Hubbard was serving a roughly seven-year sentence after being accused by Russia in 2022 of working with Ukraine as a mercenary. American President Donald Trump announced his release from prison on social media, saying it was out of respect for the president and nothing was asked of the U.S. in return.

“This release was not part of an exchange — and we extend our thanks to President Putin for releasing him on President Trump’s request,” Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said on social media after he retrieved Hubbard in St. Petersburg.

Hubbard, 74, was an active-duty airman beginning in March 1974, an Air Force spokesperson told Military Times. He was an Airman 1st Class as an apprentice administration specialist, with his last duty station at Mather Air Force Base, California. He separated from the service in March 1978.

Mather closed as a military base in 1993 and is now operational as the Sacramento Mather Airport.

After active duty, Hubbard served in the Air National Guard, but due to the age of the records, information regarding his role as a guardsman in the force’s system is sparse, the spokesperson said.

The National Guard did not return a request for comment.

Although Trump said “no swap” was necessary for Hubbard’s release, he told reporters outside the White House and in a subsequent social media post that if he placed sanctions on Russia, Hubbard’s release would not have occurred.

He said that people who “don’t know how life works” questioned his decision to waive sanctions on Russia during the negotiations to release Hubbard.

“If I would’ve done that, you would not have Mr. Hubbard coming back,” he told reporters.

“If you would’ve put those sanctions on, or whatever you want to call them, you could forget about him, you’d never see him again,” he continued. “He’d be back in jail for 25 years.”

Hubbard’s release comes less than a week after Trump prevented new sanctions on Russia, which were intended to target the country’s largest buyers of oil and gas, drawing criticism from members of Congress who support the legislation and Ukraine.

Alongside Hubbard, the administration has negotiated the release of other Americans from Russian custody since returning to office last year, including Robert Gilman, Ksenia Karelina and Marc Fogel, Witkoff said.

Meyer will now serve as Hegseth’s senior advisor to the task force, which is tasked with addressing the military’s “unacceptable” living conditions, the defense secretary announced Monday in a video on social media.

“Our warfighters should be focused on training, readiness and defending this great nation,” Meyer said during the video. “They shouldn’t have to fight for basic living conditions when they come home at night.”

As senior advisor, Meyer will travel to installations across the country, looking at their barracks, meeting with service members and identifying how to curtail any issues blocking the resolutions.

The first group of installations Meyer is expected to visit are all located in California, with Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms on Thursday and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar on Friday.

If sticking to schedule, Meyer will have visited 21 bases across the country, with most along the East Coast, by the end of December, according to a map displayed during the social media video.

“I want you to ask this question for the next couple of months: Where’s Dakota?” Hegseth posed during the video. “Could he be coming to my base, to my installation, to my camp, my fort? Because he might be.”

“He’ll be traversing the country on behalf of the Barracks Task Force, on behalf of me personally inspecting, holding town halls, getting real input, and then providing real solutions,” Hegseth continued. “Be on the lookout for him.”

Hegseth first formed the task force in October 2025 to be led by the assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment. The group is meant to identify investment opportunities and create department-wide policies for barracks standards.

The One Bill Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law in July 2025, gave the Defense Department $1.2 billion for barracks improvement, with $230 million allotted for the Marine Corps Barracks 2030 initiative and $425 million for enlisted boot camp barracks and other related facilities, as well as $1 billion for Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force restoration and modernization of military housing.

A Government Accountability Office report from August found that the Defense Department does not request enough funding to meet its installation maintenance and improvement needs, resulting in an estimated $285 billion of maintenance backlogs in fiscal 2025.

Previous GAO reports found that some barracks were “chronically neglected,” resulting in poor conditions that impacted enlisted service members’ quality of life. Thousands of service members lived in subpar barracks, with some having potentially serious health and safety risks, according to a 2023 report.

Recently, the Barracks Task Force funded various projects at installations across the nation, including modernized housing at Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, and a housing installation at Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton, Washington.

