Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's defense against a desertion charge will rely in part on his claim that he walked off his post in Afghanistan in an attempt to reach another U.S. base to report on wrongdoing in his unit.

The whistleblower argument has been put forward in a memo from Bergdahl's lawyer, military law specialist Eugene Fidell, and CNN reported Friday that senior Defense Department officials confirmed that Bergdahl's claim was included in an Army investigation of the case by Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl.

Dahl's report went to Gen. Mark Milley, head of the Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., , who earlier this week authorized charges of one count of desertion and one count of misbehavior before the enemy against Bergdahl.

The senior Defense officials cited by CNN said that Bergdahl claimed to be concerned about problems with "order and discipline" at Combat Outpost Mest-Lalak in Paktika province and also had concerns about "leadership issues at his base."

One of the Defense officials said "This was a kid who had leadership concerns on his mind. He wasn't fed up, he wasn't planning to desert," CNN reported.

Fidell's memo cited by Bloomberg News made a similar argument against the desertion charge in commenting on the report by Maj. Gen. Dahl, who interviewed Bergdahl extensively at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston last year.

"While hedging its bets, the (Dahl) report basically concludes that Sgt. Bergdahl did not intend to remain away from the Army permanently, as classic 'long' desertion requires," the Fidell memo said.

"It also concludes that his specific intent was to bring what he thought were disturbing circumstances to the attention of the nearest general officer," the memo said.

Dahl's report has not been released and Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, declined comment Friday on the Dahl report or Bergdahl's claims.

The 28-year-old Bergdahl went missing in June 2009 and was released last May 31 in a controversial prisoner exchange for five Taliban prisoners at the Guantanam Bay, Cuba, detention facility.

Members of Bergdahl's unit have charged that he was a discipline problem and a poor soldier who packed up his equipment and left it behind before going missing.

In 2012, Bergdahl's father, Bob Bergdahl, disclosed a series of emails from his son to Rolling Stone magazine.

Bowe Bergdahl wrote that three "good" sergeants in his unit had been forced to move to another company and that his battalion commander was a "conceited old fool."

Bergdahl said of the mission in Afghanistan that "I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting."

Fidell has said that an Article 32 hearing on whether there was sufficient evidence to proceed to court martial against Bergdahl was expected to begin April 22 at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston but the Pentagon on Friday said no firm date had been said. The maximum penalty on the count of misbehavior before the enemy was life imprisonment.

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ABINGTON, Pa. (AP) — Saying the military needs to do more to compete with corporate America for quality recruits, Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened the door Monday to relaxing some enlistment standards — particularly for high-tech or cybersecurity jobs.

Speaking to students at his former suburban Philadelphia high school, Carter said the military could ease age requirements and bring in older people who are mid-career, or provide student loan repayments to attract students who have finished college.

There are few details so far, but Carter said the military needs to be more flexible in order to recruit and retain quality people.

The idea, largely in line with the civilian approach to recruitment, upends the military's more rigid mindset, which puts a high value on certain standards. It reignites a persistent debate about how the services approve waivers for recruits who have committed lesser crimes, behaved badly, are older than current regulations allow or have other physical issues that prevent them from joining the military.

Carter sees recruitment and retention as major challenges to a military coming out of two wars and facing turmoil around the world.

At Fort Drum, New York, Carter told 10th Mountain Division soldiers that he knows they have many choices as they consider future jobs.

"Are we able to compete, are we able to keep up?" he asked the division soldiers, some of whom are preparing to deploy to southern Afghanistan. He also announced for the first time that some of division soldiers will deploy to Iraq later this summer. About 1,250 will go.

Carter added that the Defense Department needs to be innovative and "to think outside the five-sided box" of the Pentagon.

Specifically, he pointed to cyber jobs as an area where standards could be relaxed. Military leaders have long complained that it is difficult to attract and keep cyber professionals in the services because they can make far more money in private industry.

This is not the first time, however, that the services have looked to reduced restrictions as a way to entice more recruits.

During 2006-07, the military steadily increased the number of bad behavior waivers as the services — particularly the Army and Marine Corps — struggled to meet deployment demands in Iraq and Afghanistan. The services let in more recruits with criminal records, including some with felony convictions, in order to meet recruiting quotas.

And in some cases, the services relaxed age restrictions, allowing older people to enlist or rejoin the military.

But as the wars dragged on and suicides, sexual assaults and other bad behavior by service members spiked, military leaders began to question whether there was a link to the relaxed enlistment standards.

Carter also is considering other changes to help ensure the military attracts the best and brightest, including programs to pay off student debt, improvements to the retirement, promotion and evaluation systems and doing more to allow sabbaticals for service members.

There has been much discussion lately about allowing service members to participate in 401(k)-type programs, because as much as 80 percent of the people who enlist don't stay in service long enough to earn retirement benefits. Carter told the Fort Drum soldiers he is "looking very hard" at that type of program for those who leave before they hit the 20-year retirement mark.

In his speech to more than 1,000 students at Abington Senior High outside Philadelphia, Carter said the military has to work harder to compete with corporate America for highly skilled graduates.

"Because we too often talk about sacrifice alone, which is no small thing, we probably don't spend enough time highlighting the opportunities that exist and the fulfillment one has from achieving excellence and doing it in service to your country," said Carter, a member of Abington's class of 1972. "No one should gloss over the hardships or the dangers of military life, but I do want you to understand how fulfilling and rewarding military life can be also."

Carter also alluded to his lack of military service, telling students, "You don't have to join the military service to serve your country, I didn't."

But he said "the military, and public service as a whole is worthy of your respect, worthy of your support and worth of your consideration."

After visiting his former high school, Carter flew to Fort Drum.

Brigades from the 10th Mountain Division served as anchor units in eastern Afghanistan for much of the war, particularly during the early years when the U.S. had only a smaller force there. For many years they rotated with brigades from the 82nd Airborne Division.

On Tuesday, he will visit Syracuse University's Institute for Veterans and Military Families.

The Defense Department has launched a partnership with the institute and the Schultz Family Foundation for a program called Onward to Opportunity, which will provide industry-specific training and job placement assistance for service members and spouses as the troops leave the military.

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Sydney (AFP) - Prince Harry will begin a month-long attachment with the Australian Army on Monday, officials said, spending time on bush patrols, working with an indigenous regiment and possibly flying helicopters.

