that is attacked has the right to defend itself. And that right doesn’t stop at the border of your own nation,” said Adm. Rob Bauer, speaking at the close of the committee’s annual meeting, also attended by U.S. Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Bauer, of Netherlands, also added that nations have the sovereign right to put limits on the weapons they send to Ukraine. But, standing next to him at a press briefing, Lt. Gen. Karel Řehka, chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces, made it clear his nation places no such weapons restrictions on Kyiv.

“We believe that the Ukrainians should decide themselves how to use it,” Řehka said.

Their comments came as U.S. President Joe Biden is weighing whether to allow Ukraine to use American-provided long-range weapons to hit deep into Russia. And they hint at the divisions over the issue.

Biden met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday, after this week’s visit to Kyiv by their top diplomats, who came under fresh pressure to loosen weapons restrictions. U.S. officials familiar with discussions said they believed Starmer was seeking Biden’s approval to allow Ukraine to use British Storm Shadow missiles for expanded strikes in Russia.

Biden’s approval may be needed because Storm Shadow components are made in the U.S. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to share the status of private conversations, said they believed Biden would be amenable, but there has been no decision announced yet.

Providing additional support and training for Ukraine was a key topic at the NATO chiefs’ meeting, but it wasn’t clear Saturday if the debate over the U.S. restrictions was discussed.

Many of the European nations have been vigorously supportive of Ukraine in part because they worry about being the next victim of an empowered Russia.

At the opening of the meeting, Czech Republic President Petr Pavel broadly urged the military chiefs gathered in the room to be ”bold and open in articulating your assessments and recommendations. The rounder and the softer they are, the less they will be understood by the political level.”

The allies, he said, must “take the right steps and the right decisions to protect our countries and our way of life.”

The military leaders routinely develop plans and recommendations that are then sent to the civilian NATO defense secretaries for discussion and then on to the nations’ leaders in the alliance.

The U.S. allows Ukraine to use American-provided weapons in cross-border strikes to counter attacks by Russian forces. But it doesn’t allow Kyiv to fire long-range missiles, such as the ATACMS, deep into Russia. The U.S. has argued that Ukraine has drones that can strike far and should use ATACMS judiciously because they only have a limited number.

Ukraine has increased its pleas with Washington to lift the restrictions, particularly as winter looms and Kyiv worries about Russian gains during the colder months.

“You want to weaken the enemy that attacks you in order to not only fight the arrows that come your way, but also attack the archer that is, as we see, very often operating from Russia proper into Ukraine,” said Bauer. “So militarily, there’s a good reason to do that, to weaken the enemy, to weaken its logistic lines, fuel, ammunition that comes to the front. That is what you want to stop, if at all possible.”

Brown, for his part, told reporters traveling with him to the meeting that the U.S. policy on long-range weapons remains in place.

But, he added, “by the same token, what we want to do is — regardless of that policy — we want to continue to make Ukraine successful with the capabilities that have been provided” by the U.S. and other nations in the coalition, as well as the weapons Kyiv has been able to build itself.

“They’ve proven themselves fairly effective in building out uncrewed aerial vehicles, in building out drones,” Brown told reporters traveling with him to meetings in Europe.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has made similar points, arguing that one weapons system won’t determine success in the war.

“There are a number of things that go into the overall equation as to whether or not you know you want to provide one capability or another,” Austin said Friday. “There is no silver bullet when it comes to things like this.”

He also noted that Ukraine has already been able to strike inside Russia with its own internally produced systems, including drones.

The service set a goal in 2023 to assign one chaplain per destroyer by 2025 in hopes of filling a shortage of emotional, mental and spiritual counselors aboard those ships. The goal meant creating 48 new permanent billets.

As of September, the Navy had a dedicated chaplain serving aboard 29 of 31 East Coast-based destroyers and 27 of 45 West Coast-based destroyers, leaving 20 billets to be created in the coming year.

“But they will all be filled in fiscal year 2025. That is when the funding comes online for the unfilled billets,” said Rear Adm. Gregory Todd, chief of the U.S. Navy Chaplain Corps.

The Navy began focusing on mental health resources and quality-of-life initiatives in 2022 after a spate of 10 suicides and at least two suicide attempts aboard the aircraft carriers USS Ronald Reagan, USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS George Washington. The service documented 71 suicides in 2022 and another 69 suicides in 2023, according to the Defense Suicide Prevention Office.

While the Navy Chaplain Corps already has permanent positions aboard larger vessels such as aircraft carriers, amphibious assault ships and guided-missile cruisers, chaplains have historically supported destroyers at the squadron level, with two assigned to accommodate multiple warships spread across an area of responsibility. The difference between a squadron level chaplain and a dedicated destroyer chaplain, Todd said, is all about accessibility.

“If you have two chaplains per squadron, they are always a visitor,” he said. “They are somebody that is not part of the crew, not part of the ebb and flow of the ship’s life.”

Putting a chaplain onboard a ship full time, Todd said, fosters better relationships between the chaplains and the crew. Chaplains serve as religious advisers and routinely assist sailors with operational stress, family problems and coping with life at sea.

A dedicated chaplain was aboard each East Coast-based destroyer that deployed to the Middle East in the past year as the Israel-Hamas conflict reached a boiling point and Iranian proxy forces launched relentless attacks on merchant shipping vessels in the Red Sea. Conversations between those chaplains and their crews included the sensitive nature of combat, Todd said.

“There were issues like, ‘Oh my goodness, what I am doing has a potential of taking another person’s life’ — in firing missiles at enemy combatants. So, how do we work through that?” Todd said.

In 2023, destroyers with a chaplain on board averaged 31 counseling sessions per month, compared to just three per month for those without chaplains. That data has held consistent throughout the process to place more chaplains aboard destroyers, Todd said.

To meet sailors where they were, destroyer chaplains go to the combat center of the ship, where missiles are fired. Since January, U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, has reported almost daily instances of U.S. forces destroying attack drones, land-based missile systems and enemy support vehicles.

“Having those kinds of important conversations along the way are encouraging and helps people have a sense of meaning to what they’re doing,” Todd said. “Do you count that as a counseling appointment? Probably not, but it is an important engagement.”

Now that the Navy is nearing the finish line of assigning a chaplain to every destroyer, Todd said, the service has its eye on frigates, as well as adding more chaplain billets for the Marine Corps and Coast Guard, both of which fall under the Navy Chaplain Corps. The service is also exploring ways to recruit chaplains from within its ranks.

The service has prioritized at-sea billets in recent years, assigning more chaplains to ships. Doing so, Todd said, came with the risk of leaving shore-based billets empty. In September 2021, the Navy had 886 billets with 877 chaplains on active duty. As of August, the number of billets had increased to 932 while the number of chaplains held steady at 877. A comparison of shore-based billet vacancies was not available, the Navy said.

“We need to recruit more — that is the challenge right now,” Todd said.

The Chaplain Corps is aiming to recruit 100 new chaplains in the coming year.

To become a Navy chaplain, an individual must have a master’s degree or equivalent and be endorsed by a religious institution. Once selected, the candidate must pass the Navy’s physical fitness test and complete officer development school and chaplain school, which take about eight weeks.

While there is still work to be done, Todd said, putting chaplains closer to the deck plate has given the Chaplain Corps a sense of what drives service members — “feeling like they are doing something important.”

“That’s kind of a spiritual thing — to sacrifice for the greater good, to really be part of something bigger than themselves,” he said. “That is why they joined [the military].”

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As of last week, fiscal 2024 active-duty recruitment numbers were at “25,000 and change,” said Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein, commander of the Air Force Recruiting Service.

The current tally already tops the 24,100 who entered the active force in 2023, when the target was 26,877, according to Pentagon data.

Even with the target elevated this year to 27,100, all signs point toward achievement of that goal, Amrhein said Thursday, with just over two weeks left in the fiscal year.

“It wasn’t any one thing,” he said. “It was a lot of levers being worked in combination to each other, which really gave our recruiters the tools they needed … to find the talent to come into our service.”

Amrhein and his senior enlisted leader, Chief Master Sgt. Rebecca A.C. Arbona, were at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Thursday as part of an overseas visit to several European bases where the command has a handful of recruiters assigned.

The reserve and Air National Guard are also having banner years, he said, after missing the mark by more than 30% last year.

While at Ramstein, Amrhein swore in 16 new recruits at a ceremony on the flight line next to a C-130J cargo plane. One of the recruits, a 40-year-old, was eligible because last fall, the service raised the maximum enlistment age from 39 to 42. An airman has to be at basic military training before turning 42, service officials said.

Raising the maximum enlisted age is just one of many factors that turned around Air Force recruiting, Amrhein said.

Last year was a tough one for new enlistment across much of the military, not just for the Air Force. Both the Navy and the Army also fell well short of their objectives. The Pentagon called it the worst recruitment year for services since the inception of the all-volunteer force.

Besides the age limit increase, the Air Force also loosened body fat restrictions last year, bringing them in line with Navy and Army standards.

The raised threshold of 26% fat for men and 36% for women, up from 20% and 28% respectively, allowed the service to bring in an additional 3,000 active-duty recruits, or 5,600 if the reserve and Air National Guard are included, Amrhein said.

Improvements to medical screening also opened up more channels for recruits to serve.

The service was hit hard last year by a backlog of medical waivers, slowing down the review process. The average wait was 12 to 14 days but in some it could take up to three months or more, he said, calling that too long.

As a result, about 8,800 people walked away before their cases were decided, Amrhein said. Based on an Air Force approval rate of about 70% for medical waivers, the loss of those applicants cost the service about 5,600 new airmen last year, he said.

In response, staffing was beefed up and the waiver review process now takes an average of two to three days, Amrhein said.

Another cause of the bottleneck was the rollout of MHS Genesis, the Defense Department’s new electronic health records system, about two years ago.

More recruits are now being flagged for health issues because Genesis captures their entire medical history, from an inhaler prescription to a brief telephone consultation, if it’s on record.

Prior to Genesis, the Air Force reviewed about 10,000 medical waiver requests per year, according to Amrhein, who said that by comparison, “we’re just over 23,000 for this year alone.”

The service now grants automatic waiver approval for six or seven exoskeletal conditions, such as knee pain or shoulder issues, that in the past were approved 85% of the time or more, Amrhein said.

But he was quick to say that the changes have not lowered the caliber of recruits.

“I want to make sure there’s a delineation on what we would consider the qualifications to serve versus meeting a standard,” he said. “When I’m thinking of meeting a standard, I’m thinking, ‘Can they graduate from BMT? Can they continue to serve and do they meet those in-service standards?’ Those we haven’t compromised on.”

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Huntington Ingalls Inc. has received an $18.4 million contract from U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command to handle preliminary planning to deactivate the nuclear power plants on the Nimitz, the first step toward decommissioning and eventual disposal.

The contract calls for a deactivation plan to be submitted to the Navy by November 2024. The Nimitz is still on active duty, homeported at Naval Base Kitsap in Washington state, with deactivation planned for 2026 and to be completed in 2027.

The contract for the Nimitz was included in an Aug. 28 roundup of projects approved by the Defense Department. Naval Sea Systems Command will oversee the project.

The Nimitz completed a six-month maintenance at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in June and shares a portion of Naval Base Kitsap with the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan.

After the Ronald Reagan completes its six-month overhaul, the ship is scheduled to take up the Nimitz’s role as the Navy carrier homeported in the Pacific Northwest.

