Suicides increased among U.S. military personnel last year, an ongoing trend Pentagon officials say they plan to address with a $125 million investment in prevention and mental health programs next year.

The rate for active-duty personnel rose to 28.2 per 100,000 members in 2023, from 25.1 per 100,000 members during the previous year^[1], according to new data released by the Pentagon on Thursday. That year-to-year increase is not statistically significant but when compared with the past 12 years, shows long-term "real change," defense officials said.

"We continue to see a gradual, statistically significant increase in the active component suicide rates from 2011 to 2023. This tells us that it's most likely a real change. Stated differently, there is a low likelihood that this change is due to natural variation or chance," Liz Clark, director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, said Thursday on a call with reporters.

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The Defense Department's annual suicide report for 2023^[3] found that the suicide rate also increased among reserve members, but it decreased slightly for the National Guard^[4].

According to the report, 363 active-duty troops died in 2023 by suicide, up 32 service members from last year, while 69 reserve members took their own lives, compared with 65 in 2022.

Ninety-one Guard members died by suicide in 2023, down from 99 in 2022.

The deaths occurred despite concerted efforts in 2022 by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who ordered the department and the services to make suicide prevention a top priority.

In the past year, DoD has been working to implement initiatives recommended in 2022 by a suicide prevention review board, completing 20 of the board's 83 recommendations so far, said Dr. Timothy Hoyt, deputy director of the Office of Force Resiliency, on the call.

"While some progress has been made, Secretary Austin has been clear that there's still much work to do and that we won't let up," Hoyt said.

Regarding the individual services, the suicide rate remained steady in the Marine Corps^[5] over last year, but it continued to have the highest rate among the services^[6], losing at least 64 Marines to suicide for a rate of 35 per 100,000 members.

The Army^[7] rate increased significantly from 27 per 100,000 to 32.7 per 100,000 soldiers, with 158 deaths. The Air Force^[8] had 70, its rate slightly higher in 2023 at 20.5 per 100,000 airmen, and the Navy^[9]'s rate was 19.3 per 100,000 members, with 69.

The Space Force^[10], the smallest branch of the armed services, had two deaths by suicide. The Coast Guard^[11], which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, was not addressed in the DoD report.

"The Department mourns our teammates whom we've lost to suicide. And through our actions -- by taking care of our people, and prioritizing the health, well-being, and morale of our force -- we honor their memories," Austin said in a statement Thursday.

Firearms remained the leading means of suicide among the active-duty, reserve and National Guard components in 2023, with upward of 65% taking their lives with a gun, compared with 50% of suicides in the U.S. population.

The commission recommended that the department raise the age for service members to buy guns to 25, require those living in military housing to register all privately owned weapons and restrict storage of personal firearms in barracks.

The DoD did not adopt those policies but instead launched public awareness campaigns and has been working with businesses located near military installations to provide storage devices at a discount to gun owners, Hoyt said.

The DoD also is working with the military exchange system to provide vouchers for storage devices for those who buy a firearm on base, he added.

"We're continuing to promote this culture of lethal means safety, incentivizing secure firearm storage and really promoting safety across the installation and particularly in our barracks and dorms, to make sure that we are securely storing firearms when we're off duty and in our homes," Hoyt said.

The $125 million in programs in 2025, up from $17 million this year, will go toward recruiting and retaining mental health professionals; implementing the Brandon Act, the legislation that allows service members^[12] to request a mental health assessment without interference from commands; revising suicide prevention training; and fostering a culture of firearms safety, according to DoD.

The commission's firearms recommendations are unlikely to be implemented under the incoming administration, and service members may even see an expansion of their gun rights on base should Fox News host and former Army National Guard Maj. Pete Hegseth -- the nominee to head the department -- be confirmed.

Noting in a May 2023 interview with the National Rifle Association^[13] that most installations prohibit concealed carry, Hegseth said it "doesn't make sense."

"If you can't trust people who have been recruited, trained to use firearms and entrusted with so much responsibility, then something is very wrong," Hegseth said.

As with previous years, the military population most at risk for suicide, according to the report, are young, male enlisted troops under age 30, accounting for 61% of the deaths. The most common stressors seen in those who died were relationship problems, 44%, or who had a mental health diagnosis within the year before they died, 42%.