The 30-year-old, who will be nudged down to fifth in line to the throne by the birth of his brother Prince William's second child this month, has already announced he will leave the British military in June after his Australian swansong.

Upon arrival in Canberra, the royal will lay a wreath at the Australian War Memorial before reporting for duty to Australian Defence Force chief Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin.

Captain Wales, as he is known in the British Army, will be embedded with a number of Australian army units and regiments in Sydney, Darwin and Perth.

"He is expected to take part in a range of unit-based activities and training exercises," the Australian Defence Force said in a statement.

"These will include urban training exercises, regional bush patrols, flight simulation and aviation activities, joint fire exercises and indigenous engagement activities.

"Captain Wales will also take part in routine activities, such as physical training, first aid training and pack marches."

The prince, who has flown Apache helicopters for Britain, has reportedly asked to fly choppers in Australia, although a Defence Force spokesman said his credentials would need to be checked first.

Harry, who graduated from the elite Sandhurst military academy and served twice in Afghanistan, will also spend time with wounded and ill service personnel, whose rights he has long championed.

During the attachment, he will travel from Australia to Turkey to attend the Gallipoli centenary commemorations on April 24 and 25.

A captain commissioned in the Household Cavalry, Harry currently has a desk job organising commemorative army events in London.

"After a decade of service, moving on from the army has been a really tough decision," he said in announcing his departure last month.

"The experiences I have had over the last 10 years will stay with me for the rest of my life. For that I will always be hugely grateful."

Harry earned a reputation as a wild-child in his youth with party-going high jinks, but has since tried to carve out a more mature role for himself, with his devotion to military service playing a major part.

He came to Australia during his gap year in 2003, where he worked as a "jackaroo" on a cattle station.

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The U.S. Army has pledged to investigate recently resurfaced allegations that American soldiers and contractors sexually abused more than 50 Colombian minors in the mid-2000s, weeks after the accusations appeared in a report on the Colombian government’s battle against rebel militias.

Colombia’s Historical Commission on Conflict released a landmark 800-page report in February detailing the government’s fight against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a guerrilla group that engaged in a 50-year conflict with state forces. One section of the report focused on the U.S. military’s assistance to Colombia’s government in its efforts and noted harrowing accounts of rape and sexual abuse against underage Colombian girls.

“There is abundant information of sexual violence with total impunity, thanks to bilateral accords and diplomatic immunity to U.S. officials,” the report stated. In the towns of Melgar and Girardot, 70 miles from Bogotá, U.S. military workers allegedly abused 53 girls, recorded the acts and sold the footage as pornographic videos, the report said.

Although the report called it one of the most "notorious" cases of sexual violence of that time, Colombian media outlets began amplifying the allegations in the report in late March. On Friday the U.S. Army confirmed it would investigate the situation along with Colombian officials. “We take this issue very seriously and will aggressively pursue all credible allegations,” Chris Grey, a spokesman for the Army’s criminal investigation unit, told USA Today.

One case highlighted in the report, in which a U.S. military contractor and sergeant allegedly raped a 12-year-old Colombian girl in 2007, is well known in Colombia. Last month Colombian newspaper El Tiempo spoke with the girl’s mother, Olga Lucia Castillo, remarking that “half the country knows of her tragedy.”

Castillo told the newspaper her daughter was “never the same” after the incident. “When I was finally able to establish that the girl had been raped, we tried to find who was responsible and, despite the pain that overwhelmed us, I found them at the base and confronted them,” she said. “Their response was: ‘Your daughter is a little whore; nothing has happened here.’ ” Castillo said her daughter, now 20, has attempted suicide three times and rarely speaks or leaves the house.

Grey told USA Today that investigators tried to interview the girl as part of the investigation, but her attorneys refused. 

The report recommended that the U.S. government subject its citizens accused of committing crimes against Colombians during the conflict, including killings, forced disappearances and sexual abuse, to independent tribunals and "eliminate the privileges and protection that cover the military officials of the U.S. and the contractors in their service." 

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A 20-year-old US man was arrested in Kansas on Friday for allegedly plotting a suicide bombing at the US Army base Fort Riley, the Justice Department said.

John T. Booker, who goes by the name "Mohammed Abdullah Hassa," previously tried to join the US Army, but was denied entry because of internet posts about "jihad," the BBC reports.

Booker faces three federal charges that can bring up to life in prison for planning to detonate a car bomb in order to support the Islamic State militant group.

Here's the full report from the Department of Justice:

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I went to the West Point Military Academy out of high school, and after graduating in 2005, I became a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.

I spent six years in active duty, eventually becoming a captain and commander of a homeland defense site in Shariki, Japan.

I always loved the idea of serving, but I noticed that promotions occurred at generally the same rate.

I saw superstars promoted at the same time as peers who did the minimum to get by — which killed the motivation of the ambitious people.

While in the Army, I had started taking online MBA courses, and since I'd always had an entrepreneurial itch, I decided to leave in 2011 to start a real estate company.

It was a huge adjustment, and at times I doubted my decision to take this plunge. But because I had gone all in with both my time and money, there was no turning back — which, fortunately, forced me to stick it out.

With two partners I started a business, iCandyHomes, which buys distressed properties to rehab and sell. In three years, we've grown our team to 20 people and are rehabbing about 26 homes — but our goal is to grow the company much further.

RELATED: Story of a Self-Made Real Estate Mogul: 'I Quadrupled My Net Worth in Five Years'

When I got home from Japan, I hit the ground running — the day after I arrived, I already had appointments to see homes. I also went back to school full-time to finish my MBA.

But I had been naïve about what it would take to get the business going. I had underestimated the startup expenses, including home-office overhead and real-estate seminars that cost in the tens of thousands of dollars.

I also wasn't prepared for the timeline required to start making money — my first deal took nine months to complete.

This was a humbling period for me. Within months I'd gone from being an Army captain to living in my parents' basement, struggling to get my first few deals done. And while I'd always been a conservative spender, it was still hard to go from having a predictable military paycheck to having no income.

Every bit of money I'd saved, and any money I made on real estate deals just went back into more deals, so I never knew when — or if — I'd have income. I lived with my parents for over a year, and had to take out a small student loan in the second year of school to help cover costs.

But just a few years later, a lot has changed. My partners and I have grown our company enough that I can draw a pretty consistent personal income, although I keep it comparable to my Army captain's salary. I would rather reinvest the earnings back into the company to build its long-term future.