“From this point forward, there’s no confusion about who’s accountable,” Meyer posted on social media. “If we don’t get this fixed, there’s only one person to blame. Me.”

Former President Barack Obama awarded Meyer his Medal of Honor in 2011 for his service during the Battle of Ganjgal in Afghanistan in 2009 when he repeatedly entered an enemy ambush zone to rescue wounded comrades and recover the bodies of fallen service members. His actions were credited with saving 13 Americans and 23 Afghan personnel.

Meyer left the Marine Corps in 2010 and reenlisted in the reserves in April 2025, with his oath of enlistment administered at the Pentagon by Hegseth.

The F-22 completed airborne tactical command and in-flight control of a YFQ-44A Fury earlier this month, the Air Force announced.

The fighter jet’s pilot served as an airborne “quarterback” and gave high-level directives to an Anduril-made Fury CCA. The unmanned, semi-autonomous aircraft’s onboard autonomy software interpreted and executed the directives in real time, per the release, performing in-flight maneuvers and simulated combat tasks.

“This achievement demonstrates what is possible when we are aligned with industry on a shared imperative: delivering capability to the warfighter at unprecedented speed,” Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink said in the announcement.

“We are driving urgency into every part of acquisition from rapid integration and flight learning to disciplined assessment, so we can turn promising technology into combat capability at the pace the threat demands,” he continued.

Personnel from the 412th Test Wing, 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron, 309th Software Engineering Group, Experimental Operations Unit, F-22 System Program Office and the CCA Software Autonomy and Teaming Branch collaborated during the demonstration.

The service plans to use data from this event to inform software integration, developmental testing and further CCA concepts, the announcement says.

This test follows other milestones in the CCA development after the service announced its intention to have 500 combat-ready, semi-autonomous systems by 2032, with an overall fleet size of 1,000.

The Anduril-made Fury executed its first live-fire test by conducting an end-to-end, beyond-line-of-sight strike against a simulated target during a live-fire test at Edwards Air Force Base, California, in July.

Alongside Anduril’s CCA, the service has made strides with General Atomics’ FQ-42A Vengeance, which was delivered to Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, last month to continue regular test and evaluation operations.

Anduril has yet to announce which Air Force base will house Fury, but Creech airmen conducted an Agile Combat Employment exercise earlier using the defense company’s aircraft, allowing airmen to complete sorties and build foundational tactics and procedures that will mold how CCA are integrated into the force.

The Mission and Installation Contracting Command awarded 21,450 contracts in fiscal 2026 valued at $6.8 billion, with $2.9 billion going to American small businesses, according to a Friday release.

As the command moves to expand its role in the service’s modernization and innovation acquisition, it increased its contracting by more than $1 billion from fiscal 2025, which had 22,000 contract actions valued at $5.5 billion.

Growing facility modernization requirements, increased acquisition authorities and adding the 410th Contracting Support Brigade to the MICC drove the increase from last fiscal year, the release says.

“Some growth was expected as we welcomed the 410th Contracting Support Brigade into the command,” MICC Command Sgt. Maj. JennyAnne Bright said in an early October message to the team. “But $1 billion in growth reflects the growing demand for your expertise and your ability to deliver contracting solutions to Soldiers and our mission partners at the point of need.”

The command had more than 299,000 Government Purchase Card transitions with a value of more than $520 million, giving extra “purchasing power” in support of soldiers, installations and mission partners across the service, the release states.

The MICC employed a wider range of acquisition authorities to address more complex regional requirements and to expand industry collaboration, such as Other Transactions Authorities, Small Business Innovation Research Phase III and Multiple Award Task Orders.

The command’s Facilities, Operations, Readiness, Growth and Experience, or FORGE, initiatives consolidated multiple modernization requirements into larger efforts that grouped related requirements to increase effectiveness, the release says.

One of the MICC FORGE initiatives gave a $169.1 million Other Transaction agreement in support of 17 modernization projects, while another established around $987 million in modernization efforts.

