Newsbytes August 14, 2026
In this issue:
Trump Orders Navy Shipbuilding Overhaul
IG Flags Decay at Japan Bases
Star Act Stalls Over Funding Fight
George Washington to Relieve Lincoln
VA Secures Record Drug Price Reductions
VA Adoption Reimbursement for Infertility
Trump Orders Navy Shipbuilding Overhaul
President Donald J. Trump signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum titled "Rebuilding the United States Navy and America's Shipbuilding Industrial Base" on August 13. The memorandum targets cost growth, schedule delays, and cancellations that the administration attributes to overly complex designs and iterative design changes, and to a lack of capacity and competition that has produced order backlogs across six major Navy shipbuilding programs.
The directive works through a series of planning requirements rather than immediate execution. Within 60 days, the Secretary of War must deliver a plan to replace the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and the Advanced Weapons Elevators with steam and hydraulic systems on CVN 81, the future USS Doris Miller. Within 120 days, the Department of War (DoW) must submit a plan to raise submarine and carrier readiness that includes standing up a fifth public Navy Yard, with drydock capacity sized to the projected fast attack submarine fleet and locations considered near the Pacific Fleet, including the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and the territories. A separate 90-day requirement covers a Component Repair Center holding at least one ship set of spare equipment for the Los Angeles, Virginia, Seawolf, Ohio, and Columbia classes. The memorandum also directs a review of Naval Sea Systems Command aimed at results-based accountability for leadership measured by speed of delivery. Finally, it authorizes a "Finland Model" for up to three ship classes, modeled on the October 2025 icebreaker construction agreement that supports the Coast Guard, under which a foreign shipbuilder may build the first two ships in its parent yard only if it simultaneously builds or buys a United States yard, hires and trains an American workforce, licenses its techniques to the American yard, and sources an American supply chain.
The FRA supports rebuilding sea service fleet capacity and expanding naval shipyard infrastructure, and the Association will judge this memorandum by what actually reaches the waterfront. For years FRA has told Congress that maintenance backlogs and strained shipyard capacity fall hardest on Sailors, who absorb the cost in extended deployments, deferred maintenance, and time away from families. A fifth public shipyard and a dedicated component repair pipeline would directly relieve that pressure, but the memorandum requires only plans, and plans require appropriations. FRA notes as well that the Finland Model traces to a Coast Guard icebreaker program, and the Association will press to ensure Coast Guard shipbuilding and depot needs are treated as a full part of this effort rather than a proof of concept for the Navy. The Association will engage HASC, SASC, and the appropriations committees as the 60, 90, and 120 day reports come due.
IG Flags Decay at Japan Bases
A Department of War Office of Inspector General management advisory dated August 6 warns of widespread structural decay at United States installations in the Pacific, with the publicly released findings concentrated on Marine Corps and Air Force facilities in Japan. The advisory grew out of an audit of Pacific Command infrastructure during which investigators visited 11 installations in May 2025. At Marine Corps Base Camp Courtney on Okinawa and at Kadena and Yokota Air Bases, inspectors documented visible corrosion, mold, fire damage, cracks in building exteriors and interiors, concrete spalling with exposed rebar, water intrusion, lead-based paint, asbestos-containing material, and inoperable communication connections.
At Camp Courtney, the report includes photographs of Tengan Pier, a roughly 50-year-old logistics and recreation facility the IG describes as having reached the end of its service life, showing corroded steel fenders, damaged concrete, and damaged beam support columns. Housing findings were severe. At Stearley Heights, 139 homes were affected by ceiling collapse and 22 units were vacated. Concrete damage affected 544 homes at Kinser Tower, and Sebille Manor drew 100 mold reports, with dozens of residents forced to move. Water infrastructure failures included a 12-foot crack in a 50-year-old Kadena line that lost roughly 400 million gallons, and broken pipes at Kadena and Yokota that caused flooding and collapsed sidewalks. Officials told investigators that aging infrastructure, construction choices, and environmental conditions including typhoons, earthquakes, and tsunamis drove the accelerated degradation. The IG is carrying the findings as unresolved until DoW, Pacific Command, and United States Forces Japan document root causes and identify the funding to fix them.