And here's one benefit to being a real estate investor: I live in one of our rehabbed properties — a big lifestyle upgrade from my parents' basement!

In this industry, you can go from feeling rich to broke in the same day. But I love the challenge of owning my own business.

Plus, I love knowing that our team is directly rewarded based on our results, rather than on an arbitrary evaluation process. We've come a long way, and this keeps everyone — myself included — motivated to keep going.

RELATED: How I Did It: I Left My Corporate Job to Work for Myself

This post was excerpted from "3 People, 3 Career 180s: 'How I Reinvented Myself After 30'," originally published on LearnVest.

SEE ALSO: How I spent only $14,000 taking $195,000 worth of trips around the world

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In a historic step, 16 female soldiers made it through their first day of US Army Ranger School, a punishing infantry course that was previously closed to women.

Nineteen women took part in the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade's first co-ed Ranger course Monday at Fort Benning, Ga. The female candidates joined 380 male soldiers to take on the Ranger Physical Fitness Assessment – a pass-fail event that prevents many from entering the course.

Students must perform 49 push-ups in two minutes, 59 sit-ups in two minutes and six chin-ups to a strict standard, Ranger officials maintain. They also must complete a five-mile run in 40 minutes.

At the end of the day, three females did not meet the standard to continue, a 16-percent failure rate. By contrast, 78 male candidates didn't meet the standard to continue, a 20-percent failure rate.

Candidates also had to complete the combat water survival assessment (CWSA).

The CWSA consists of a log walk and rope drop where candidates have to scale a ladder 30 feet above the pond, walk up and down a short set of stairs and crawl out onto a rope to a hanging Ranger Tab sign. They do one pull-up and ask permission to drop into the pond before falling into the pond and swimming to the side.

Then the swim-test portion requires them to go into the water, calmly take off their equipment and swim 15 meters without panic to demonstrate their ability to swim to safety should they get into a position where they are in over their head in the swamps of Florida, or anywhere else during training, Ranger officials said.

This was day one of the Ranger Assessment Phase, or Rap week.

The second morning begins with a 10-kilometer, land navigation course. Students have to find four out of five points in five hours – 2.5 hours in the dark and 2.5 hours during daylight.

Students who fail the course can retest on the following day.

Following the land-nav course, students spend the rest of the afternoon crawling through the mud and negotiating other challenges on the Malvesti obstacle course.

The last hurdle of RAP is a 12-mile road march students must complete in less than three hours, carrying a rifle, fighting load carrier vest and a rucksack weighing approximately 43 pounds.

"All students have to make it through phase one in order to advance in the course," said Gary Jones, a spokesman for Fort Benning. "If they don't make it all the way through to Thursday, which includes the 12-mile foot march, then they are out."

RAP week accounts for about 40 percent of the students who fail to make it through the course. Another 15 percent of students fail to complete the course because of injuries and poor performance.

Once students complete RAP, they have 57 days to complete to earn the coveted gold and black Ranger Tab.

Ranger School is a punishing ordeal designed to push combat leaders, both officers and sergeants, to their mental and physical limits. About half of all candidates fail to meet the standard.

Senior Army leaders recently decided to allow females to attend the historically male-only, infantry course. The effort is a result of former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's January 2013 directive that all services open combat-arms roles to women that so far have been reserved for men. The services have until 2016 to make this happen.

Like male candidates, female Ranger School students will have to spend long hours weighted down with infantry weapons and equipment on patrols through the thick forests of Fort Benning, and the dense swamps of Camp Rudder, Florida.

They'll also be expected to climb and rappel in the steep mountain terrain of Camp Merrill near Dahlonega, Georgia.

Ranger School candidates have to endure these challenges on two meals a day while getting three to four hours of sleep a night for eight weeks.

SEE ALSO: Welcome to Ranger school, where the Army's toughest soldiers are made

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Army and Marine first sergeants have to talk a lot, considering their duties as company-level senior enlisted leaders. While they primarily act as advisors to company commanders and deal with administrative issues, they sometimes say things that drive troops crazy.

1. “It would behoove you … “

Often used by first sergeants to tell troops that it would be a good idea to do something — “it would behoove you to wear your eye-pro on the range” — it’s often overused and mispronounced as “bee-who-of-you.”

2. “Hey there, gents”

First sergeants sometimes refer to their troops as gents, which is short for gentlemen. Of course, this is totally fine and not a big deal, except when you are called a gent all of the time.

3. “Utilize”

According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, “utilize” means to use. So stop making a word choice so complicated and just freaking say use.

4. “All this and a paycheck too!”

In the Army and Marine Corps, you get to work out, shoot stuff, and blow things up, and you get paid for it. It’s often pretty fun — who doesn’t love explosives?! — but the “all this and a paycheck too!” comment from the first sergeant doesn’t usually come at these moments. It comes at the halfway point of a 20-mile hike when you are sucking wind and hoping for death.

Also, you make way more than everyone else here. And is that a pillow in your rucksack?

5. “If you’re gonna drive, don’t drink. If you’re gonna drink, don’t drive.”

Just one of the many things first sergeant mentions in his lengthy talk before allowing the company to leave for the weekend; “if you’re gonna drive, don’t drink” is solid advice that should be followed. But it’s also part of a boring brief that he repeats word-for-word EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK.

Other phrases troops may hear during the liberty brief include, “If you’re gonna tap it, wrap it,” and “take care of each other out there.” In first sergeant’s defense, he’s required to give this brief to cover his own butt, in addition to it being a hopeless attempt at avoiding the inevitable 3 a.m. phone call to come on Saturday.

6. “The first sergeant”

When you pick up staff noncommissioned officer in the Army or Marine Corps, they must take you in a room and tell you that you can start talking in the third person, because it happens a lot. Hearing about what “the first sergeant” would do, as opposed to what “I” would do is eye-roll worthy.

“The first sergeant would make sure to let his battle buddy know.”

7. “Good to go? / Hooah?”

First sergeants like to use common catchphrases to make sure their troops understand. While a “good to go?” makes sense to gauge whether troops are listening, when it comes after every sentence in the liberty brief, it can get old very quick. For Army first sergeants and others, it’s pretty common to use the motivational “hooah” in a questioning manner. Hooah?

8. “We got a lot of moving parts here.”

Let’s not get wrapped around the axle here, gents. We’ve got battalion formation in the A.M., the general is coming in, so we need to be there at 0400, good to go? We got a lot of moving parts here, so let’s try to all stay on the same page, good to go?