Alongside modernization efforts, for the 12th consecutive year, MICC exceeded its assigned small business goals despite a workforce decrease.

“Exceeding our small business goals across the board for a 12th consecutive year is a phenomenal achievement by our contracting and small business professionals,” Luis Trinidad, director of the Army Contracting Command-MICC Office of Small Business Programs, said in the release. “Operating with a 30% reduction in personnel, our team rose to meet a more demanding workload.”

The command’s small business-eligible dollars increased by $104.8 million, requiring more detailed reviews of acquisition packages.

For fiscal 2027, which began Oct. 1, MICC expects a continued boost in modernization requirements and demand for enterprise contracting solutions, forcing innovative acquisition authorities that are tailored to specific mission and soldier needs, according to the release.

Because MICC was established in October 2008, the end of fiscal 2026 aligned with the command’s 18th anniversary. It was founded under the Army Contracting Command as the Installation Contracting Command, and then redesignated as MICC shortly after.

“In just two short decades, MICC has grown into an indispensable element of the Army’s mission, and that legacy is entirely due to the hard work and excellence of professionals like you,” MICC Commanding General Brig. Gen. Freddy L. Adams said in the release.

The Total Army Combat and Training Munitions Information System, or TACTMIS, is meant to replace the previously used Total Ammunition Management Information System, or TAMIS, once it retires on Oct. 30. TACTMIS aims to update how the Army plans, manages and reports munitions for training, testing, operational and combat activities, according to a recent release.

“TACTMIS is a foundational step in modernizing how the Army manages the munitions that enable readiness and warfighting,” Army Chief of Munitions and G-3/5/7 Deputy Chief of Staff John C. Hinnant said in the release. “It gives the Total Army a more authoritative, integrated and accountable way to generate requirements, manage authorizations and maintain trusted visibility of munitions data across the force.”

TACTMIS, developed under the Software Acquisition Pathway, was built using the Appian Platform to be a cloud-enabled, low-code “Software-as-a-Service” capability, the announcement says. The system supports a variety of inputs such as requirements calculations, authorization management, request processing and enterprise reporting.

Using a common organizational framework, the system is meant to reduce manual workload, improve data integrity and increase the visibility of munitions demand and fulfillment across the service and its joint partners.

The upgraded system can coordinate workflows across enterprise systems while maintaining the commanding role of the Army systems and data sources it interacts with, per the statement, supporting readiness planning while providing timely data to inform decision-making for senior leaders and defense industrial base requests.

“TACTMIS moves the Army from fragmented and manual munitions-management processes toward a modern digital capability built for the scale and speed of today’s force,” CW3 Deidre Burgos, TACTMIS program manager, said in the release. “Our focus is ensuring commanders and staffs have reliable tools to manage munitions requirements, authorizations, forecasts and expenditures with greater accuracy, transparency and confidence.”

The system is also aligned to support the Army’s broader modernization efforts such as Ammo360, which is a software initiative meant to boost ammunition accountability and unify the operating picture within the service’s network.

TACTMIS is designed to support over 10,000 users across the globe and operate without dedicated unit-level administrators. The system’s platform allows for TACTMIS to evolve in increments as the Army’s requirements, policies and mission needs change so redesigns are unnecessary for future enhancements.

Planned enhancements include a classified capability intended to support real-time combat munition requirements and expenditure reporting for readiness and logistics operations, the announcement reads.

“Delivering this initial release is an important milestone, but it is also the beginning of an enduring modernization effort,” Burgos said. “TACTMIS provides the digital foundation the Army needs to evolve alongside future operational requirements while maintaining uninterrupted support to the force’s ability to arm, train, and sustain.”

A fight in the Indo-Pacific would look different from past wars, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, making maintaining the “Golden Hour” standard difficult.

Instead of requiring medical care and evacuation to a surgical facility to occur within 60 minutes of a traumatic combat injury, the 18th Theater Medical Command, based at Fort Shafter, Hawaii, is rethinking the term to mean bringing advanced care to the point of injury.

