Gary Kurtz, “Star Wars” producer and Vietnam-era veteran, died Sunday in North London, England, after battling cancer.

A new tropical uniform, which has been described as “like pajamas,” is being field tested. It's based on the same design as the current Marine Corps combat utilities, but made of a lighter material designed to dry faster and keep Marines cooler.

Nearly 17 years after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, the international coalition in Kabul is putting down new roots with hardened permanent structures to replace temporary ones at its headquarters in the increasingly violent capital.

When James Riney’s mother took him shopping for new bedding to outfit his room in their new house, the 4-year-old considered a few options: first sharks, then dinosaurs, then comic book superheroes. He passed on all three.

Syrian Democratic Forces launched the third phase of ground operations to clear Islamic State fighters from northeastern Syria on Monday, following cross-border air and artillery strikes from the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.

Army Staff Sgt. Bryan McQueen has a minor brain injury following an attack in Afghanistan, but he will head home to his high school sweetheart wife and newborn son in a few days — a fate his mother said is an answer to her prayers.

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In anticipation of the long-awaited rollout of the Meal, Ready to Eat pepperoni pizza, Stars and Stripes flew several of the military ration’s main pizza entrees into Afghanistan for taste tests with the troops. Here's what they had to say.

The Pentagon has identified the soldier who died Tuesday from a noncombat injury at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, as Staff Sgt. Diobanjo S. Sanagustin, 32, from National City, Calif.

Command Sgt. Maj. Timothy A. Bolyard died of wounds sustained in the attack at at Camp Maiwand in Logar province.

One week after the Marine Corps celebrated a century of women in its ranks, some of its newest female recruits will be issued blues dress coats designed to look more like those of their male counterparts.

The top leaders of the U.S. security services firm that former Navy SEAL Erik Prince founded as Blackwater in 1997 have resigned, and a new chief executive has been named, the company announced.

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Taylor J. Galvin died in Baghdad from injuries sustained when the helicopter in which he was traveling crashed early Monday in Sinjar in Iraq’s Nineveh province.

An American servicemember was killed and several other troops were injured late Sunday in Iraq when their helicopter crashed after participating in a raid against an Islamic State target, military officials said Monday.

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Many of Afghanistan's remaining Soviet-made T-55s and T-62s are gradually succumbing to the ravages of time. Maintainers can barely keep the beasts running, and those they can’t are being cannibalized for parts or sold off as scrap.

The U.S. military has made its mark on the fashion world many times — consider the leather bomber jacket, khaki pants or the wool peacoat — but few soldiers likely would have pegged the infamous “glow” belt to crossover into world of civilian style.

A U.S. soldier assigned to a special operations unit in Europe was convicted of attempted rape in Denmark last week, officials said.

The Army has formally terminated its effort to develop a 25 mm airburst weapon, the largest of nearly three dozen ways a Pentagon watchdog has said the military could save $2.3 billion in defense spending.

In the newly released 1.5-minute Air Force video, Tech Sgt. John Chapman can be seen charging up a steep slope toward enemy positions to recover a fellow servicemember who had fallen from the back after the team came under heavy enemy fire from al-Qaida.

“We continue to work by, with and through our partners to achieve the lasting defeat of ISIS in designated parts of Iraq and Syria,” Operation Inherent Resolve officials said in a statement.

Troops tired of Anthony’s pizza, Charleys' subs and Auntie Anne’s pretzels will have a new food option named after someone they may actually recognize when Wahlburgers opens on a Washington base.

Lance Cpl. Dillon Bennett suffered a traumatic brain injury, shrapnel to his knee and other cuts and bruises as a result of a mortar round explosion last month. He was awarded a Purple Heart during a ceremony at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif.

The Army’s Special Operations Command is cooperating with Washington state investigators after police say a Ranger brutally killed a woman in her hotel room, then opened fire at two occupied cars before fatally shooting himself late last month.

Awarded to AC First LLC in August 2016 and valued at $429 million, the cost-plus-fixed-fee contract was intended to provide maintenance services on armored vehicles and weapons throughout Afghanistan, including on Bagram and Kandahar air fields. As of May, the Army had paid out close to $78 million on the contract.

A Green Beret who fired on a civilian truck in Afghanistan showed “horribly poor judgment” during a deployment in which officers let soldiers drink alcohol and have sex in violation of military rules, the team’s enlisted leader stated in an Army investigation report.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Csaid in a statement he was “appalled and disgusted” by the vandalism, promising the state would fully fund the replacement. The new stone is expected to be nearly impossible to shatter.