The FRA is alarmed by these findings and considers them a readiness problem, not a facilities problem. Marines and Sailors in Okinawa and mainland Japan are the forward edge of the Indo-Pacific posture, and asking them to work from a pier at the end of its service life and to raise families in housing with collapsing ceilings and documented mold degrades both safety and operational capability. The Association urges Congress to treat the IG's unresolved status as an action-forcing deadline, to direct DoW to produce the root cause and funding documentation the IG has demanded, and to fund sustainment, restoration, and modernization for forward-deployed sea service installations in the FY2027 military construction accounts rather than deferring it another cycle.
Star Act Stalls Over Funding Fight
The Major Richard Star Act carries 315 House cosponsors on H.R. 2102 and 77 Senate cosponsors on S. 1032, and it still has not reached the President's desk. The bill would end the dollar-for-dollar offset that reduces military retired pay for Chapter 61 medical retirees who also receive VA disability compensation. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that for the nearly 59,000 medically retired veterans receiving Combat-Related Special Compensation, the change would raise total compensation by an average of roughly $1,450 per month.
The obstacle is the pay-for. CBO scores the Star Act at approximately $78 billion in direct spending over the 2026 through 2036 period, and congressional PAYGO rules require that cost to be offset. The vehicle chosen for it, the Take Care of America's Veterans Act (H.R. 9237 and S. 4744), bundles more than 60 veterans bills and funds the Star Act in part by revising the VA rating schedule: tinnitus would lose its standalone compensable rating except when tied to otherwise noncompensable hearing loss, and obstructive sleep apnea controlled by treatment would drop to a 0 to 10 percent rating. VA projects those changes would reduce disability compensation by up to $57 billion over ten years and affect as many as 1.5 million veterans. Current ratings would not be reduced; the changes apply to new claims and future reassessments. On July 16 the House rejected a motion to recommit that would have swapped the rating offsets for unobligated Department of War funds, failing 210 to 211 with three Republicans joining every voting Democrat, and leadership then pulled the bill before final passage. The Senate companion remains in committee, and repeated unanimous consent requests to discharge S. 1032 have been blocked.
The FRA supports the Major Richard Star Act and opposes paying for it by reducing the earned compensation of other disabled veterans. Forcing combat-injured retirees to forfeit retired pay they earned through service is an injustice that has gone unaddressed for nine years, and FRA has never wavered on fixing it. But tinnitus and obstructive sleep apnea are among the most common conditions our Shipmates carry out of shipboard and flight line service and out of blast exposure, and trading one group of disabled veterans against another violates the Sacred Trust this nation owes all who served. FRA's position is threefold: pass the Star Act, strike the rating schedule offsets, and identify an equitable funding mechanism that does not draw from the disability compensation account. The Association will continue pressing House and Senate leadership toward a clean path, whether as standalone legislation or in the FY2027 NDAA.
George Washington to Relieve Lincoln
The forward-deployed aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73) has transited the Strait of Malacca into the Indian Ocean en route to the Middle East, where it will relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72). The Lincoln departed San Diego on November 21, 2025, was redirected to the Middle East in January, and has now been deployed 265 days with more than 240 consecutive days at sea and no standard port call. Officials have indicated the rotation was planned before recent reporting on shipboard conditions emerged. Carrier turnovers typically take several weeks, and the Lincoln faces at least a two-week transit home after the handoff.