The “tyranny of distance” in the region makes implementing the Golden Hour challenging since it accounts for over 50% of the world’s surface, 18th TMC Maj. Gen. E. Darrin Cox told Military Times on Monday during AUSA 2026.

“In the past, what [the Golden Hour] has meant is getting someone from the battlefield to a [medical] facility in that 60 minutes, so here in the Pacific, that may not be possible,” Cox said. “So what we’re talking about when we say Golden Hour is the pathophysiology of injury and bringing care to that patient in that time before pathology becomes deranged.”

As autonomous systems become increasingly relevant in militaries across the globe, the command is experimenting with ways it can assist patients with prolonged care at the point of injury, while keeping in mind the possibility of an attack.

Blood Storage and Distribution

Even though warfare and medical care are both “human endeavors,” Cox said, autonomous systems are a part of the future. The systems can help deliver care through managing a patient’s vital signs, triaging patients, delivering blood or monitoring a patient so a provider on the ground can take care of others.

“We’re experimenting with autonomous delivery of blood and other Class VIII medical supplies,” Cox said. “They’re experimenting in Ukraine with autonomous evacuation of injured folks off the battlefield, so there’s a lot of work in that area.”

“Not everything in Ukraine is directly applicable to the maritime environment you find yourself in the Pacific, but we take what we observe, we learn those lessons, and then we try to apply it to the operating environment that we’re in,” he continued.

Alongside experimenting with autonomous systems, the 18th TMC is working with joint partners and allies to ensure access to blood distribution facilities, storing it west of the International Date Line.

“We were able to successfully bring blood from Japan to Australia last year during the Talisman Saber exercise,” Cox said. “That demonstrates developing those networks where we can move blood from potential storage locations to the points of need as different operations would surge.”

In critically injured trauma patients, blood and its components are necessary at the point of injury, Cox said, whether it’s blood provided by other countries for American use or stored ahead of time in a facility.

The best option is fresh whole blood, but that requires collection on scene, which has a limited supply, and refrigerated fresh blood has a limited lifespan. Another option is frozen products, both blood and plasma, but they need to be thawed with specialized equipment.

Cox highlighted that many partners in the Pacific, like the Philippines, are developing their own armed forces blood program where they have a stockpile of blood in military hospitals and accept donations. America is looking to have blood-sharing agreements with some joint partners, like Australia and Japan, which have a similar testing protocol to America’s and allow for the U.S. to use blood procured locally on U.S. casualties.

“We’re also with our partners in the Philippines,” 18th Command Sgt. Maj. Jennifer Francis told Military Times. “We ensure that we share what we’re doing in the field, so that we can enhance their own capability. So we’ve made huge strides there in the Philippines.”

Training on New Concepts

Ensuring that the combat medics are familiar with these concepts and innovations ahead of a conflict takes training on “anything and everything” related to the options, she said.

The Army has multiple “echelons of care,” but it all begins with basic self-care training and the more advanced Combat Lifesaver training before some reach the combat medic level.

“Once you get to tactical combat casualty care, that’s a little bit more robust,” Francis said. “They have the basic application of tourniquet[s], and then going through some of the head-to-toe trauma.”

In the Indo-Pacific theater, the overall medical care is not significantly different, unlike the environment, prompting the 18th TMC to continue to innovate through technology and training to keep trust with soldiers.

The 18th utilizes an 8th Forward Resuscitative and Surgical Detachment, or FRSD, which is a 20-person team that can execute surgery in the theater, Cox said, and the command is tinkering with different configurations of tents versus fixed mobile containers that can be taken on or off an Army watercraft, land or underground.

At the May 2026 Land Forces of the Pacific Symposium and Exposition in Hawaii, the 8th FRSD demonstrated a care simulation on a cut suit which modeled a surgical unit aboard a vessel.