The Navy’s plan for the Nimitz calls for it to transit down the West Coast of the United States and South America, around Cape Horn, and proceed to Newport News, Va., where the deactivation work would begin, according to the contract.

The Nimitz is the first of the class of 10 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers based on the same design. It’s named after former five-star admiral Chester Nimitz, a Navy leader in World War II. All Nimitz-class carriers were built between 1968 and 2006 at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.

The Nimitz was the second nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to join the Navy, following the USS Enterprise, a design used for only one ship. The Navy’s newest carrier is the USS John F. Kennedy of the Gerald R. Ford-class. It was commissioned in June 2017.

The John F. Kennedy was planned to replace the Nimitz in the fleet next year, but its delivery date was pushed back by the Pentagon to 2025. Two more Gerald Ford-class ships are under construction — a new USS Enterprise and the USS Doris Miller, which is named after the black sailor who received the Navy Cross for heroism at Pearl Harbor.

The Navy had announced in 2023 that the Nimitz would be retired in 2025, with the second-oldest carrier of the class, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, scheduled to retire in 2026.

But the Nimitz deactivation date was pushed back to May 2026 amid delays in the construction of the new Gerald Ford-class carriers.

The deactivation of the Nimitz is also awaiting deconstruction techniques that will be used to take apart the nuclear reactors on the original USS Enterprise, which was deactivated in 2012 and decommissioned in 2017 but has not undergone major demolition work yet.

The Navy has said it also delayed the retirement of the Nimitz and Eisenhower out of heightened demand for carrier strike groups to respond to crises around the globe, including recent tensions in the Red Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

The Navy confirmed earlier this year that it would move ahead with the retirement of the Nimitz, but it now expects Eisenhower to continue in service until at least 2030.

The contract for Huntington Ingalls is earmarked for advanced planning of defueling the Nimitz’s two separate nuclear reactors, which heat water using nuclear fission to crate steam that passes through four turbines. The power plants generate up to 260,000 horsepower, turning four 25-foot diameter bronze propellors, each weighing 66,000 pounds. The Nimitz has a top speed of slightly more than 30 knots.

President Gerald Ford commissioned the Nimitz at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., on May 3, 1975, three days after the fall of Saigon marked the end of the Vietnam War.

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Austin said that passing a continuing resolution that caps spending at 2024 levels, rather than taking action on the proposed 2025 budget will hurt thousands of defense programs, and damage military recruiting just as it is beginning to recover after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Asking the department to compete with (China), let alone manage conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, while under a lengthy CR, ties our hands behind our back while expecting us to be agile and to accelerate progress,” said Austin in the letter to leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has teed up a vote this week on a bill that would keep the federal government funded for six more months. The measure aims to garner support from his more conservative GOP members by also requiring states to obtain proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when registering a person to vote.

Congress needs to approve a stop-gap spending bill before the end of the budget year on Sept. 30 to avoid a government shutdown just a few weeks before voters go to the polls and elect the next president.

Austin said the stop-gap measure would cut defense spending by more than $6 billion compared to the 2025 spending proposal. And it would take money from key new priorities while overfunding programs that no longer need it.

Under a continuing resolution, new projects or programs can’t be started. Austin said that passing the temporary bill would stall more than $4.3 billion in research and development projects and delay 135 new military housing and construction projects totaling nearly $10 billion.

It also would slow progress on a number of key nuclear, ship-building, high-tech drone and other weapons programs. Many of those projects are in an array of congressional districts, and could also have an impact on local residents and jobs.

Since the bill would not fund legally required pay raises for troops and civilians, the department would have to find other cuts to offset them. Those cuts could halt enlistment bonuses, delay training for National Guard and Reserve forces, limit flying hours and other training for active-duty troops and impede the replacement of weapons and other equipment that has been pulled from Pentagon stocks and sent to Ukraine.

