With the affirmative cost recovery (ACR) program, the Environmental Law Division can assist installations in recovering funds spent on environmental cleanup. The Army is involved in the cleanup of numerous past or presently-owned military facilities, representing billions of dollars in expended and projected cleanup costs. The mission of the ACR program is to recover cleanup costs from contractors or other responsible entities for contamination on Army property, and to avoid expending funds to cleanup contamination caused by a third-party.

The Department of Defense (DoD) Consolidated Adjudication Facility (CAF) is an enigma for many DoD personnel holding top secret security clearances. For example, the accused in a joint military commission faced the prospect of losing their defense counsel over security clearance issues.1 Specifically, a security officer believed each of the accused’s defense attorneys willfully disseminated classified information over an un classified network. The security manager subsequently “referred” the matter to the DoD CAF for adjudication. The military judge—already frustrated at the perceived slow pace of security clearance adjudications for new personnel—soon became focused on a litany of DoD CAF-related questions, including what exactly the DoD CAF’s role was in the process, whether a referral created a conflict of interest for defense counsel, how best to speed things up to resolve the matter and avoid delay, and what a “referral” ac ...

Recognizing the importance of interoperability with our allies, the U.S. Army has fully embraced the Military Personnel Exchange Program (MPEP). The Army currently has 156 total exchanges with fifteen countries. The foreign personnel serving in U.S. Army positions includes nine foreign general officers serving as deputy commanding general or chief of staff at the division, corps, and Army Service Component Command levels.

Shortly before reporting to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) as the only active duty military attorney assigned to the Office of Counsel, I sat down with the incumbent for some left-seat/right-seat. Those two days felt akin to drinking from a classified firehose. While each new assignment poses challenges, by the time a judge advocate hits the field grade ranks, they have at least seen or heard about most issues, even if from a distance. Not here. Despite having nearly two decades of judge advocate work behind me, I found myself in a position requiring virtually a different language. “I haven’t practiced this type of law before,” I found myself preemptively apologizing. “Don’t worry,” I was told, “No one has—not until they get here.”

In amplifying TJAG’s mantra to “Be Ready” we must understand our multi-national partners. If you are to assume anything in a multi-national military operation, assume your multi-national partners view the world, and, relevant to this article, the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC), differently than you. The consequences of an opposite assumption could have significant legal and, more importantly, operational impacts. Compounding the challenges when working with a multi-national partner whose experience may vary from zero understanding of LOAC to incredibly sophisticated insight—the partner nation will almost certainly have different permissions and authorities enabling more or less operational flexibility.

I believe that the troops who were sadly killed in Niger in October of 2017 were engaged in a mission that they were not authorized by law to participate in . . . and that is a significant reason that they tragically lost their lives.1–Senator Tim Kaine

Information is altering the character of international conflict in an era of strategic competition, and the U.S. military will not successfully grapple with this changing landscape by happenstance. In the words of former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, the “advent of the internet, the expansion of information technology, the widespread availability of wireless communications, and the far-reaching impact of social media have dramatically impacted operations and changed the character of modern warfare.”1

. . . in pursuing a foreign policy based on American interests, we will embrace diplomacy. The world must know that we do not go abroad in search of enemies, that we are always happy when old enemies become friends, and when old friends become allies.1

I [expletive omitted] shot Bin Laden! Robert Allen Riggle Jr., 26 May 20111

The Foundation of Five concept was challenged recently in an opinion piece in The Army Lawyer (see Demolishing the Foundation of Five, Nov./Dec. 2018). What follows is a response to that piece: