This archive covers progress in military affairs: veterans’ care, conflict prevention, peacekeeping efforts, and reforms that reduce harm and improve accountability. Stories here look at what’s working — from policy changes to community support — for service members, families, and societies navigating the realities of defense and security.
The U.S. Navy celebrated a historic moment this week as it announced Lt. j.g. Madeline Swegle was set to become its first Black female tactical fighter pilot. Swegle has earned her wings as a U.S. Navy fighter pilot and will receive her “Wings of Gold” in late July.
The judgment, seen as a landmark decision for the Indian military, means that all women will now be eligible for the same promotions, ranks, benefits and pensions as their male counterparts, irrespective of their years of service or whether they had retired.
The German government has announced plans to convert 62 disused military bases just west of the Iron Curtain into nature reserves for eagles, woodpeckers, bats, and beetles.
Research from Johns Hopkins University finds that MDMA seems to re-open a window of opportunity for social bonding and rewiring trauma-related faulty connections in the brain.
The leaders of North and South Korea have committed themselves to the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and pledged to bring a formal end to the Korean War, 65 years after hostilities ceased.
On January 7, 1979, Vietnamese forces rolled into Phnom Penh and ended the Khmer Rouge regime, closing nearly four years of rule that had killed an estimated 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians — roughly a quarter of the population. The road to justice was long, but the day itself broke the nightmare.
The 1864 Geneva Convention was the world’s first codified international treaty that covered the sick and wounded soldiers on the battlefield.
The Tamoyo Confederation took shape along Brazil’s coast in 1554, when Tupinambá chieftains who had long been rivals chose unity over isolation in the face of Portuguese colonization. Chief Cunhambebe was elected to lead alongside a council of four others, coordinating resistance across hundreds of miles of coastline until the alliance ended in 1567.
Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans on Christmas Day, 800 C.E., when Pope Leo III placed a crown on the Frankish king inside St. Peter’s Basilica. It was the first such coronation in the West since Rome’s fall more than three centuries earlier, and it set the template for the Holy Roman Empire that endured until 1806.
Hadrian’s Wall began rising across northern Britain in 122 C.E., when the Roman emperor arrived determined to mark where his empire ended. Three legions spent at least six years building the 73-mile barrier of stone and turf, punctuated by guarded gates every Roman mile. It stood as Rome’s northwestern frontier for nearly three centuries.