More than 40 U.S. Marines sent to southeastern Ukraine to train with the local marines as part of the 19-country Sea Breeze exercise, which U.S. officials hope will encourage the country’s military to emulate western armed forces to meet NATO standards.

Under normal Marine field conditions, scarcity might make Skittles or jalapeno cheese spread from a Meals, Ready to Eat pouch worth trading. But on a base outside Mykolaiv, where Marines trained with their Ukrainian marine counterparts as part of the 19-nation Sea Breeze naval exercise this month, the American staples can net more unusual goods.

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Exercise Sea Breeze is a lot like many other annual drills at the operational level. But in this case, Ukrainians are going to use what they learn to fight separatists backed by Russia.

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The purpose of Thursday’s exercise was to increase combat effectiveness and demonstrate resolve among the 17 allied and partner nations participating in the training known as Exercise Sea Breeze, now in its 18th iteration.

One U.S. servicemember was killed and two others were wounded in an apparent insider attack in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, according to a news release from Resolute Support.

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Armed guards stood watch outside a tent at Bagram Air Field on Friday as a group of soldiers danced the Electric Slide in an atmosphere something like a summer block party.

A Marine general violated ethics rules on a recent deployment to Iraq when he asked or allowed his aide to loan him money and run his personal errands, the Pentagon’s inspector general said Thursday.

Fleet Marines are set to get a more reliable, faster and better protected amphibious fighting vehicle starting in late 2020 as the Corps begins replacing its decades-old amphibious assault vehicle.

Nearly three dozen troops have been trained on a new weapon that looks and feels like a standard-issue carbine but fires nonlethal rounds that explode on impact and release a cloud of irritating pepper powder, military officials said Tuesday.

Dozens of men who marched hundreds of miles across Afghanistan arrived in Kabul with demands for an end to decades of conflict on Monday, shortly after the Taliban ended its brief cease-fire.

The Taliban ordered their fighters back to the trenches Sunday hours after a suicide car bombing spoiled a holiday cease-fire.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered an indefinite extension to a government cease-fire with the Taliban late Saturday, even as a blast in eastern Afghanistan cast a pall over a countrywide celebration of the Eid al-Fitr holiday and historic dual cease-fires.

The first day of the Eid holiday in eastern Afghanistan brought a strange sight — presumed Taliban fighters walking up to Afghan soldiers at checkpoints and taking selfies with them.

The dining facility at NATO’s Resolute Support helped celebrate the Army’s 243rd birthday Thursday by dishing up an “all-American lunch” of prime rib, crab legs, baked potatoes, shrimp scampi and a massive sheet cake.

Despite the eight-day truce announced by the Afghan government, the Taliban has remained on the offensive, mounting attacks in northern Afghanistan a day after the Kabul government’s pause in combat operations against the group began.

A suicide bomber on foot detonated his explosives near a van full of government employees on Monday, killing at least 12 people ahead of an anticipated Taliban cease-fire.

The splinter group, led by Mullah Mohammad Rasul, said late Saturday its stand-down would begin immediately and last until an unspecified future date.

Elite Australian troops committed “unsanctioned and illegal” violence in Afghanistan with a “disregard for human life,” special operations soldiers told a secret military inquiry, an Australian newspaper reported Friday.

A group of Oregon National Guard soldiers transformed a second-hand espresso machine at Iraq’s Camp Taji Military Complex into their own coffee shop. Funds collected in a donation jar are used for projects to boost morale and promote unit cohesion.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Thursday announced a weeklong cease-fire with the Taliban beginning next week, lasting through the end of Ramadan and into one of the holiest periods of the year for Muslims.

Afghan officials have approved the United Arab Emirates’ offer to contribute troops to NATO’s Resolute Support mission to advise and train Afghanistan’s security forces, a move that could bring an Islamic ally into the fight against extremism.

The Emergency Surgical Center for War Victims, or Emergency Center, in Kabul reported 421 admissions in May, compared with 384 in the same month last year, when a massive truck bomb went off a few blocks from the medical facility on the last day of the month.

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At the Kabul market known as “Bush Bazaar,” shops sell military goods of suspect origins — everything from what U.S. troops wear on their backs to what they put in their bellies, and more. Many of the goods may have been pilfered from military supply shipments.

The bomber detonated his explosives at about 11:20 a.m., at the entrance of a large hall where a religious body known as the Afghan Ulema Council was meeting.