For the first time, the Defense Department analyzed trends in suicide among military family members based on the most recently available data from 2022. According to the report, 146 family members -- 93 spouses^[14] and 53 dependents under age 23 -- died by suicide, a drop of 9% from 2021. Over time, however, the rate among military families has increased overall since 2011, trends that are also seen in the U.S. among the general population and adolescents.

If you are a service member or veteran who needs help, it is available 24/7 at the Veterans and Military Crisis Line. Dial 988 Press 1, text 838255 or use the online chat function atwww.veteranscrisisline.net^[15].

Related: Pentagon Watchdog Will Assess Navy's Suicide Response and Prevention Efforts Following Spate of Deaths^[16]

The email came through one day in January 2015, according to Tim Gallaudet, during a pre-deployment exercise off the East Coast that included the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group.

The subject line read, in all caps, “URGENT SAFETY OF FLIGHT ISSUE,” recalls Gallaudet, then commander of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command. In his telling, the email from an operations officer asked for any information on a series of unknown objects disrupting the exercise. Attached was a now declassified video of what the Navy would later confirm were unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs^[1].

But the email had disappeared by the next day, Gallaudet testified Wednesday before two subpanels of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

“Moreover, the Commander of Fleet Forces Command and the operations officer never discussed the subject, even during weekly meetings specifically designed to address issues affecting exercises like the one in which the Theodore Roosevelt Strike Group was participating,” Gallaudet told lawmakers and a packed room full of members of the media and the public. Outside the hearing room, a line of hundreds waiting to get in snaked through the Rayburn House Office Building hallway.

That experience led Gallaudet to believe that some in the government may know more about UAPs, colloquially known as UFOs, than they were letting on. And it convinced him, as well as other panelists who testified Wednesday, of a potential “constitutional crisis” and a fundamental lack of transparency from the executive branch, the military and the intelligence community that leaves Congress in the dark.

“The continued overclassification surrounding UAPs has not only hindered our ability to effectively address these phenomena, but it has also eroded trust in our institutions,” Gallaudet said.

Congress in recent years has been hot on the UAP trail, as a bipartisan but still somewhat fringe-y coalition of lawmakers has held hearings and applied pressure on other government entities to release information, particularly about any clandestine programs using taxpayer money. They’ve encountered some resistance.

“I’m not going to name names, but there are certain individuals who didn’t want this hearing to happen because they feared what might be disclosed,” said South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, who chairs Oversight’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology and Government Innovation.

But the intrigue on Capitol Hill has been fueled by increased public interest in the topic, as some videos of UAPs have become public. A subject once confined to sci-fi films and conspiracy theorists has begun to enter the mainstream. UFO enthusiasts attended the hearing, posting selfies and photos of themselves with the panelists.

“The boys. #ufotwitter,” one user posted to X^[2], accompanying a photo of the four witnesses.

Last year, David Grusch, a former military and intelligence officer, claimed in bombshell testimony to a House Oversight subcommittee that the U.S. government had recovered “non-human” material^[3] and has a secret program to recover and reverse-engineer crashed aircraft. Luis Elizondo, an author and former Department of Defense employee who testified Wednesday, said he was aware during his time at the Pentagon of reports of “biologics” recovered.

“Was anything described … that we have possession of bodies?” Missouri Republican Rep. Eric Burlison asked.

“Yes. Yes,” Elizondo responded.

“Is it multiple types of creatures?” Burlison continued.

“Sir, I couldn’t answer that. I can tell you anecdotally that it was discussed quite a bit when I was at the Pentagon. The problem is, the supposed collection of these biological samples occurred before my time — in fact, before I was even born,” Elizondo said.

Alien fever hasn’t yet broken. President-elect Donald Trump, during an October appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, spoke about interviews he’d had with former military pilots who observed mysterious spherical objects. And Kirk McConnell, a former House and Senate staffer, sparked buzz in September when he was seen in the trailer of the James Fox documentary “The Program” making startling claims.

“We have sources who have asserted not only that there have been crashes, but there have been crash retrievals,” McConnell says in the clip^[4].

The uproar has led to legislation as well.

Last year, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., backed an amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act directing the National Archives and Records Administration to create a collection of UAP-related records that would carry the presumption of immediate disclosure. But the language included in the final package fell short of what some advocates had urged, and subsequent bills have followed.