Going forward with the continuing resolution, said Austin, will “subject service members and their families to unnecessary stress, empower our adversaries, misalign billions of dollars, damage our readiness, and impede our ability to react to emergent events.”

Noting that there have been 48 continuing resolutions during 14 of the last 15 fiscal years — for a total of nearly 1,800 days — Austin said Congress must break the pattern of inaction because the U.S. military can’t compete with China “with our hands tied behind our back every fiscal year.”

Johnson’s bill is not expected to get support in the Democratic-controlled Senate, if it even makes it that far. But Congress will have to pass some type of temporary measure by Sept. 30 in order to avoid a shutdown.

The future USS New Jersey, a fast-attack submarine, will become a deployable part of the Navy’s force during the ceremony at Naval Weapons Station Earle in New Jersey on Sept. 14, culminating five years of construction that represents a historic shift in how Navy submarines are designed.

The New Jersey is the 23rd Virginia-class submarine, but it is the first of its kind — designed from the keel up with specific modifications for gender integration.

“The submarine community is a fully gender-integrated warfighting force,” said Vice Adm. Robert Gaucher, commander of Submarine Forces Atlantic.

Modifications included obvious ones — more doors and washrooms to create separate sleeping and bathing areas — and some that are more subtle — lowering some overhead valves and making them easier to turn and installing steps in front of the triple-high bunk beds and stacked laundry machines.

The design changes were made to accommodate the growing female force of submariners. In the past five years, the Navy has seen the number of officers and enlisted sailors in the submarine force who are women double and triple, respectively, Gaucher said.

As of August 2024, 730 women were assigned to operational submarines — serving as officers and sailors on 19 nuclear-powered, ballistic-missile and guided-missile submarines, and 19 nuclear-powered attack boats, according to Submarine Forces Atlantic.

The increase follows the 2010 lift of the ban that barred women from serving aboard submarines. A decade later, in 2021, the Navy announced a long-term plan to integrate female officers on 33 submarine crews and female enlisted sailors on 14 submarine crews by 2030.

“To support women serving onboard submarines, the submarine force, starting with [the Pre-Commissioning Unit] New Jersey, is building all future [nuclear-powered attack submarines] and the new Columbia-class, [ballistic-missile submarines] gender-neutral from the keel up,” Gaucher said.

Construction on the New Jersey began in 2019 at HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding division in Virginia. The warship was christened in 2021 and delivered in April to the Navy at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.

Before construction of the New Jersey, the Navy retrofitted existing Ohio-class submarines with extra doors and designated washrooms.

Obesity was the leading cause for disqualification among hopeful military recruit applicants, and the top driver of separations among active-duty troops in 2023, according to the new American Security Project study. The Washington-based think tank that studies modern national security issues found the Pentagon spent some $1.25 billion last year treating military patients for dozens of diseases related to obesity, and another $99 million in lost productivity among hospitalized overweight troops.

“America can no longer afford to ignore this [obesity] crisis,” American Security Project researchers wrote. “The United States armed forces face an unprecedented challenge as obesity prevalence among service members continues to rise. As combat and incidental injuries become less prevalent year-over-year, rates of obesity-related conditions, including diabetes, osteoarthritis, hypertension and steatotic liver disease increasingly meet or exceed civilian trends.”

Researchers suggested the Pentagon take a more proactive approach to preventing obesity, focusing on providing young, enlisted troops with health and nutrition education and access to quality foods. They also suggested the military replace long-held, appearance-based body composition standards with health-based standards driven by medical professionals and classify obesity as a disease in the military health system so troops can be treated medically for the condition.

“Unlike nearly all other diseases affecting service members today, obesity itself is not considered a disability nor disease by the service branches nor the Department of Veterans Affairs, making it difficult to proactively identify and treat,” the report reads. “Without this written classification and its associated protections, service members face bias and discrimination for ‘exceeding weight standards,’ becoming ineligible for promotion, educational privileges, deployment or disability compensation.”