Tempted by online reviews promising “the best ribs in Germany,” two Stars and Stripes reporters recently trekked to Heidelberg to visit Hakim’s Imbiss and Steak House.

It’s not clear who carried out the attack — one of at least three that occurred in Afghanistan on Wednesday — that targeted the Interior Ministry’s compound a few hundred yards from Kabul’s airport and a coalition air base where Americans and their allies train Afghan forces.

A field of lights and a display of names and photos projected on a blast wall here Monday night paid tribute to the more than 2,400 Americans who’ve died as part of the United States’ nearly 17-year war in Afghanistan.

The staff sergeant died Thursday from a noncombat-related incident at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo, the Pentagon said Friday.

An American servicemember seen in an online video shooting into a moving truck in Afghanistan acted in accordance with military rules, an investigation has found.

Sgt. Steven Garcia, who is stationed in South Korea, was told that his wife, Marina Garcia, had given birth to a daughter in Arizona who died during childbirth. But police say she tried to give the newborn away. Though he’s not the baby’s biological father, he plans to fight for custody.

The Taliban retreated from the capital of western Farah province Tuesday after launching a pre-dawn assault on the city that killed and wounded several Afghan troops, with U.S. airpower supporting government forces.

Taliban claims to have downed Afghan military helicopter in other incident, but government says its forces destroyed it after mechanical failure.

At least two police officers were killed and more than six people were wounded in a series of blasts that rocked the capital Wednesday afternoon, including multiple bombings in a neighborhood near the international zone where the U.S. Embassy and NATO mission are located.

The Air Force is eliminating mandatory computer-based training on all but three courses and giving commanders wide discretion in how they conduct most ancillary training, the service’s top leaders said in a new memo.

Afghan defense officials initially said the attack targeted about 30 Taliban leaders who were taking part in a military parade. They said the strike was on a Taliban training camp, with foreign fighters from across the border in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan among the dead.

Kabul police foiled an attempted attack on civilians gathered for a blood collection drive in a park about a mile from the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters, officials said Monday.

“We talk about our deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, but never in a million years would you ever expect to be called upon to do something in Los Angeles,” said Lt. Col. Shannon Stambersky, the head of UCLA’s Army ROTC program.

An Office of Special Investigations rookie on Reddit noticed a subtle cry for help among Reddit posts. Then he and another airman made 25 calls to get in touch with the supervisor of the airman who made the posting.

The combined joint forces command responsible for land operations in Iraq deactivated Monday in Baghdad, signaling the end of major combat operations against the Islamic State in that country.

Every dog will have its day, and Friday belongs to the Devil Dog.

As embassies became more fortress-like, the Seabees’ focus expanded from interior walls out to compound perimeters, and from watching construction projects for bug-planting to maintaining systems that monitor for signs of potential violence.

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Islamic State propaganda videos seized by the U.S. appear to show masked militants training inside a mosque in northwestern Afghanistan, doing pushups, playing leapfrog and bunny hopping.

The changes were greeted cautiously by soldiers and veterans on the online forum Reddit, where some users identifying themselves as soldiers mentioned forging training certificates in the past.

The Army has warned recruiters about using texts or social media to contact potential recruits after a mass text sent to high school parents near Indianapolis disclosed hundreds of personal cell phone numbers.

Development costs for the Amphibious Combat Vehicle are now an estimated $60 million below original projections of $810.5 million, a Government Accountability Office report found, though it warned of continued potential for cost overruns or delays.

U.S. officials said the eighth annual iteration of the exercise is not directly related to U.S., British and French missile strikes, which targeted Syria in response to a suspected chemical attack on the Syrian city of Douma that killed dozens on April 7.

A $60 million power project overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Afghanistan couldn’t be powered up for fear it would put Afghan lives at risk, and shoddy work could leave the system structurally unstable, a government watchdog found.

U.S. Army Master Sgt. Jonathan J. Dunbar of Austin, Texas and U.K. Sgt. Matt Tonroe died Friday after an improvised explosive device detonated near a patrol in Manbij, Syria.

Military leaders have said they’re overwhelmed by unnecessary training requirements, but seasoned officers in Afghanistan said they see signs of a turnaround as the Pentagon looks to streamline military policies.

About one in 10 Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan are foreign fighters, the top U.S. general in the country said Thursday, in a statement touting recent U.S. and Afghan operations targeting the group.

A U.S.-led medical task force in Iraq has treated hundreds of patients over the past five months, including about 300 wounded Iraqi security personnel, as coalition forces have shifted from offensive operations to holding ground retaken from the Islamic State.