Congressional attention has followed. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Ranking Member of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, has written to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao seeking written answers by August 27 on reported shortages of basic supplies, water quality and plumbing problems, mental health concerns, deck safety, and mail disruptions that left care packages in transit for months. Rep. Marlin Stutzman has separately said he will seek a Pentagon accounting of conditions aboard the ship and the plan to address them. Navy officials have disputed the most severe characterizations and point to religious, medical, and mental health services available to the crew. Families raised concerns directly with Acting Secretary Cao at a town hall at Naval Air Station North Island earlier this month. The George Washington's departure from the Western Pacific also leaves the region without a forward-deployed American carrier for a period the Navy has not specified.
The FRA holds that operational tempo of this length is a quality-of-service issue that Congress must examine, not merely a matter of crew endurance. Sailors and Marines will meet the mission asked of them, and the crews of both strike groups have done exactly that. The question FRA puts to the defense committees is whether a carrier force of the current size can sustain twice-extended deployments without eroding retention, mental health, and family stability across the fleet. The Association supports the pending oversight requests, urges the Navy to answer them fully and on time, and will press HASC and SASC to pair any force posture demands with the shipbuilding, maintenance, and manning to meet them. Predictable rotation schedules, reliable mail and supply, and transparent communication with families are not amenities; they are conditions of a sustainable force.
VA Secures Record Drug Price Reductions
The Department of Veterans Affairs announced on August 13 that it has secured a record $10.44 billion in pharmaceutical price reductions so far in Fiscal Year 2026. The figure compares with $5.23 billion in FY2024 and $7.99 billion in FY2025, and reflects negotiated pricing on drugs purchased for the Veterans Health Administration rather than a discretionary savings account.
VA Secretary Doug Collins framed the reductions as a return for veterans and taxpayers from tougher negotiations with drug manufacturers, and said the department will continue using the approach to deliver more care. VA also reported enrolling more than 215,000 new veterans in VA health care during 2026 and opening 40 new health care facilities. Department officials have said lower baseline costs on high-volume prescriptions give VA budgetary room to fund complex medical programs, including specialized cancer treatments and mental health therapies.
The FRA supports efforts that lower pharmaceutical costs without narrowing the formulary or restricting access. Hundreds of thousands of sea service veterans fill prescriptions through VHA pharmacies, and price reductions of this scale are meaningful only if they translate into shorter waits and fuller shelves at the point of care. The Association urges VA to direct the resulting budgetary flexibility toward front-line clinical staffing and pharmacy operations, and cautions Congress against treating negotiated price reductions as a justification for reducing VA medical care appropriations. FRA will monitor whether formulary breadth and prescription fill times hold steady as these agreements take effect.
VA Adoption Reimbursement for Infertility
The Department of Veterans Affairs continues to offer reimbursement for qualifying adoption expenses to veterans whose service-connected conditions cause infertility. The benefit is tied to eligibility for VA assisted reproductive technology services, and it covers the adoption of a child under 18 years of age arranged through a qualified adoption agency as defined in Department of War Instruction 1341.9, for adoptions finalized after September 29, 2016.
Reimbursement is capped at $2,000 per adoption, with a maximum of $5,000 in any calendar year for veterans adopting more than one child. Where both spouses are covered veterans, only one may claim reimbursement for a given adoption. Qualifying expenses include public and private agency fees, placement fees, foreign adoption fees, legal and court costs, and medical expenses for the biological mother and the child, including temporary foster care before placement. Veterans apply using VA Form 10-10152, Reimbursement Request for Qualifying Adoption Expenses, and must submit supporting documentation within two years of the adoption becoming final, or within two years of the issuance of a certificate of United States citizenship in the case of a foreign adoption.
The FRA supports VA programs that ease the financial burden on service-disabled families and encourages eligible Shipmates to use this benefit before the filing window closes. For sea service members whose service-connected injuries have foreclosed the possibility of biological children, adoption is a path the nation should help make possible rather than one it leaves to individual cost. The Association notes that a $2,000 cap has not been adjusted in the years since the program took effect and now covers a small fraction of typical adoption costs, and FRA will raise indexing this benefit with HVAC and SVAC staff as the committees consider veterans health legislation this fall.