9. “Give me three bodies!”

If you ever need a great example of language that makes you feel like you are just a number in the military, look no further than someone asking “for bodies.” What first sergeant means here is that he needs three motivated US Marines to carry out a working party.

“Just get my goddamn bodies, turd.”

“Roger, first sergeant.”

10. “You trackin’?”

Often used just like “good to go?” or “Hooah?” the phrase “you trackin’?” is first sergeant’s other way of making sure we all understand. We’re all looking in your direction, listening to the words you are saying, tracking along just fine.

11. “Got any saved rounds?”

Last but certainly not least is the phrase “got any saved rounds?” which is a way of asking if anyone has anything to add. This one usually comes at the end of long meetings and should be followed by complete silence, so we can get out of this godforsaken room.

Inevitably, Carl over there is going to say something.

So, got any saved rounds? Any phrases we missed? Let us know in the comments.

SEE ALSO: 41 phrases only people in the military will understand

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Russia is building a supertank — if it can afford it.

The new T-14 Armata ("Армата") main battle tank is a massive 55-ton beast of a weapon boasting multilayered armor and an independent crew capsule, and topped with a fully automated 125 mm main gun firing both cannon rounds and laser-guided missiles.

The T-14 Armata isn't expected to be revealed to the public until Moscow's Victory Day parade next month. Then, alongside the latest and greatest toys in President Putin's collection, it will trundle across Red Square in a parade of post-Soviet military might.

But already today, we have a good idea of what it will look like.

Conception meets reality

Last week, a new video surfaced on YouTube purporting to show a dress rehearsal for the upcoming May 9 Victory Day parade, which will celebrate the 70th anniversary of Russia's prevailing over Nazi Germany in World War II. There, alongside columns of current-generation tanks, mechanized bridge-layers, BTRs, and missile launchers, multiple versions of a new weapons systems ran back and forth across the Alabino training grounds southwest of Moscow, as a voice in the background sonorously extolled each weapon by name and function.

Among the military hardware on display, we saw Koalitsiya self-propelled howitzers...

...a new form of wheeled armored car, almost entirely shrouded in tarp, but vaguely resembling a BTR in form...

...and an entire phalanx of new Kurganets infantry fighting vehicles:

Finally, outside the grounds and apparently not part of the parade rehearsal proper, a single, solitary shrouded tank rolled by -- apparently the elusive T-14 Armata:

What it means to investors 

So... impressive stuff. But here at The Motley Fool, as much as we love Kremlin-watching and Cold War-punditing, what we're really interested in is finding out whether all of this fancy new Russian hardware means anything to our portfolios.

It does.

On one hand, Russia's new investment in modernized military weapons could well inspire the Pentagon to accelerate development of its new M1A3 variant Abrams main battle tank, currently expected to be operational by 2019. Budgets permitting, the Pentagon might even try to revive parts of its Future Combat Systems concept, a $160 billion project to develop a whole new family of armored vehicles for the 21st-century Army.

After all, Russia is spending an estimated $9.2 billion to build its 2,300 T-14 Armata tanks. From what we see in the video, Russia's also developing other armored vehicles derived from the Armata, and additional weapons (Koalitsiya, and that wheeled armored car) as well -- all of which suggest additional defense spending. It's only logical that the Pentagon will see this as requiring a response. That could mean additional revenue dollars for BAE Systems, Textron and General Dynamics, which together build most of America's armored vehicles. Revenues which, according to S&P Capital IQ, translate into operating profit margins of anywhere from 5% (BAE) to 15% (General D).

It's not all good news for these defense contractors, however. This year, Russia is expected to sell as much as $15 billion worth of weapons in international markets. According to Reuters, Putin has publicly proclaimed his intention to "expand" Russia's sales of "high-tech military products" to customers in "the Asia-Pacific region, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean."

Crucially, Russian tank manufacturer UralVagonZavod (UVZ) says its T-14 Armata will sell for "half the cost of its rivals." Assuming the other weapons being demoed on Red Square next month sell for similar discounts, this threatens to drastically underprice U.S. arms manufacturers in international markets -- potentially siphoning away sales.

So the moral of this story? Even after Crimea, and even after Ukraine, the real struggle between the U.S. and Russia these days may be the struggle for global dominance... of market share.

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Children who grow up with one or both parents in the military and spend time on or around bases — otherwise known as military brats — get used to things that seem weird to everyone else.

Since I was born at William Beaumont Army Hospital on Fort Bliss, Texas, with years spent there and subsequent deployments to Kaiserslautern, Germany and Osan, South Korea, I've become very familiar with this lifestyle.

In honor of Month of the Military Child, here are some tell-tale signs you were a member of a military family:

1. Your pantry was always stocked with rations.

The self-contained, individual ration called Meal Ready-to-Eat (MRE) is a typical military family household commodity. MREs contain a main course, side dish, bread, dessert, and a flameless ration heater. These instant dishes, like "beef ravioli in meat sauce" and "pork chop formed in Jamaican style sauce with noodles," are designed to give service members in the field well-balanced meals. Sometimes a packed lunch was an MRE shoved into your backpack.

2. You learned the phonetic alphabet along with your ABCs

The phonetic alphabet is a list of specified words used to identify letters in a message transmitted by phone or radio.

For example, the word "Army" would be "Alpha Romeo Mike Yankee" when spelled using the phonetic alphabet.

Just like the military, you also refer to countless things with acronyms. Military slang and acronyms are tossed around in conversations with ease and as a child you learn to pick them up quickly. For instance, no one ever explained the meaning of "Hooah" (pronounced WhoAh) to you but you knew that it was short for "Heard, Understood, and Acknowledged."

3. Along with a school ID, you had a military ID.

Military ID cards are golden tickets and misplacing one meant perpetually waiting with a sponsor in a small ID card office. The khaki-colored "identification and privilege card" is the key to a military base and all of its goodies — gym, commissary (grocery store), swimming pool, etc. 

4. Your church had an American flag inside it.

No different from an American flag hanging inside of a school classroom, America's Stars and Stripes are also recognized inside military installation chapels. 

These chapels are designed to be convertible in order to accommodate various religious beliefs of service members. For example, the chapel may offer a Catholic Mass at 8 a.m. and then a Protestant service at 11 a.m. 