Boats or ships should transport patients because evacuating by air en masse would be less likely, Army medics told Military Times at the event. The team began using autonomous small multipurpose equipment transports, or SMETs, uncrewed, eight-wheeled robotic combat vehicles guided with a remote control, to carry patients.

Although the Cheyenne being equipped with over double the speed and range of current weapons systems will be transformative, Bell, the defense manufacturer for the aircraft, anticipates the real “revolutionary” part to be its software, Frank Lazzara, Bell’s director of MV-75 Sales & Strategy, told Military Times in an interview.

The Cheyenne program is the service’s inaugural “digital-first” weapons system with a modular open systems approach, or MOSA, that allows the Army to virtually refine its architecture and helps acquire intellectual property and data rights needed to control future upgrades and avoid vendor lock-in.

“The Army is trying to set the standard for the government to have control over their maintenance, their upgradeability, like they’ve never had before,” Lazzara said at the 2026 Association of the United States Army conference in Washington, D.C.

Bell’s open system approach differs from others, he said, because it is guided and directed by the Army, giving them more control and changing the way business is conducted throughout the lifecycle of the aircraft.

“This is the model for what the government should get when they acquire a weapon system of this level and an acquisition at this level,” Lazzara said. “That’s what gets lost out there.”

“You can hang another system on an old aircraft, and you might have a little bit more capability, but you’re never going to have the capability you have in this aircraft, plus the ability to much more easily upgrade and maintain your aircraft through its life cycle,” he continued. “That’s where the payoff really happens.”

The Cheyenne, which is designed to be a multi-mission aircraft, is the Army’s next-generation tiltrotor assault and utility aircraft, slated to replace part of the force’s UH-60 Black Hawk fleet. Its missions include long-range assault, utility, medical evacuations and humanitarian assistance.

The aircraft is designed to fly at speeds over 300 miles per hour, can carry up to 14 soldiers and support an external load of up to 10,000 pounds.

The aircraft was crafted for operations in the Indo-Pacific given its ability to cover vast distances quickly, but it can also be used in a close-in fight, special operations or as a deterrent in other theaters, Lazzara said.

While looking at a model of the aircraft on display at AUSA, Lazzara said that it is intended to make a pilot’s job easier. Someday, pilots may even be able to control Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA, as it is plugged into MOSA.

There’s a heavy emphasis on controlly cost since it is a “delicate balance” because increasing capabilities and maintaining a low cost as contracted. Nothing on the aircraft was designed to be over a certain weight, allowing current equipment to be used in its construction, keeping the cost low.

The project office for the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft, or FLARRA, conducted a design evaluation of the aircraft, gathering together operators, trainers and engineers in the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade to give feedback on the design.

The 101st, based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was selected as the first unit to field the helicopter, with an expected arrival in 2027. The aircraft was previously set for a 2031 or 2032 delivery date, but the service announced the accelerated production timeline in January.

The evaluations, which are meant to include soldiers in the process, led to some design decisions, including seating configuration and no cockpit doors, Lazzara said. But now, Bell is at a point in the development process where it’s time to “snap the line” and only progress with what’s already been decided.

Bell is under a contract to deliver six training test aircraft and two limited-use test aircraft, but the development timing is “tough.”

“We’re in a little bit of what I would call re-evaluating what that looks like based on leadership changes in the Army, and there’s really just kind of a different feeling in the Army right now with leadership changes both at the secretary level and the chief level,” Lazzara said.

He said that there’s a series of meetings happening soon between Bell’s program team and the government to discuss the way forward, including what a feasible baseline schedule would look like without compromising capability and making sure both are aligned on funding.

The Army’s fiscal 2027 funding request allotted $2.1 billion for the Cheyenne program in the Research, Development, Test and Evaluation framework, according to budget documents, a significant boost from $350 million in fiscal 2026.

By the end of fiscal 2040, the Army anticipated up to 334 aircraft, according to a 2025 Congressional Research Service report.

