USAF Vet. University College London Alumnus. @UCL Foreign Policy / Military Analyst. All opinions expressed are my own.
Joined June 2012
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Patrick Fox retweeted
Oh No: Atlanta Falcons Announce Surprise Game In Paris buff.ly/E7yq6Rg
The video is horrific. Deaths in training always seem to hurt more, at least they always have for me. Death by enemy action is one thing, but dying in routine activity has an air of senselessness to it. I think that's why many have decried recruiting spectacles at sports events in the aftermath of this.
The truth is simpler - the military is an incredibly dangerous profession. Even in training, many personnel are doing highly dangerous things routinely, so that when required they can successfully execute those same tasks under even more extreme conditions. Whether its overflights, airshows, skill exhibitions for the public, or any other demonstration - mistakes happen, equipment fails, Murphy raises his unholy hand and strikes down one of our own. It happens with depressing regularity and it is no more likely to happen at a public event than it is at some obscure training venue the public never sees. The only difference at an exhibition is that the public is made brutally aware of just how dangerous the "routine" of military service can be.
Airman dies after rappelling accident at UTSA-Navy football game trib.al/PS63H17
Union troops did the same during the New York City Draft Riots of 1863. The 20th Independent Battery, New York Volunteer Artillery assisted in quelling the rioters by firing canister into the crowd.
We need to be sentencing people to death for this kind of thing. The various espionage statutes have very wide latitude for doing it in peacetime depending on the nature of the information compromised. At minimum, they should be imprisoned for decades.
Former US Army Sergeant Joseph Schmidt pleaded guilty in June 2025 to charges of sharing classified information with the Chinese government.
Schmidt served in the Army as a human intelligence collector from 2015 until January 2020, including with the 109th Military Intelligence Battalion at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. He was trained in Mandarin at the Defense Language Institute and had a deep interest in Chinese culture.
Six days after leaving active duty, Schmidt took a four-day trip to China, and then traveled to Turkey the following month, where he emailed the Chinese consulate offering them classified information before returning home again. In March 2020 he flew to Hong Kong and remained in China until October 2023.
According to the FBI affidavit, Schmidt visited the headquarters of the Ministry of State Security in Beijing, offering them classified information along with his Army ID card and a PKI token which allowed access to the Army’s Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRnet).
Schmidt left behind a wealth of digital evidence of his actions, including a Google search history for terms such as “can you be extradited for treason”, “soldier defect”, and “chinese.consulate number doesn’t go through”. The FBI’s affidavit includes screenshots of his Google Maps application which were recovered from his iCloud account and showed a driving route from Beijing International Airport to MSS headquarters.
Another Google Maps screenshot showed his phone in close proximity to MSS headquarters on March 10th, 2020. He also saved a 23-page document to his iCloud account titled “High Level Secrets” and a four-page document titled “Important Information to Share with Chinese Government.”
Investigators from the FBI and Army quickly built a case against him but had no opportunity to arrest him so long as he remained in China. FBI agents arrested Schmidt when he landed at San Francisco International Airport in October 2023. He initially pleaded not guilty but later changed his plea.
In October 2025 he was sentenced to four years in prison.
#usarmy #china #hongkong #beijing #army #soldier
It is without doubt the best “whole war” documentary on the Second World War ever made. In no small part because it interviewed so many of those who lived through it and lets them tell it as they experienced it.
It seems that @Channel4 currently has the complete series of the outstanding #WW2 documentary "The World at War" available to watch through its on demand service.
*Highly* recommended (in case anyone was vaguely unaware). channel4.com/programmes/the-…
I remember when this happened, UnderArmour in particular was incredibly popular and once the reason for the USMC prohibition became common knowledge amongst the other services, no one wanted to risk wearing it.
In 2006 the commanding general of the US Marines in Iraq banned his men from wearing the most popular sports shirts in America, because of what the burns surgeons were finding.
It was 50 degrees in Anbar province. The issued cotton T-shirt was soaked through in minutes, so Marines had been buying their own. Tight, light, sweat-wicking tops in polyester, the kind every gym in the country is full of. They were cooler and they dried fast. Nearly everybody had them on under the body armour.
Then the roadside bombs started. A bomb under a vehicle produces a flash of fire lasting a second or two. Cotton scorches in that time. Polyester melts.
The Navy doctors at the field hospitals described the result. The shirt turned to liquid and set again on the man's chest and back. A burn that should have been survivable became a far worse one, because there was now a layer of plastic fused across it that had to be cut away.
In April 2006 the order went out from Camp Fallujah. No synthetic athletic clothing outside the wire. It named the brands.
The Marines then went looking for something that wicked sweat, dried fast, did not stink after a week and would not melt. What they found had been grazing in New Zealand the whole time. Fine merino wool is now standard issue next to the skin for troops who expect fire.
That is twice in 25 years, in two different services, that plastic clothing has been tested on young men by an explosion. Both times the answer came off a sheep.
I guarantee those 6 are dwarfed by the number of people willing and eager to volunteer for it.