Earlier this year, Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett and a group of his Oversight Committee colleagues — including Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz and Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, both of Florida, along with Burlison — introduced legislation^[5] that would require the declassification of federal documents related to UAPs.

And on Tuesday, Burchett introduced a bill^[6] that aims to provide protections for whistleblowers who come forward with information about federal programs studying UAPs — a response to reports that whistleblowers have been stigmatized and targeted for making information public.

Another bill^[7], led by California Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, would require the Federal Aviation Administration to establish reporting requirements for UAP incidents.

“It’s incredibly important that civilian pilots have the opportunity to safely report the UAPs that they’re seeing or encountering in the air,” said Garcia, ranking member on Oversight’s Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs.

The position of the Department of Defense’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, is that there is no evidence that any government “investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology,” according to a February 2024 report^[8].

AARO concluded that “most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” and that claims of evidence being hid from Congress were the result largely of “circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence.”

But Michael Shellenberger, a free speech activist and founder of the Substack newsletter “Public,” pushed back on Wednesday against those kinds of dismissals, testifying that he stands by his reporting about a supposed special access program called “Immaculate Constellation” despite the Department of Defense denying any record of it.

“The Pentagon, the intelligence community, is treating us like children. It’s time for us to know the truth about this,” Shellenberger said.

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©2024 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. Visit at rollcall.com^[9]. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

He has repeatedly called to ban women from serving in combat roles in the military.

He advocated extensively to gain pardons for troops accused and convicted of war crimes.

And he was one of a dozen troops turned away from serving on the National Guard^[1] mission to defend the Capitol, allegedly over tattoos that are popular with neo-Nazi and far-right groups.

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Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's surprise pick to be the next defense secretary, has an extensive history of combat in the culture wars that have been brewing over the military for the past decade.

Prior to Trump's announcement Tuesday evening that he was nominating Hegseth, the National Guard veteran was most known as a co-host on the weekend edition of "Fox and Friends," one of Trump's favorite TV shows. But in choosing Hegseth, Trump landed on a defense secretary nominee with a record of public statements that line up with the promises Trump made on the campaign trail to root out alleged "wokeness" within the military.

Senators from both parties tasked with considering his nomination responded Wednesday by saying that they have a lot of questions about Hegseth's history and those past statements, but broadly insisted they were reserving judgment.

"I'm going to have to visit with him about those remarks," Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the Senate's first female combat veteran who was rumored to be in the running for Trump's defense secretary, told reporters Wednesday when asked about Hegseth's opposition to women in combat.

"Even a staff member of mine, she is an infantry officer. She's back in Iowa now. She is a tumble. So he's going to have to explain it," Ernst added, though she did not answer when Military.com asked whether she would vote against Hegseth over the issue.

And while initial reaction to Hegseth's selection from former officials and some lobbyists outside the Pentagon^[3] was blunt and laced with colorful expletives, inside the building, reactions from rank-and-file officials varied between muted or unfazed to simply trying to get on with their daily tasks and tune out the political turmoil outside.

One senior defense official simply said that they were focused on a smooth transition between administrations, but pointedly noted that Trump officials have yet to sign the official legal forms with the General Services Administration that enable the transition process to formally begin.

Hegseth served in the National Guard from 2002 to 2021, rising to the rank of major, with deployment^[4]s to Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay^[5], according to service records released by the Army^[6] on Wednesday. His awards include two Bronze Stars, two Army Commendation Medals and the expert infantryman and combat infantryman badges, according to the records.

In recent years, Hegseth has aggressively opposed efforts to make the military more welcoming to women, those from minority groups and LGBTQ+ people -- efforts that Republicans collectively deride as "wokeness."

In his most recent book, "The War on Warriors," released in June, he lamented what he described as a shift away from war fighting to "social justice, transgender [and] woke training." He also attributed many of the Pentagon's perceived struggles to the integration of women into the military, especially in combat roles -- a process still in its early stages.

He reiterated those views in a podcast appearance earlier this month, telling host Shawn Ryan that he was "straight-up saying we should not have women in combat roles."

He also advocated for firing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown, who has become a target of far-right Republicans complaining about wokeness.

"First of all, you've got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs," Hegseth said on the podcast. "Any general that was involved, any general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the [diversity, equity and inclusion] woke shit has got to go."

