The U.S. Army released its new plan to tackle climate change, which the service claims “poses an immediate and serious threat to U.S. national security and affects how and where the Army trains and operates.” The new “Army Climate Strategy” (ACS) Implementation Plan states that the Army must do more than just “adapt” to climate change because “dangerous levels of greenhouse gases (GHG) have already accumulated in the Earth’s atmosphere.” The service must instead work to mitigate the effects of climate change. The strategy highlights three main “lines of effort,” including installations, acquisition and logistics, and training. The Army will work toward making sure installations have “resilient energy and water supply, carbon free electricity, efficient and sustainable infrastructure, sustainable land management, and more. The Army also vowed to reduce fuel consumption and rely on advanced technology to help mitigate climate change during deployments. Additionally, the service will “train and educate the Army to operate in a climate-altered world.” “The ACS envisions the Total Army as ‘a resilient and sustainable land force able to operate in all domains with effective mitigation and adaption measures against the key effects of climate change, consistent with Army modernization efforts,’” the strategy’s implementation plan states. “The effects of climate change will be a feature of global conditions for the foreseeable future. As such, the Army must continually adjust the ACS-IP to reflect the best science and cutting edge technologies. In FY25, the Army will assess progress, revisit assumptions, update and refresh the way ahead,” it adds. The Army’s plan comes after John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, said climate change can “force” military invention after once again calling it a “national security issue.” During a July press conference, Kirby said climate change is a “driver of actual missions” because it

No new intelligence prompted President Joe Biden’s nuclear Armageddon remarks, according to the White House. Biden told a group of donors late Oct. 6 that the world faces the “prospect of Armageddon” due to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s perceived threat of using nuclear weapons. “No. No,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One on Friday, when asked whether new intelligence motivated Biden to make the comments. “The President was speaking about concerns about Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons, just as he did at the U.N. General Assembly and we have done over the past few weeks,” Jean-Pierre added….

“Fat Leonard” — the central figure in a $35 million corruption scandal in the U.S. Navy — is in Venezuela, perhaps never to receive his due punishment, having fled the U.S. a month ago just days before his sentencing. And the sailor blamed by his commanders with destroying a $1.2 billion amphibious assault ship, the USS Bonhomme Richard, was cleared last week by a military judge. Neither story covers the military service in glory. To be sure, Leonard Glenn Francis — the 350-pound Malaysian defense contractor who routinely bribed naval officials to supply him with classified information on ship movements, direct business to his company and tip him off to investigations — did not escape from military custody on Labor Day weekend. It was the U.S. Marshals service that lost him from house confinement. The Marshals service, and the federal judge who approved the conditions of his medical furlough from prison, deserve scrutiny for the incredibly lax and opulent terms of his house arrest. Francis hired his own guards, who were stationed in windowless garages, with no night patrols and no visitor’s logs, while he resided in a $7,000 a month rented house in a gated community. The Washington Post reported last month that Francis always seemed to have advance notice of official visits, and it took six hours for authorities to respond when the severed ankle monitor signaled that there was a problem. But worse than the ignominy of losing the prisoner is the wantonness of his fraud and the deep-rooted cooperation he got for years from the Navy. Thirty-three officers and civilians have been convicted in the fraud, including a rear admiral, since the first charges were filed in 2013. Honest officers who reported the fraud far earlier had their careers ruined. The length and breadth of the scandal suggests that the Navy’s culture is far too welcoming to supply chain corruption. The Bonhomme