How the Military’s Holiday Tradition of Tracking Santa Came to Be
Fire Watch | A Military.com Podcast
Release Date: 12/22/2023
Always Faithful, Always On: The Taxing Job of a Marine Corps Drill Instructor
Fire Watch | A Military.com Podcast
Marine Corps drill instructors represent one of the most legendary roles in the military. From the 1987 war movie "Full Metal Jacket" to their essential job of making new Marines at boot camp in 13-week cycles, the role has become iconic to the public and within squad bays alike. Last month, Military.com and The Washington Post into the mental health and personal struggles that have afflicted the drill instructor population. With my reporting partner, Kelsey Baker, we found that the high-stress environment for drill instructors was bleeding into some of their personal lives, causing...
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Trump’s Promises to Radically Change the Military
Fire Watch | A Military.com Podcast
Since announcing his campaign for re-election, the public has weighed and dissected the merits and shortfalls of incoming President Trump’s aims for the military. But what has been missing is how these promises or inferences might come to fruition and what challenges they may face on their way to implementation. In this episode, we spoke to two people with collective decades of experience in analyzing military policies, both foreign and domestic. We talked about five promises – or policies floated in the media – that will likely see early headway in Trump’s military. In this episode:...
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Stolen Valor & the 2024 Election
Fire Watch | A Military.com Podcast
At its surface, Stolen Valor is a legal term used to describe people who claim gallant military awards -- like the Purple Heart or Medal of Honor -- they did not earn in an effort to gain money, property or other tangible benefits, according to a 2013 congressional act. But the phrase seems to have inhabited a broader meaning and gained a foothold in the public consciousness in recent years, one that has been sometimes divisive, but also critical to identifying when public figures might be embellishing or outright lying about their service records. On this episode, we talk to three experts...
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Osprey Crash Investigations Often Blame the Pilots and Crew. Is That Fair?
Fire Watch | A Military.com Podcast
The V-22 was a novel aircraft when it was conceived in the 1980s. Promising to give American service members an advantage on the battlefield, it was versatile. It could fly like a plane, but rotate its propellers to take off like a helicopter. Military services jumped on it, especially the Marine Corps. But since 2022, Ospreys have crashed four times during routine training exercises, killing a total of 20 service members. That figure is on top of more than 40 previous fatalities, many having occurred during a long and troubled development period for the aircraft. Concerns about the...
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Why ‘Back in My Day’ Views of Navy Boot Camp Changes May Be Missing the Point
Fire Watch | A Military.com Podcast
Last time, on Fire Watch, we took you inside Navy Boot camp. I was accompanied by Military.com reporter and Navy veteran Konstantin Toropin. And we came armed with a few questions: Is Navy boot camp different than veterans remember it? Is it still hard? And what do those changes say about the sailors joining the Navy today? In this episode, we’re taking a closer look at those changes – ones that have fueled generational dissent among Navy veterans who see new recruits as being coddled. But isn’t there a better way to assess what the Navy and its new sailors are doing? In this episode:...
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Inside Today's Navy Boot Camp: Less Yelling, Same Sleep Deprivation
Fire Watch | A Military.com Podcast
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Underreporting Child Abuse & The Case of China Lake
Fire Watch | A Military.com Podcast
On this episode we will be focusing on years of underreporting of child abuse at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California, one of the Navy’s most sprawling installations which is located in the Mojave Desert. This is a story about disclosure – or rather the lack of disclosure. In this episode: Drew F. Lawrence, Konstantin Toropin.
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Vets in Hollywood and TV
Fire Watch | A Military.com Podcast
In this episode we examine the history of the military, Hollywood and the veterans who brought real-as-can-be portrayals of that world to big and small screens. I interviewed some of the contemporary players – actors, advisors and writers – who made some of those portrayals a reality. In this episode: Jim LaPorta, Drew F. Lawrence, Caitlin Bassett, Capt. (ret.) Dale Dye
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On the Ice with Marines Preparing for War in the Arctic
Fire Watch | A Military.com Podcast
We’re in a Norwegian valley, high above the Arctic Circle. It’s late afternoon in early March and a group of over a dozen infantry Marines are standing around an American and Norwegian chaplain. It’s windy, cold. The Marines hold laminated prayer cards in dense gloves, some are shifting back and forth to stay warm. A radio chatters in the background with reports from the front. “That symbol – that cross – came to signify that Rome could force people to obey out of fear, obedience out of fear of being raised upon that cross,” a Marine chaplain said. “And Christ says, I will...
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On the Hunt for Army Recruits at an NRA Sponsored Sporting Convention
Fire Watch | A Military.com Podcast
Since the COVID-19 pandemic four years ago, recruiting across the military services has been in crisis. Many recruiters lost access to schools that were shuttered. The military also has been increasingly the subject of political attacks – mainly from the right of the aisle condemning the services as “woke.” We’ll get into that in the episode. My colleague, Steve Beynon – an Army veteran and Military.com’s Army reporter – and I wanted to see what it was like for recruiters on the ground floor. How do they recruit? Why were they at the Great American Outdoors show? Are the problems...
info_outlineNote: This special Christmas episode originally aired on December 23rd, 2022. We thought it might bring you some holiday cheer again this year. Enjoy.
When the red telephone began to ring, Col. Harry Shoup feared the worst. It was 1955, at the height of the Cold War, and Shoup was in the operations center of the Continental Air Defense Command in Colorado. CONAD, as it was known then, stood as the early warning system for a Soviet attack. So the ringing of the red telephone never meant anything good.
What happened next launched the now-named North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, into a decades-long tradition to track Santa and bring joy to children around the world. And it started with a simple act of kindness, a Cold War scare and a youngster hoping to tap into a little Christmas magic.
So who runs NORAD, and how do they know so much about Santa? On this episode of Fire Watch, we learn about the decades-long tradition and speak to the service members who track Santa on Christmas. Plus, a special reading of “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” by the 18th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. (Ret.) Martin Dempsey.