Service ended with singing "God Bless America" or "America the Beautiful." Also, the priest was referred to as chaplain.

5. Calling everyone by last names seems normal.

It is almost as if this behavior is innate, because remarkably, military brats quickly begin to refer to anyone by their last name. That is because troops refer to each other by their last name, a practice originating from their training in boot camp. 

Calling an adult "ma'am" or "sir" is another natural mannerism.

6. At “colors” you drop everything and look for an American flag.

The flag is raised briskly and lowered slowly on American military bases every morning and evening while a patriotic song is played through a loudspeaker, usually "To the Color" or the National Anthem, depending on the base. 

This time is referred to as "Colors." Military personnel are required to stop, face the direction of the base flagpole, stand at attention, and render a salute until the music stops.

Moreover, you're used to singing the national anthem everywhere, even in movie theaters after the previews finish.

7. You are a bit of a perfectionist, especially in your appearance.

Appearance represents a form of self-discipline, and in the armed forces, it is a requirement that a soldier is neat and well-groomed when in uniform.

Leaders ensure that personnel under their command present a conservative military image.

Similarly, this practice was echoed into your childhood and that meant you didn't get to sport a trendy haircut, loud fingernail polish, or an untucked shirt. 

8. People ask you where you grew up and it takes you five minutes to answer.

Not having one permanent home for more than five years can make for a lengthy response to the question, "Where are you from?" Living in different states and sometimes foreign countries makes, "I'm from all over" the simplest answer. 

That is because military families don't have much of a say as to where they go. Some families luck out and get amazing placements to installations like the Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe Bay, with sailing and surfing classes at the on-base marina and ample views of paradise.

9. Your doctor wears combat boots.

Service members and their families largely use the hospitals and clinics on base as their primary care providers, and those clinics are staffed with military doctors and medics.

A far cry though from the white lab coat with the cold stethoscope, many of these health care providers have seen the worst of the worst. 

10. You had holiday dinners in a chow hall.

Instead of heading over to grandma's house, military families often go to a dining facility for a cafeteria-style Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. 

This is either because travel is too difficult or expensive, or because the family lives on an installation in a foreign country. 

11. Your chores were mandatory.

Mom never had to come in and make your bed because every morning before school it was your responsibility. Failing a parent-conducted room inspection resulted in more chores or pushups. So you learned how to do things the "right way" quickly.

12. If you aren't 15 minutes early, you're late.

Being "tardy" doesn't exist in the military world. You were early to school, doctor's appointments, ceremonies, and parties — no exceptions. 

13. You have immediate respect for anyone in uniform.

Respect for individuals serving in the armed forces is strongly encouraged in military family upbringings. Possibly because you catch a glimpse of your personal experiences as a military brat, and that kind of relation isn't possible with civilians.

I always look twice when a young troop is in an airport terminal — not because of the enormous rucksack, but to figure out if they're heading home, to an overseas deployment, or to a combat zone.

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Israel's armed forces see a growing threat in instant messaging applications -- both to battlefield secrecy and to the privacy of women soldiers.

According to official military journal Bamahane, the number of troop indictments for sex crimes has almost doubled since 2012, with "infringement of privacy" counts, some involving the collection and sharing of compromising photographs, making up 35 percent of cases.

The journal cited, as one example, a soldier who photo-shopped the face of a female comrade onto an image of another woman’s nude body and pressed her into having sex with him by threatening to disseminate the image.

In another case, a non-commissioned officer was accused of surreptitiously photographing women in the shower.

WhatsApp, the instant messaging application owned by Facebook, has become particularly popular among Israeli conscripts in recent years.

The military's chief censor, Brigadier-General Sima Vaknin-Gil, said WhatsApp messaging about the Gaza war last July and August was the challenge to operational security that prompted the most discussion in meetings she held at the time with her staff.

"Do I think WhatsApp is liable to be an acute problem in the future? Yes, unequivocally," Vaknin-Gil told Bamahane, predicting the power of social media would require a review of official secrecy standards in the country.

During the Gaza war, the military said it arrested several soldiers for publishing the names of casualties over the application before next-of-kin could be formally informed. The Israeli military regards such breaches as a security risk as well as a humanitarian issue.

The military has also disciplined troops for allegedly racist comments on Facebook, and in the case of a group of women soldiers, for posting photos of themselves in underwear and combat gear.

Vaknin-Gil said effectively monitoring social media activity in Israel for breaches of military law would be impossible.

"First of all, it's not under my aegis," she said. "Secondly, you would have to expand the body called censorship dozens of times over in order to handle all of the existing WhatsApps groups."

The military's response appears to be mainly cautionary, for now, by playing up social media cases that lead to the stockade.

"This is a very troublesome phenomenon, and soldiers don't understand how grave it is," the chief military prosecutor, Colonel Udi Ben-Eliezer, told Bamahane. "The telephone is easily available, and therefore the crime becomes very easy to do."

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WASHINGTON (AP) — It's not against the law or military regulations to choose not to sit with someone in the dining hall or to unfriend them on Facebook, but in the traumatic aftermath of a sexual assault, a victim could interpret those moves as retaliation.

In these days when a tweet or Instagram photo can be wielded as weapons, the Pentagon is struggling to define retaliation and rein in bullying or other behavior that victims perceive as vengeful.

At the same time, military leaders are expanding efforts to better train their lower- and midlevel commanders to detect and deal with retaliation, while also insuring that other, more innocent actions are not misinterpreted by assault victims.

On Friday, the Pentagon released a deeper analysis of the sexual assault survey data made public last December. That report acknowledges the difficulties in gathering data about retaliation, including problems with how some of the survey questions may have been misinterpreted and that incidents of retaliation may have been over counted.

It's a thorny problem for the military, in the aftermath of a RAND study that concluded that about 60 percent of sexual assault victims believe they have faced retaliation from commanders or peers. Members of Congress are demanding swift steps to protect whistle-blowers, including sexual assault victims who have been wronged as a result of their reports or complaints.

Pentagon leaders said the survey questions need to reflect what legally constitutes retaliation, which includes taking action to discourage someone from going forward with an assault complaint. But they also acknowledged that often victims believe they are being retaliated against if peers no longer invite them to parties or if they are disciplined for illegal drug or alcohol use in connection with the assault.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter unveiled four new initiatives to focus training more directly on the differences in assaults on men and women and increased efforts to prevent retaliation.

The survey showed that unwanted sexual contact against men usually involves multiple assailants on more than one occasion, happens during work hours at their duty station and is more often described by the victim as hazing or an effort to humiliate them. Incidents described by women are usually after work hours, off the base and often involve alcohol use by either the victim or the perpetrator.

Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Snow, director of the Pentagon's sexual assault prevention program, said the military services are working to get better information about the assaults and retaliation so they can improve training.

Sexual assault is such a heinous crime, Snow said, that a victim may easily interpret any action by a superior -- even a transfer to give the victim time to heal -- as a reprisal.

Last December, the RAND survey estimated that 62 percent of sexual assault victims believed they faced some type of professional retaliation, social ostracism, adverse administrative action or punishment.

But defense and military officials involved in sexual assault response and reporting now say the questions may have inadvertently included innocent actions by commanders seeking to protect the victim or other social practices that were not designed to persuade a victim not to press forward with criminal proceedings. RAND has since dropped its estimate, saying that about 57 percent of assault victims believe they faced retaliation.

According to survey data, many of the women said the retaliation came in the form of social backlash from co-workers or other service members.

Snow and Galbreath said the military must understand what exactly that is, and whether they can determine if the social reaction is designed to deter a victim from pursuing legal action -- which would more clearly be retaliation.

Officials also agreed that if victims believed he or she were being targeted or unfairly punished, then those concerns must be addressed. They said commanders need to find ways to detect those problems and stop them, either by taking action against perpetrators or making it known throughout the unit that social ostracism is not acceptable, and by communicating better with victims.

One challenge is to do that without violating the privacy of a victim. Often a lower-level commander may not be aware of a sexual assault case, and could inadvertently discipline someone for failing to show up for duty, when they may have been seeking health care or other assistance.

In other cases, a commander may try to transfer assault victims to get them the help they need, give them time to heal or get them away from a bad situation. But victims may see that as professional retaliation if it stalls their military career or puts them in a less desirable job or location. But officials said commanders need more training so they can better handle those situations.

Last December, the Pentagon reported that there were a bit more than 6,100 victims of reported sexual assaults in 2014, an increase of about 11 percent. And an anonymous survey of service members showed that about 19,000 troops said they were victims of some type of unwanted sexual contact, down from about 26,000 in a 2012 survey.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - China's armed forces, the largest in the world, have yet to become a military which fully follows the law, its official newspaper said on Tuesday, underscoring the problem of rooting out deeply-seated corruption.

Weeding out graft in the military is a top goal of President Xi Jinping, chairman of the Central Military Commission, which controls China's 2.3 million-strong armed forces.

Serving and retired Chinese military officers have said military graft is so pervasive it could undermine China's ability to wage war, and dozens of senior officers have been taken down.

In a front page commentary, the People's Liberation Army Daily said that the concept of rule of law had yet to fully take root.

"At present, the laws and rules system for our military has basically been formed, but the concept of rule of law and the transformation of ways of behaving has yet to be completed," it said.

Bottlenecks have formed that are preventing the military's modernization, it said, including what it termed "paying attention to experience and not paying attention to the law".

The Communist Party committees — the ones which exercise the real control in the military — must avoid the situation where only one person makes the decisions, and that any decisions they make are legal, the paper said.

The more advanced the military becomes, the more it needs to follow the law, it added.

The logistics department has been particularly problematic for the People's Liberation Army.

Lieutenant General Gu Junshan, who had been deputy director of the department, is suspected of selling hundreds of positions. He was charged with corruption last year.

Xi is also waging a broader campaign against corruption in general, vowing to take down powerful "tigers" as well as lowly "flies".

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Alex Richardson)

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BAE Systems has won a contract worth up to $434m (£287m) to provide US soldiers with combined night-vision goggles and thermal sights.

The defence company has developed a system that unites the picture from thermal imaging sights mounted on troops’ weapons, which work by detecting heat differences, and night vision goggles, which enhance the available light to produce a wider image.

Currently soldiers use their night-vision goggles for overall situational awareness, but have to raise their weapon and look down their sight to aim.

BAE’s product transmits the picture from the weapon’s sight to the goggles, meaning soldiers do not have to look down their guns to see what is in their crosshairs.

Bringing the two together images together should speed up the time its takes to engage a target, once it has been acquired by the soldier on night vision goggles. The company said it should also allow troops to acquire targets more stealthily.

“Supplying the US Army with this new rapid target acquisition technology builds on our heritage as a long-time provider of thermal weapon sights and precision targeting solutions,” said Terry Crimmins, vice-president of BAE’s survivability and targeting solutions.

"The ability to conduct surveillance in any light or weather condition increases mission safety and effectiveness.”

BAE is developing the new combined system at its factory in Hudson, New Hampshire.

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A four-star US Army general who served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during the war in Kosovo is promoting failing penny stocks, according to a new Bloomberg report.

Since 2004, and after he ran for president, retired Gen. Wesley Clark has joined the boards of at least 18 public companies, 10 of which were penny-stock companies. Only one of these penny stocks didn't lose value during his tenure, and three went bankrupt after he left their boards, according to Bloomberg.

"His appearance on a board is a huge red flag," said Joe Spiegel, whose fund, Dalek Capital Management, made money shorting the stock of one of Clark’s ventures. “These companies use people’s names to get legitimacy,” Spiegel told Bloomberg.

Penny stocks are sketchy, relatively small market-cap and low-price stocks that trade outside of the major market exchanges. They're considered to be high risk because they don't have a lot of liquidity and have limited disclosure.

Two of the more interesting ventures that Clark has been involved with include recruiting military veterans to a grilled cheese food-truck franchise and helping a convicted felon (Clark said "he seemed honest and legitimate in this business") to raise money to grow lettuce.

Bloomberg reports that the grilled cheese venture "is losing money and hasn’t signed any veterans as franchisees, and the lettuce operation is being sued for failing to pay its bills."

With the grilled cheese operation, Clark was promised more than $200,000 a year by a group of penny-stock promoters to help find military veterans to staff trucks or buy franchises. But so far, "he's made little money for himself," and four of the five people recruited from the Wounded Warrior project have already quit because "of all the lies and b.s."

As for the lettuce company, it's called VFT Global. It's run by Dennis Levine, a convicted felon who pleaded guilty to securities fraud in the '80s and helped inspire Charlie Sheen's character in the movie "Wall Street," according to Bloomberg. 