At least six soldiers are planning to file for preliminary religious exemptions to avoid participating in the firing squad execution of Nidal Mikal Hasan, a nonprofit leader told The Sun.
washingtonsun.com/defense/so…
The Army, as I understand it, is currently working out the protocols for the Hasan execution. I’m curious if the commander of the firing party will be charged with delivering a coup de grâce with his sidearm should the prisoner survive the volley. This was previously the case.
Patrick Fox retweeted
I was on active duty at a 1LT at the old Walter Reed at the time. We saw the shooting on the news and my oic a were savvy Philippina major said ‘you junior people, get out of here. I and the contractors will hold it down. They’re going to lock the post down.’ And she sent us home- and just in time. They locked down for like five days. No one in or out, because that fucking piece of shit had been there for a long time. CID was crawling over that hospital and installation for months. It turns out he worked one floor under me for months. That hospital had good people in it – soldiers worked hard to take care of combat wounded through the height of the war and Iraq and Afghanistan. And they got hit hard by this monsters actions. He was one of us and he betrayed everything that we stand for. Honor, courage, selfless service, duty to nation and our brethren- *everything*.
So, Fuck that guy. I don’t care what happens to him. Public, private, firing squad or kick his crippled ass in a river- his justice will come in this life or the next.
How I got involved in the Fort Hood terrorist attack. and my honest feelings on the live streamed execution.
Last night was the first time my wife heard this story and may have only told it twice before. She knew I was involved but didn't know anything more. When the shooting happened, 3 of the victims were sent to a hospital south of Fort Hood. Where I worked, there were 9 of us who were still serving in the Guard/Reserves. And we wanted to help anyway we could.
So the boss said, “Cool, help ‘ em out.” We went down to the hospital. One of the soldiers was in a very bad way. His family was flying in, and our main focus was picking up family at the airport, getting them meals, anything we could do to let them focus on their soldier.
The next day, one of the soldiers was told by the doctors he was being released. Had no one from his unit or family available to assist him. (Wisconsin Guard). The day of the attack a General showed up and talked to us and one of the wounded. So my buddy and I called the boss and got permission to put him in my unit and drive him to Hood ourselves. We called around the base, but it was clear Fort Hood was not prepared for this.
The drive is about 45 minutes, and once we got on base, nobody seemed to know where his unit was. We finally talked to someone who sent us to one of the chapels. On the way there, his arm started bleeding again, so we took him to Darnell. I might have had a little incident with the staff because I don't think they were handling the situation well. I told him to get his OIC, and an LT came up and was way more helpful. But this kid would not let me leave his side. At the moment, he had two bullet holes in him and had no idea what was going on. So I stayed in the room with him while they examined and bandaged him.
After he was released, a member of his unit came in the ER, and after hugs, he took that young man home back to his unit. A lot of people don't know nearly a quarter of his unit was killed or wounded that day. The ones who remained pushed forward and deployed. I think the worst part of this for me is I don’t remember his name.
For brevity I left it short.
Opinion:
We deserve to see this man die if we choose. He watched too many of my brothers and sisters flee in terror, and many died.
Patrick Fox retweeted
Today in 732, the Frankish leader Charles Martel turns back a Muslim army at the Battle of Tours (aka the Battle of Poitiers). The victory halts the Umayyad march from Spain into Western Europe and will go on to be celebrated for saving European Christendom from Islamic conquest
Patrick Fox retweeted
Amazing man- SSG Alonzo Lundsford shot 7 times- one of which was to the head (that is now public knowledge) Read that again shot point blank 7 times by that man. I was a new doctor rotating on the surgery service on that day. At the purple heart ceremony he talked about struggling with not being about to stop it...I was like, " you are like a wall of power...you stopped 7 bullets, who else could have done that?" I often wondered how many were saved because it took so many bullets to take down SSG Lundsford.
A FORT HOOD SURVIVOR WHO WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD BY NIDAL HASAN SAYS HE'LL BE THERE TO WATCH JUSTICE FINALLY HAPPEN.
He took multiple bullets that day, and he says he isn't going for revenge.
He's going so the families of the fallen and the survivors can finally close this chapter and keep living.
He said it best himself: you live by the sword and you die by the sword, and Hasan chose a coward's way by targeting unarmed soldiers.
Those families have spent years of Christmases, Thanksgivings, and Easters with an empty chair at the table.
This survivor is living for the soldiers he lost that day, and that's as American as it gets.
This was an outstanding speech from @SecRubio in Athens. Highly recommend giving it a listen.
youtu.be/eOv1DpML7I4
I was reminded today of a little known bit of WWII lore: the Mob was instrumental in assisting the Allies. From preventing work stoppages on various docks and keeping communist union agitators in check, to gathering intelligence on Italy via family connections.
To my knowledge Mathew Black is the only one to give the details of Operation Underworld a book length examination. And what a code name!
There is a great nod to this in the 1991 film The Rockateer, when Paul Sorvino's character (the Mob boss) teams up with the Feds to kill Nazis with tommyguns.
youtu.be/RdnSuxydDT4