Democrats were not ready Wednesday to oppose Hegseth over those comments.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the current chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee who will be ranking member of the committee next year, said he would have to "look closely" at Hegseth's record, though he said he was "skeptical" because of Hegseth's lack of leadership experience.

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, an Armed Services Committee member who caucuses with Democrats, similarly suggested he doesn't know enough about Hegseth to make a decision yet.

"I don't know much about him," King said. "I haven't seen a lot that impresses me as qualifications for one of the most complicated and important jobs in the country, if not the world. So I'm going to await, as I always do, the hearings and information."

Even if Democrats oppose Hegseth, he will only need a simple majority to be confirmed, and Republicans will hold 53 seats in the Senate next year.

Republicans similarly were withholding judgment Wednesday.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., an Armed Services Committee member, commended Hegseth's military service but acknowledged he lacks leadership experience.

"Now it's a matter of asking him questions, learning more about him and so forth. So I'll go into that with an open mind," Rounds said. "Until I get a chance to actually talk to him, and until I get a chance to actually understand the direction he's going -- does he see the strategic needs that we have to address within the Department of Defense?"

One hurdle to confirmation that other recent defense secretaries have faced appears not to be a factor in Hegseth's case -- a waiver to a law that bars recent service members from being Pentagon chief. While Hegseth left the Guard within the seven-year timeframe of that law, experts who spoke with Military.com said the law only applies to active components of the military, not the Guard.

"This doesn't apply. It's about active duty and the whole reason why we have the requirement is to ensure effective civilian control over the military, so the more distant you are from active, day-to-day service, the stronger the presumed protection is for civilian control," said retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel Maurer, a former judge advocate and current associate professor of law at Ohio Northern University. "If you're a reservist or National Guard ... you are already a civilian, primarily."

Hegseth would also come into the defense secretary job with a record of advocating on behalf of service members accused and convicted of war crimes and amid questions about his stint in the D.C. National Guard.

In 2019, during Trump's first term in office, Hegseth used his platform on Fox News, as well as private phone calls^[7] with the president, to convince Trump to exonerate two Army officers accused of murder while serving in Afghanistan and lessen the punishment of Navy SEAL^[8] Eddie Gallagher. Gallagher was convicted of posing for a photograph with the corpse of an ISIS prisoner, though he was acquitted of fatally stabbing the wounded detainee.

One of the soldiers, 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, was found guilty in a 2013 court-martial of second-degree murder, making false statements and other charges after he ordered his platoon to fire on three Afghan men on a motorcycle. He was later pardoned by Trump. The other soldier, Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, was charged with murder after killing a suspected, unarmed Taliban bombmaker, later burning his body. Golsteyn also received a Trump presidential pardon.

Meanwhile, while serving in the D.C. National Guard, Hegseth was among at least a dozen guardsmen pulled from the mission to secure the Capitol in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

In his book, he claims he was removed for having a Jerusalem Cross cross tattoo. But he also has a Deus vult cross tattoo – a symbol rooted in the First Crusade, where it served as a rallying cry in Christian battles against Muslims and Jews. Hegseth also has the words "Deus Vult" -- the phrase is Latin for "God wills it" -- inked on his biceps near the cross.

Today, the words and symbol, especially taken together, have largely been co-opted by neo-Nazi and far-right groups, frequently surfacing in extremist protests, including the violent 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

During the first Trump transition, Hegseth was among the names floated to head the Department of Veterans Affairs^[9], a position where he would have built upon his work as president and CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, a conservative group that does not disclose its membership or financial backing but was established with funds from libertarian billionaires David and Charles Koch.

Hegseth led CVA from 2012 to 2016, a timeframe that coincided with a tumultuous period at the VA, rocked by a scandal over appointment delays, cancellations and secret scheduling calendars that was linked to the deaths of more than 40 veterans.

As the Pentagon prepares for Hegseth and the incoming Trump administration, the senior defense official who spoke to Military.com said that the department wasn't taking any major steps to safeguard policies currently in place or rolled out by the Biden administration, because a future secretary of defense would have the power to override any policy they see fit.

"There's not much to safeguard," they said.

Related: Trump Won. Here's What That Could Mean for the Military.^[10]