The company's website claims that it will "provide a secure, reliable food source" with "innovative solutions" in a world where "essential resources like energy, food, and water" are running low. So far, they haven't grown anything.

Further, they've even recently started buying lettuce from other companies. But they have failed to pay the bills, claiming the lettuce was bad or never delivered, according to Bloomberg.

To check out the whole story, head to Bloomberg >>

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When a new recruit in China’s army received a smartwatch as a gift from his girlfriend and used it to snap a photo of his comrades, he was unknowingly sparking a ban on all such devices for all 1.6 million soldiers in the People’s Liberation Army.

China’s military authorities point to the potential for smartwatches and other wearable devices to be hijacked as eavesdropping tools that can expose sensitive locations and communications as the reason for the ban.

After a squad leader caught the recruit enjoying his new gift, he took it up to his superiors, who ultimately banned smartwatches and other wearables. “The moment a soldier puts on a device that can record high-definition audio and video, take photos, and process and transmit data, it’s very possible for him or her to be tracked or to reveal military secrets,” according to the resulting warning as published in the Liberation Army Daily, the Chinese military’s official newspaper.

Individual members of the Chinese army contacted by NBC News confirmed that smartwatches and other wearable devices are now banned.

The ban on smartwatches and other wearable devices in the Chinese army highlights the general challenges military forces around the world. “Any self-aware organization will have measures for operational security,” said Peter Quentin, a research fellow at the British defense think tank Rusi, in an interview with the BBC.

Quentin added that any device that’s networked can be exploited deliberately or inadvertently, which is why some places where sensitive discussions take place already forbid phones.

There are already companies trying to protect against the potential security vulnerabilities that come with the increasing prevalence of smartwatches and wearable devices. Bastille Networks, for instance, is using proprietary software and sensors to monitor unusual radio frequency activity in enterprise environments.

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During its annual May 9 Victory Day Parade commemorating the end of World War II, the Russian military brings out the most striking examples of their ground force vehicles.

This year, they publicly unveiled what is possibly the most ambitious ground vehicle program since the end of the Cold War.

The Armata Universal Combat Platform is Russia’s attempt to make a interconnected family of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, self-propelled guns, and other vehicles. The centerpiece is the T-14 Armata main battle tank, a radical design that highlights a troubling lack of fighting vehicle development in the West.

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The Army’s effort to introduce unmanned vehicles into its inventory has slowed as the service’s budget tightens and questions remain on how the technology will be used.

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when insurgents were attacking supply convoys, the Army made a push to develop driverless trucks. However, the technology never reached the battlefield.

Bryan McVeigh, force projection project manager, said it is vital that the benefits are fully understood before the Army commits its shrinking resources to autonomous technology. 

“We haven’t proved that the juice is worth the squeeze yet,” he said in an interview with National Defense. “We have to demonstrate that the technology is mature enough before the leadership will allow us to commit … resources.”

The current budget environment has put a strain on the development of cutting-edge technologies, said Heidi Shyu, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics, and technology during an acquisition forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

Funding for the Army’s research, development and acquisition (RDA) account has been hardest hit by budget cuts, she said. “Since 2011, [the] Army RDA account has decreased twice as fast as the Army’s top line.” 

That account finances experimentation and procurement of new technologies such as unmanned systems. 

The role for unmanned ground vehicles needs to be better defined so that the technology can more effectively fit within the operating concepts of its units, she said. 

The Army needs to look at more specific uses for unmanned systems, said Shyu. “What we need to do is scope to specific mission space [where] we can literally use an unmanned vehicle.”

She pointed to recent testing of autonomous shuttles on Army bases as one example. 

Applied Robotics for Installations and Base Operations, a SmartAmerica Challenge team sponsored by the Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC), has completed several successful pilot tests for autonomous vehicles on military bases. They presented their findings at the June 2014 SmartAmerica Challenge Summit in Washington, D.C., a demonstration showcasing technologies of 24 teams formed by over 100 companies, government agencies and academic institutions. The challenge commenced in 2013 as part of a White House presidential innovation fellow project. 

One of the main reasons the uptake of fully autonomous ground vehicles has not progressed at the same pace as unmanned aerial systems is that the applications and requirements have not been fully spelled out, said service officials.  

“It’s … a leading-edge technology, so how it fits inside the operating concepts of units hasn’t been well defined,” said Scott Davis, program executive officer for combat support and combat service support. “If you don’t understand how that’s defined, it’s very difficult to come up with individual system requirements. I think we’re starting to turn that corner now that we have less attention focused on other engagements.”

The complex terrain that ground vehicles operate in is another barrier to full autonomy, Shyu said. 

Trying to design a fully autonomous vehicle that can accommodate all of the potential environments that the military fights in is extremely difficult and costly, she said. 

“Unmanned vehicles that can navigate [mountainous] terrain and not fall off the cliff, are not that easy,” she noted. Muddy and sandy environments that soldiers frequently fight in also have to be considered. 

It’s very difficult for autonomous vehicles to navigate that type of environment without human intervention at some point, Davis said. Even unmanned aerial systems, though advanced, require a certain level of human involvement when initiating a flight, he said at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Ground Robotics Conference in Arlington, Virginia. 

“I think we’ll see [full autonomy] probably in the next 10 years if you think about highways and things that have pretty clearly defined behavioral patterns and markings,” Davis said. But when considering open terrain and combat situations, requirement definitions will continue to evolve. 

“The best thing we can do today is settle on the standards and taxonomy and really understand the architectures we’ll need to build in so we’ll enable growth as best as we can predict going forward,” he added. 

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan played a role in impeding long-term adoption of unmanned ground vehicles, according to officials. 

“There was a war that happened and that probably affected program of record development,” said Maj. Gen. Robert Dyess, director of the force development directorate for G8 force development.

It allowed the Army to field large numbers of robotic capabilities, but most of them were bought with overseas contingency operations funding, he said. This meant that the majority of the programs didn’t have a long-term lifespan and lacked a program structure developed in Training and Doctrine Command courses. 

Davis said the biggest push during the war was for technology that improved survivability. This meant that a lot of time, effort and money went into the development of more heavily armored manned vehicles. However, there were strides made in unmanned applications regarding counter-improvised explosive device measures as well as route clearance, Davis said. 

Another hurdle that needs to be overcome in order to achieve autonomous vehicles in battle is getting key decision makers onboard with unmanned systems even in the tight budget environment, said retired Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, former executive director of the University of Texas at Arlington’s Automation and Robotics Research Institute in Fort Worth.

