By Debbie Gregory.

I thought it might be nice to recognize the passing on some famous Veterans that Passed Away in 2018. They served our nation and we need to remember all those who we have lost.

• Anna Mae Hays, who died in January at age 97, was a career officer in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. Her breakthrough ascent to become America’s first female general officer began when Hays served as an Army nurse in malaria-infested jungles during World War II.

• Keith Max Jackson was an American sports commentator, journalist, author and radio personality, known for his career with ABC Sports. He served as a mechanic in the Marine Corps. Using his GI Bill, he attended Washington State University, starting as a political science major but soon moving over to broadcasting and graduating in 1954 with a degree in speech communications. He died in January at the age of 89.

• John Mahoney, a British-born actor who emigrated to the United States and enlisted in the U.S. Army in order to become a U.S. citizen, died in February at the age of 77. Mahoney was best known for his role as Martin Crane in the sitcom Frasier. The show ran for 11 seasons between 1993 and 2004.

• Floyd Carter Sr., one of the last of the Tuskegee Airmen, dedicated his life to service. The decorated veteran of three wars and 27 years with the NYPD died in March at age 95, leaving a long legacy as a groundbreaking hero pilot and a city police detective. In 2007, Carter was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President Bush for breaking the color barrier in Tuskegee.

• Roy Hawthorne Sr., one of the most recognizable Navajo Code Talkers, died in April at the age of 92. He was one of the most active members the Navajo Code Talkers Association. Like others who served as Code Talkers, Hawthorne took the vow of silence seriously and never told anyone what he did in the war until 1968, when the use of the Navajo language as a code was declassified. “I never even told my family about it until we were told it was all right,” Hawthorne said in a 2010 interview.

• R. Lee Ermey was an American actor, voice actor and Marine Corps drill instructor. He achieved fame when he played Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket, which earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Ermey passed away in April at age 74.

• Art Paul, the man responsible for Playboy’s famous logo, served during World War II with the Army Air Corps. Upon leaving the military, Paul became a freelance illustrator and Playboy magazine’s first employee in the 1950s. He said he crafted the bunny logo in about an hour. Pail died in April at the age of 93.

By Debbie Gregory.

The U.S. Army is investing millions of dollars in experimental exoskeleton technology designed to relieve some of the burdensome weight that combat troops carry into battle, with a view to creating “super-soldiers.”

The technology is being developed by Lockheed Martin Corp through a $6.9 million contract award from the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center under a two-year, sole-source agreement.

Canada-based B-TEMIA first developed the exoskeletons as a way to assist people who had mobility difficulties Lockheed Martin’s is licensing ONYX, a battery-operated exoskeleton suit that straps on over clothing and uses a suite of sensors, artificial intelligence and other technology to aid natural movements.

The technology could be used to help soldiers carry the special equipment they need in the field, including weapons, body armor, night-vision goggles and advanced radios, which can weigh well over one hundred pounds.

OYNX uses electro-mechanical knee actuators, special sensors and an artificial intelligence computer to become familiar with the user’s movements and apply the right torque at the right time to assist with walking up steep inclines and lifting or dragging heavy loads

In mid-December, Army researchers and soldier equipment officials held a three-day exoskeleton event at Fort Drum, New York, known as a User Touch Point event, that allowed technology vendors, requirement developers and engineers to gain soldier insights on current exoskeleton technology

Keith Maxwell, the exoskeleton technologies manager at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said people in his company’s trials who wore the exoskeletons showed far more endurance.

“You get to the fight fresh. You’re not worn out,” Maxwell said.

Maxwell, who demonstrated a prototype, said each exoskelelton was expected to cost in the tens of thousands of dollars.

In 2014, Special Operations Command began its quest to develop the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) an Iron Man-type suit that would provide operators with full-body ballistics protection and increased physical performance. The program has produced a number of prototypes, but still faces many challenges.

By Debbie Gregory.

Shay Assad, the Director of Defense Pricing and Contracting Initiatives (DPC), in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has been removed from his position.

Trump administration officials have reassigned the Pentagon’s former top weapons-buying negotiator after he racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel costs and pushed a controversial plan to slow payments to defense contractors.

Assad has been reassigned to a post unconnected to the contract negotiating team he has led for the last seven years. The move comes after he pushed to have contractor payments tied to their performance instead of to production milestones. Additionally, Assad had a special arrangement that allowed him to live in the Boston area and commute regularly to Washington, which cost over half a million dollars since 2012.