Last year, the American Security Project found nearly seven in 10 active-duty troops were overweight or obese, according to their body mass index, including some 21% of active-duty troops qualified as obese, a rate that more than doubled in the past decade. Body mass index, or BMI, is a long-used but controversial method of assessing a person’s body classification by height and weight. A person between 25 and 30 on the BMI is considered clinically overweight and more than 30 is considered obese, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The researchers found the weight problem within the military was at least two-pronged because of rising obesity rates among the civilian population from which the military needs to recruit, and the loosening of military fitness standards to ensure the services have enough troops in their ranks amid recent enlistment struggles. The Pentagon, the researchers found, has lowered fitness standards to keep overweight troops in the ranks and increased the use of body composition waivers to bring overweight recruits into the military.

The military services have taken steps in recent years to counter obesity. The Army and Navy introduced fitness courses to engage potential recruits early and get them into shape to qualify for service. The Marines, meanwhile, began using more accurate biometric scanning machines last year to assess body fat.

But the American Security Project concluded those measures were not enough to mitigate the threat of increasing weight problems in the force, which were exacerbated during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, which forced many troops away from daily exercise during lockdowns. Obesity rates have not improved since the lockdowns ended, according to the researchers.

They charge reversing military policies that stigmatize obesity — such as tape measure tests — and focusing instead on providing treatment for troops susceptible to obesity or diagnosed with obesity would improve military readiness and save the services money — up to $1 billion each year, according to the study.

“These recommendations aren’t just well-justified by the existing research, they are highly cost-effective,” the researchers concluded. “Upfront investments in clinical care saves tens of thousands of dollars per patient in the long run, even if those patients remain overweight.”

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The source of a letter — written in 1945 by a serviceman stationed in Hampton Roads and found last month in Florida — has been identified.

Mike Meyer, 65, lives in Safety Harbor, Florida, and said he put the letter in the bottle and sent it out to sea earlier this year.

Meyer’s father was born in 1929 and was too young to join the military until the end of World War II but often wrote and received letters from older friends who’d left their Illinois hometown to enlist. One buddy, Jim Peters, wrote to Meyer’s father, Leroy, on March 4, 1945. The message was jotted in cursive underneath the letterhead “United States Navy, Amphibious Training Base, Little Creek, Virginia.”

That letter and bottle were found on the side of a Safety Harbor road last month by Suzanne Flament-Smith amid storm debris after Hurricane Debby. It had been washed back ashore not far from where it was let go.

The bottle also contained some sand, a bullet casing and a circular hunk of metal that Flament-Smith described as “about the size of a Whopper candy.” She quickly took to social media to share her discovery and a question: Where had it come from?

The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post and dozens of other news outlets wrote or carried stories about the curiosity.

“I didn’t think it was that big a deal,” Meyer told The Pilot about the fuss over his dad’s old letter.

“I guess the first thing is …” he said, and then he unraveled the mystery. Leroy Meyer stored many of his wartime correspondences in a box that was passed down to his children after he died in 2001. The letters were stored at his daughter’s home until Mike got them several years ago.

Mike Meyer read and reread his father’s letters. Some had been sent from soldiers overseas. One was from a girlfriend working in a factory that made Lockheed P-38 Lightning airplanes. He came to consider them historical documents and a friend’s recent retirement sparked an idea of how to share them with the world.

“She had sold her business and was throwing away some rare inventory,” he said. “She had all these Message-in-a-Bottle kits.”

Keeping his 10 favorites, he put 40 of his dad’s letters into the kits — one letter per bottle — and this spring began launching them, a few at a time, several times a week, watching through a pair of binoculars as they floated out on the tide.

“I usually put something shiny in there so they were more likely to be seen.”

He put a shell casing and a ball bearing in a bottle on April 16 along with the March 4, 1945 letter.

“I just turned it loose.”

Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8138, colin.warrenhicks@virginiamedia.com