“When you’ve got people making decisions and they have constrained resources … by design they’re going to fund those things that they’re most familiar with and comfortable with, and not fund those things that they’re uncertain about,” said Lynch, who has a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a concentration in robotics. 

The acquisition process itself is too slow and cumbersome, he added. He said the robotics enhancement program — an Army effort rolled out in April that allows inventors and manufacturers to submit robotic technologies and solutions online — is a great idea, in theory, to overcome some of the problems with current acquisition procedures, but does not go far enough. 

Getting the technology into the hands of soldiers from the very beginning so they can provide feedback to improve the product and accelerate fielding is a great idea, Lynch said. However, “As soon as you start going through the bureaucratic process of acquisition, you’re talking decades, not days,” he said, pointing to the program’s process of relying on a council of colonels for submission review and approval. 

Another flaw is not having the testing community involved from the beginning. The testers and soldiers should receive the equipment simultaneously, not sequentially in order to streamline the process, Lynch said.  

McVeigh said completely autonomous vehicles will not be achieved in the near term, but partially autonomous capabilities can be added to the current fleet with a digital architecture that can be upgraded with sensors in the years to come. 

He pointed to recent experiments executed by TARDEC as proof that unmanned vehicles are making progress. 

In 2014 TARDEC, in conjunction with Lockheed Martin, demonstrated fully autonomous convoys operating in urban environments. These experiments were performed with multiple vehicles of different models as part of the Army and Marine Corps’ autonomous mobility appliqué system (AMAS) program. 

Vehicles on which the appliqué kit had been installed, exhibited the ability to stop when there was oncoming traffic, follow the rules of the road and avoid pedestrians and obstacles at speeds up to 25 mph during the first capabilities advancement demonstration in January 2014. The second demonstration in June 2014 focused on establishing the convoy-like scenario through increased speed and additional vehicles. 

The technology in the AMAS kit comprises GPS, light detecting radar and automotive radio detection and ranging. It also includes commercial automotive sensors to make it more affordable. 

These experiments illustrate ways in which the Army can start to utilize autonomous capabilities — drive by wire, lane departure warnings and collision avoidance — in the near term with a system that can be upgraded in the future, Davis said. “It’s really trying to design an architecture that fits the system today and provides some capability in terms of driverless safety and then provides the framework or underpinning for future additions that would allow us to ever increase the robotic capability of our manned platforms.” 

He said the Army would continue to move forward with the experiments to further flesh out the technology, but more importantly to get additional vehicles in the hands of soldiers so they can begin employing them in more tactically realistic scenarios. That will help them understand exactly how they would use the technology, determine what shortfalls still exist and improve soldier confidence in the equipment, Davis said. 

“This is one of those things where I don’t think we have to wait for the perfect technological breakthrough. I think all of the elements of robotics, from providing some assistance all the way up to full autonomy, has value. So it’s really trying to figure out where those two things meet — where we can get a substantial increment of technology that we employ on the vehicles, and it fits with what the soldiers believe that they can deal with,” he said. 

Questions that will still need to be answered going forward are how removing drivers from the equation will affect the security of a convoy and how an autonomous vehicle will navigate complex urban scenarios where it will come in contact with other cars and pedestrians, he said. Some of these elements haven’t been fully explored and the experiments’ results will help shape the requirements. 

When considering the shift from manned to fully autonomous systems, the immediate effects of such a transition also have to be considered, said Lt. Col. Larry Dring, product manager for unmanned ground vehicles. 

When there is no longer a need for human drivers, the trucks can run 24 hours a day, but that can wear down the vehicles and create the need for additional mechanics because they are coming in for repairs three times as often, he said. That begs that question, “What are the real savings?”

The immediate future for unmanned capabilities in the Army is in large semi-autonomous systems used for bomb detection and disposal, McVeigh said. 

Two large vehicles that are currently in development are the route clearance and interrogation system (RCIS) and the husky mounted detection system (HMDS), he said. 

When the RCIS system identifies an improvised explosive device or some other abnormality in the road, it will allow the soldier to excavate the device remotely, removing troops from the “boom,” he said. The request for proposals will be released in the October to November timeframe and the program is about two years away from awarding a contract, McVeigh said. 

The HMDS system is moving on a similar trajectory. “Right now there’s a soldier in there and [the vehicle] goes through and identifies where there’s a disturbance in the ground and uses a radar to see if it’s something we should be looking at,” said McVeigh. If the soldier can be taken out of the vehicle, then the suspicious object can be identified without putting the fighter’s life at risk, he added. The autonomous version of that system is still a few years away, he said. 

RCIS will establish the building block for leader-follower and autonomous convoy operations, which provide clear benefits, McVeigh said. There is less chance of a soldier being harmed by an explosive device, and as the Army downsizes the number of active duty soldiers, automating convoys can free up more of them for war fighting. 

 “We see the requirements [for leader-follower] emerging through the process … I believe we will have a program of record for leader-follower by the turn of the decade,” he said. 

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Rolls-Royce just revealed that it will receive €80 million (£57 million, $87 million) to supply the British Army with engines that will power its new SCOUT Specialist Vehicle (SV).

The London-listed aerospace and defence giant company said in a statement that it will deliver 589 MTU Series 199 diesel engines from 2016 until 2022. This will be the first time that MTU engines will be used in British Army platforms.

"We are delighted that our MTU engine has been trusted for this important project," said Dr Ulrich Dohle, CEO at Rolls-Royce Power Systems. "This order once again proves that when it comes to performance and reliability, the Series 199 engine is benchmark in its power range."

The engines have a power output of 600 kilowatts and are the most powerful engines in the Rolls-Royce series. The model is already used in the Austrian army's ULAN and Spain's Pizarro vehicles. 

The contract may seem small compared to the massive £5.9 billion ($9.2 billion) deal it sealed with Dubai's Emirates airline last month, which was to supply engines for 50 A380 aircraft, but it shows that the company is back on track and winning contracts after a tumultuous year.

In February, Rolls-Royce CEO John Rishton said 2014 was a "mixed year" after the stock price drop by 23%. Underlying revenue declined for the first time in 10 years and the group went under a major restructuring. 

Then in April this year, Rishton announced that he would retire as CEO on July 2 this year and will be succeeded by Warren East.

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