Officials also say Assad’s reassignment is, in part, due to a sweeping reorganization of the Defense Department’s acquisition directorate in which leaders determined they wanted the head of pricing to be located inside the Pentagon.

Pentagon officials describe Assad as a shrewd negotiator who has saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by getting better deals with major defense contractors. But some current and former officials also describe him as a bully who needed to be monitored by his superiors out of fear he would overstep his authorities.

Prior to his government service, Mr. Assad had a 22-year private sector career in the defense industry. From 1978 to 2000, Mr. Assad worked for the Raytheon Company, holding positions including Vice President – Director of Contracts; Senior Vice President, Contracts; Executive Vice President; and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Raytheon’s Engineering and Construction (RE&C) business with eleven offices world-wide, revenue of $2.7 Billion, and 15,000 employees. In his contracting positions at Raytheon, he was responsible for over $20 Billion in contract negotiation and administration activities in all of Raytheon’s businesses – both government and commercial.

By Debbie Gregory.

The Army picked General Dynamics and BAE Systems to build contending prototypes for its Mobile Protected Firepower light tank. The Army plans to choose a winner in fiscal 2022 and have battle-ready tanks by 2025. The service branch has plans to field some 500 of the armored vehicles.

The Army turned to its traditional vendors, with a $375.9 million award to BAE and $335 million to General Dynamics Land Systems. The Mobile Protected Firepower project is in preparation for wars against peer competitors, such as China and Russia. The vehicle is essentially a 30-ton light tank to accompany airborne troops and other light infantry where the 70-ton M1 Abrams heavy tank can’t go. Therefore, two of them must be able to be transported aboard a C-17 Globemaster III airlifter, which has a capacity of about 80 tons.

“Currently, the Mobile Protected Firepower capabilities do not exist in our light formations,” said Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, director of the Next Generation Combat Vehicles Cross Functional Team. “The requirements associated with this will enable U.S. forces to disrupt, breach, and break through those security zones and defensive belts to allow our infantrymen and women to close with and destroy the enemy on the objective.”

Soldiers will test the vehicles during the Army’s trials. The tanks will be fired upon to determine how they stand up to enemy weapons and driven over the types of terrain that troops tend to travel over.

General Dynamics Land Systems’ vehicle is the Griffin, a modified version of the British Army’s new Ajax tracked reconnaissance vehicle equipped with a version of the M1A2 Abrams tank turret.

BAE will produce an updated version of the M8 Buford, an air-droppable light tank the Army flirted with buying in the 1990s but ultimately cancelled.

A third competitor, designed by SAIC, was not chosen to proceed in the competition

By Debbie Gregory.

A new, lightweight ghillie suit for snipers is being tested to replace the current Flame Resistant Ghillie System, or FRGS, that will be more functional for troops in hot environments.

The proposed Improved Ghillie System (IGS) a modular system that would be worn over the field uniform.

During the three day testing at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, snipers concealed themselves in a forest setting while other snipers tried to spot them from distances from 33 to 655 feet.

A ghillie suit is a type of camouflage clothing designed to resemble the background environment such as foliage, snow or sand. Typically, it is a net or cloth garment covered in loose strips of burlap, cloth or twine, sometimes made to look like leaves and twigs, and optionally augmented with scraps of foliage from the area.

Program Executive Office Soldier developed the IGS. Components include sleeves, leggings, veil and cape that can be added or taken off as needed.

The Army plans to buy about 3,500 IGSs to outfit the approximately 3,300 snipers in the service, as well as Army snipers in U.S. Special Operations Command.

The ghillie suit was developed by Scottish gamekeepers as a portable hunting blind. Lovat Scouts, a Scottish Highland regiment formed by the British Army during the Second Boer War, is the first known military unit to use ghillie suits.

The IGS features a lighter, more breathable fabric than the material used in the FRGS, and offers some flame-resistance, but soldiers will receive most of their protection from their Flame Resistant Combat Uniform, worn underneath the IGS, Army officials said.

Snipers, except for those fighting in urban terrain, traditionally spend much of their shooting time in a “creep,” pursuing a target in the prone position. A soldier’s creation of his first ghillie suit is seen as a rite of passage into the sniper community.