“We’re obviously concerned about a [continuing resolution] because that becomes a challenge if we are under continuing resolution for a long period of time,” Lazzara said. “So a lot of what the government and our team will be talking about … is that as well. What are the contingency plans?”

“It’s a very well-supported program,” he continued. “Funding requests went through almost as exactly as we asked for it. So clearly supported on the Hill through funding. That funding for next year or ‘27, this year now fiscal, is significantly more than ‘26. So if we’re limited to ‘26 funding, you have to find ways to work through those challenges, and that’s what they’re working on now.”

The government is currently under a short-term continuing resolution, or CR, with temporary funding measures in place through Dec. 11. Another CR or the fiscal 2027 appropriations bill would have to be passed before that deadline to avoid a government shutdown.

Within the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, or 2CR, new basics include unmanned aerial systems operation and employment, counter-UAS systems and unmanned ground vehicle usage, service officials said during a Monday discussion at the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting, titled “Project Flytrap—Accelerating Offensive Maneuver through Data-Centric Kill Web.”

Project Flytrap is an Army counter-unmanned aerial systems initiative and multinational exercise, which has leveled up from the individual soldier to the squadron level with multiple iterations.

The most recent exercise, Project Flytrap 5.0, took place in Lithuania and was concluded earlier this year with partner nations, including the United Kingdom and Australia, and was led by the Army’s V Corps. The countries integrated and tested more than 50 industry-provided technologies, launched effects and unmanned ground vehicles and tested against a live opposing force.

“The American way of war is centered on maneuver, and counter-UAS cannot remain tied to static defense,” Col. Timothy Price, commander of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, said in a Tuesday release. “Project FlyTrap ensures we maintain mobility and offensive survivability in a highly contested, opaque operational environment.”

The 2nd Cavalry Regiment is expanding Project Flytrap into a battalion-level operational capability, adapting from small-unit field trials into tactical employment connected with operational objectives aimed at breaking through drone-saturated frontlines on Europe’s Eastern Flank.

“As we’re training our soldiers for the multi-domain operations, or multi-domain breeds, we talk about the new basics inside of 2CR,” Command Sgt. Maj. Jesse Clark, 2nd Cavalry Regiment senior enlisted leader, said during Monday’s discussion.

“With the new basics, we need to focus on sUAS, counter-UAS, camouflage for electromagnetic signatures … and how we’re going to do that so soldiers understand how to camouflage themselves with those spectrum options,” he continued.

Officials listed the previous basics to include topics such as marksmanship, map reading and navigation, radio etiquette and UAS and jamming reaction to contact.

Clark said the service needs to have disciplined unit training management in which personnel, time and equipment are included to ensure soldiers are proficient at the new basics. One way to complete this is to have a series of expert badges.

“Everyone needs to know these basics because it’s going to be required whether you’re on the frontline or you’re back in the rear because we’re going to have UAS all over the place,” Clark said.

The U.S. military has strived to incorporate UAS and counter-UAS training across all branches, with new units in the Marine Corps and the Defense Innovation Unit aiming to recruit service members with first-person-view drone experience to participate in the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance program.

Steelfin, a family of highly configurable, mass-producible, surface-to-air interceptor missiles, has been developed to deliver cost, volume and capability across a variety of threats, according to a release.

Steefin uses a two-stage architecture compatible with different fielded designs, allowing the defense company to configure interceptor performance while reusing the same parts, production processes, and design across its family of interceptors.

The missile has a two-stage design with a booster and terminal interceptor, the release states. The first-stage booster can accommodate various solid rocket motor boosters to meet a set range, performance, booster types, launch configurations or packing density requirements. The second stage terminal interceptor shares the same baseline airframe, avionics, software, flight control system and interfaces across all Steelfin variants.

“Steelfin delivers a diversity of effects to meet a diversity of threats,” the release says. “Unlike legacy missiles that carry fixed, inflexible designs that are resistant to change, Steelfin offers a common interceptor architecture that produces a family of interceptor missiles, each of which can be configured for a specific mission.”

