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The Pentagon is cancelling a controversial medal designed to recognize contributions of unmanned aerial vehicle pilots and cyber troops, according to a Monday memorandum signed by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel obtained by USNI News.

A child’s drawing of a lost submarine rests behind Plexiglas in a back corner of the National Museum of the Navy in Washington, D.C., seemingly out of place amid massive ship models and aircraft dangling from the ceiling. “USS Thresher/ Bruce Harvey/ crayon,” reads its art-museum-style description. “The young son of Commander John Harvey, skipper of Thresher, drew the boat on the ocean floor after hearing of its loss. Bruce’s father and 128 other men died when the submarine sank off the New England coast.” Thresher (SSN-593), at the time the Navy’s fastest and most powerful submarine, represented a leap...

The creation of the new medal honoring unmanned vehicle pilots and cyber troops, “is a telling and sad commentary on the judgment of those who are responsible for the creation and approval of this award,” Jack Jacobs, Medal of Honor recipient and Vietnam veteran, told USNI News on Wednesday.

Friday’s deployment of USS Freedom (LCS 1) will revive a tradition of camouflaging warships. Outside of smaller patrol boats, the U.S. largely abandoned elaborate color schemes and stuck with haze gray.

The ten percent sequestration cuts across the Department of Defense budget will increase wait times at Arlington National Cemetery, a cemetery spokesperson told USNI News on Thursday. Due to the cuts funerals will drop from 31 interments a day to 24, or about 160 less funerals a month, according to preliminary estimates from the cemetery

Photographer Joe Rosenthal admitted that when he took a shot of five Marines and one Navy corpsman raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima’s Mt. Suribachi on 23 February 1945, he had no idea that he had captured something extraordinary. He was setting up for a different shot when he spotted the group of men planting the flag and quickly took a snap without even looking through the viewfinder. The chance photo would become iconic overnight and go on to win the Pulitzer Prize.

The U.S. Navy will delay the refueling of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) for an unknown period because of the uncertain fiscal environment due to the ongoing legislative struggle, the service told Congress in a Friday message obtained by USNI News.

Great list of Pearl Harbor movies. Some were good, some were awful. The most ridiculous one is still the best - The Final Countdown ("Splash the zeros!") The video clips bring back memories.

After an arsonist caused $450 million in damage to the USS Miami on March 2012, the U.S. Navy considered scrapping the submarine. The eventual decision to repair the Miami and return it to service in 2015 means that the Navy will not have to add to a rather short but fateful list - ships lost since WWII. Between December 1941 and September 1945, over 350 U.S. Navy warships and patrol craft were sunk or damaged beyond repair. In the nearly seven decades since, fewer than 30 ships have been lost directly due to enemy action or accidents. These are a...

When Tony Scott was hired to helm the motion picture "Top Gun," he had been directing television commercials and music videos during a time-out from Hollywood after his first movie failed to achieve expectations. Producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer wanted offered Scott the job of director, thinking his talent for 30-second spectacles would give the film a look of tightly controlled chaos of the dog fighting and life onboard an aircraft carrier. Scott quickly fell in love with the concept and signed on. To use fighter pilot lingo, Scott re-engaged into movie making with a bag full of knots...

As the United States continues to help Israel improve its missile defense shield due to growing fears of possible attack by Syria and Iran, claims by Iran that it has developed its own ‘carrier-killer’ that can evade U.S. Navy defense systems to hit ships in the Persian Gulf are drawing skepticism from naval experts. As first reported by Jane’s Defence Weekly , Iran released images of a test last month in which the Khalij Fars antiship ballistic missile was launched and struck a moving target. The missile is purported to be a smaller version of China’s modified Dong Feng 21,...

Like Joe Rosenthal’s "Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima", Alfred Eisenstaedt’s "V-J Day in Times Square" has been endlessly copied, reenacted and parodied. These are examples of the photo’s impact on pop culture

A list of super patriots - Marines and sailors who served their country AND won medals at the Olympics

While publicly claiming neutrality between Argentina and the U.K. during the 1982 Falklands War, President Ronald Reagan’s administration had developed plans to loan a ship to the Royal Navy if it lost one of its aircraft carriers in the war, former U.S. Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, told the U.S. Naval Institute on June 26. Lehman and then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger agreed to support U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with the loan of the amphibious warship USS Iwo Jima , he said.

The announcement of two Russian amphibious warships bound for Syria is strange. Not because the Russians are above meddling in a conflict zone or are committed to the principle of non-interference. But because deploying ships and marines represents an escalation in the Syrian conflict — an escalation the Russians have expressly avoided. On the same day news first broke about the deployment of Russian warships, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, totally in line with its previous position, announced that it was seeking the early resumption of the UN mission in Syria. With conflicting messages coming from different parts of the...

“Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” is often cited as being the most reproduced photograph in history. It is also probably the most parodied image in the world. The “Iwo Jima pose” has become a popular symbol for organizations or movements wishing to convey victory, teamwork, or patriotism. The use of the image has ranged from respectful homage to what some consider offensive misappropriation

A list with videos of movies and TV series about Pearl Harbor. How many have you seen?

In 1956, Britain's Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, saw Egypt's new president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, as a fascist riding a dangerous new wave of Arab nationalism. When Nasser seized control of the Suez Canal from its British and French owners, Eden was sure Nasser was an Arab Hitler and rejected any alternative to direct military action as "appeasement." Guy Mollet, the French premier at the time, shared Eden's opinion and joined with Britain and Israel in the attack on Egypt to remove Nasser. When Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, of World War II fame, discovered Eden's plan to intervene in...

A very short but interesting video of Frank Buckles discussing his experiences in WWI. Seemed like a true gentleman. RIP.

President Barack Obama was outmaneuvered by the Russians and should have abandoned the New START negotiations instead of seeking a political victory, says former nuclear plans monitor Vice Admiral Jerry Miller, USN (Ret). “The Obama administration is continuing a dated policy in which we cannot even unilaterally reduce our own inventory of weapons and delivery systems without being on parity with the Russians,” Miller told the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis, Md. “We could give up plenty of deployed delivery systems and not adversely affect our national security one bit, but New START prohibits such action - so we are...