The interceptor family was built to address threats across the air-and-missile defense spectrum, such as point defense, integrated air and missile defense and ballistic missile defense, while aiming to come at a fraction of the cost of other interceptors in mission classes.

To address issues with manufacturing volume and high demand, Anduril expects to “surge” production for any Steelfin variant by moving the interceptor through the same production line, with the same tooling, techniques and facilities, since they share a common architecture and components.

Anduril anticipates producing several thousand Steelfin variants per year in the short term, the announcement says.

The variants are compatible with established land- and sea-based launch infrastructure, including the M903A2, Mk 41 Vertical Launch System and Typho systems. Steelfin is meant to be able to integrate with any fielded fire control software systems, like AEGIS and IBCS, to ensure it fits into established battle management processes and procedures.

“By making Steelfin compatible with fielded air defense hardware and software infrastructure, Anduril has streamlined the path to fielding, accelerated deployment, and ensured that Steelfin will multiply the combat power of the joint force on an operationally-relevant timeline,” the release reads.

Anduril has completed ballistic testing with representative air vehicles, and flight testing for Steelfin variants is slated to begin next year.

The company’s current plan is an ambitious effort to expand air defense stockpiles after the Iran war dwindled America’s munitions supply, with analysis detailing that it would take at least three years to replenish to pre-war levels.

The news comes as the U.S. Army recently awarded Anduril a contract to increase delivery of a “common data layer,” meaning software foundation, baseline for Next Generation Command and Control, or NGC2, beginning with 1 Corps, which commands service members across the Indo-Pacific.

The contract’s base period is valued at $162.8 million, but it includes options that could bring the total value up to $1.8 billion over five years.

On March 27, when a missile hit Prince Sultan Air Base in Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia, Staff Sgt. Kalob Mitchell, Spc. Nicholas Cabo and Sgt. Xavier Jones, all with the 6th Battalion, 56th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division Artillery, sprang into action.

A 550-pound ballistic missile exploded yards from a bunker on base, filling it with dust and debris.

“We’re sitting there talking, and then all of a sudden, we didn’t hear anything, no sound at all. Everything went black, so we were hit,” Mitchell said in a recent release.

While expecting just another missile warning, the soldiers were thrown from their position and slammed against the opposing interior wall, forcing all three to lose consciousness. They had their initial medical evaluation later that day at the Role 2 Medical Facility on base.

“Woke up, checked on them. They were good. At that time, we heard screams from the opposite side of the bunker. Two Soldiers, I’m not too sure who they were, who had significant injuries; ran over there, applied tourniquets, T Triple C (Tactical Combat Casualty Care), everything,” Mitchell recounted.

Mitchell, Cabo and Jones applied a tourniquet to a severely wounded soldier, treated another with a neck injury and helped keep a disoriented soldier safe until it was safe to evacuate the bunker, per the release.

Despite their own injuries, the trio continued to assist others, carrying others out to an ambulance and helping a soldier whose leg was severely damaged, speculating that the soldier could have lost their life if not for the group.

Capt. Tyler Ritter, commander of 6-56 ADAR, 1st Cav. DIVARTY, received messages from the injured soldier saying, “Sir, your Soldiers saved my life. I thank God every day that these gentlemen survived. Their actions brought great credit upon the 6-56 Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division and III Armored Corps. These Soldiers are my heroes. May God bless them.”

Mitchell, Cabo and Jones’ service, described as the “ultimate description of what we mean when we talk about warfighting, readiness, grit and taking care of our Soldiers,” earned them each a Purple Heart during an Oct. 1 ceremony at the III Armored Corps headquarters building at Fort Hood, Texas.

“So honestly, it’s kind of cool,” Jones said in the release. “I don’t think any of us was like going for a Purple Heart because it actually sucked. Like that situation was horrible … When I saw it on my STP (Soldier Talent Profile), I was like, man, I never would have thought I would have got a Purple Heart. I never thought I was going to see anything like we saw.”