Author: Cristina Stassis

A former soldier was found guilty of stealing more than $1 million of Meals-Ready-to-Eat, or MREs, from Fort Bliss, Texas.

Joseph Lavar Davis, 47, was convicted by a Texas jury for a heist that included tens of thousands of MREs worth more than $1.1 million, Department of Justice officials announced Tuesday. 

The MRE theft took place between February and August 2020 and included 200 pallets of the field rations. Each pallet contains roughly 576 MREs, according to federal court documents. In all, this means that the grand MRE theft included about 115,200 meals — some of which are good, some of which are not.

MREs are the military’s go-to meals for troops in the field. They are designed to last in brutal conditions and be eaten in the roughest environments, without access to a microwave or stove. They are enjoyed by some but ridiculed by most. Food options have historically included fan favorites like beef stew or maple-flavored sausage patties, but in 2025, the Pentagon announced they were testing new flavors and snacks like Thai curry chicken and chocolate peanut butter bites.

As a soldier, Davis worked in food service supply, where he learned how the military buys and obtains MRE supplies, according to the Department of Justice. After his retirement, Davis was hired for a similar role, albeit as a civilian contractor. Officials said he used his position “to exploit the process and steal MREs,” and that as part of the grift, Davis coordinated the delivery, sales price and payments for the stolen MREs.

Davis was named with three other defendants in a February 2025 federal indictment. 

“Each of the indicted individuals played a role in the scheme, which involved a civilian contractor who knew how to request and pick up the MREs, a soldier to assist in picking up and transporting the MREs, an intermediary between the buyer of the MREs and these two individuals, and the civilian who sold the MREs online,” Justice officials said.

Davis and two defendants created and submitted memos “as though they were legitimate military requests for MREs,” according to the indictment. 

The second defendant was assigned to the 1st Armored Division and worked at Fort Bliss, and the third, like Davis, was former military. Justice Department officials did not give details on the other defendants in their press release, but court documents show that the other former service member pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit government property theft and signed a plea deal in February 2026. Details of the plea deal were not available online.

The team of conspirators rented trucks to transport the MREs to a fourth defendant, according to court documents, who operated a company that ran an El Paso, Texas, warehouse where the stolen MREs were then sold. Court records indicate that the defendant from the warehouse paid the three other defendants nearly $44,350 in separate payments in March and August 2020.

In a statement, U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons wrote that “Joseph Davis betrayed the very country he once swore to protect in an effort to satisfy his own selfish ambition and a jury of his peers held him accountable for it.”

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The tail insignia for the Air Force’s E-4B Nightwatch airborne command post — unofficially nicknamed the “Doomsday Plane” — pays tribute to a legendary World War II bomber unit that was awarded three presidential citations.

On June 26, the first E-4B featuring the Square B tail flash — a black box with a white letter “B” — was unveiled at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, as part of the 95th Wing’s heritage week, according to a news release from Eighth Air Force, which oversees the wing.

The Square B aircraft tail insignia was first introduced during World War II to identify B-17 Flying Fortresses with the wing’s predecessor, the 95th Bombardment Group (H). At the time, Eighth Air Force used shapes and letters to distinguish aircraft from various units “due to the immense size of bomber and fighter formations during the air war in Europe,” according to the 95th Wing’s website.

The group was the only Eighth Air Force Unit to receive Distinguished Unit Citations for its wartime service — the award was later renamed the Presidential Unit Citation. It also took part in the first daytime bombing raid on the German capital of Berlin in March 1944.

The 95th Bombardment Group was awarded its first Distinguished Unit Citation after 24 of its bombers flew as part of a harrowing two-pronged attack against the German cities of Regensburg and Schweinfurt.

It was the Eighth Air Force’s deepest strike into Germany at the time, and the American bomber force suffered extremely heavy losses, with 60 out of a total of 376 B-17s shot down and more than 600 airmen killed, captured, or listed as missing. 

At the time, Allied fighters did not have the range to escort the B-17s all the way to their targets and back, so the bombers had to try to fend off constant attacks from German aircraft by themselves for most of the mission. Weather also delayed the second wave of bombers, giving German fighters time to land, rearm, refuel, and take off again before the second prong of the attack.

The raid marked the highest losses that Eighth Air Force had suffered up to that point in the war, said historian and author Donald Miller. 

“It’s one of those raids where you can say that both sides lost the air battle,” Miller told Task & Purpose.

Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, who led the Luftwaffe, was furious at his pilots for letting the American bombers strike so far into Germany, Miller said.

“At the same time, the Air Force just took staggering, demoralizing losses,” Miller said. “It was a prelude to even greater losses in October.”

Four B-17s from the 95th Bombardment Group were shot down during the raid, and other bombers that were damaged or ran out of fuel were ditched while heading to a temporary base in North Africa after the mission, said Master Sgt. Rachel Waller, a spokesperson for the Eighth Air Force. More than a week later, only eight flyable bombers returned to the unit’s home base in England.

The group went on to receive two more presidential citations in October 1943 and March 1944, Waller told Task & Purpose. By the war’s end, the unit had flown 8,265 sorties over 321 combat missions, dropped 19,769 tons of munitions, and delivered more than 456 tons of food to Dutch citizens.

The Square B insignia was retired when the 95th Bombardment Group was inactivated in August 1945, the Air Force news release says.

Now, the tail flash adorns the E-4B, which serves as the National Airborne Operations Center used by the president, the defense secretary, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The modified version of the Boeing 747-200 is designed to survive the effects of a nuclear war and an electromagnetic pulse.

“The Square B is more than a symbol,” Col. Brian Hassler, commander of the 95th Maintenance Group, said in the Air Force news release. “It represents one of the most decorated Eighth Air Force bomb groups of WWII, a formation of airmen who flew into the heart of danger over Europe and helped shape the outcome of the war through courage, discipline, sacrifice and an unshakable commitment to one another.”

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Annual “religious liberty training” may soon be required for troops and commanders if the Pentagon adopts recommendations from a White House-directed commission of faith leaders and military advocates. 

The recommendations, which Pentagon leaders said Tuesday they “welcome,” come from the Religious Liberty Commission, a 12-person committee established by President Donald Trump in May 2025 to develop policies across the federal government to “secure domestic religious liberty.”

Some of the witnesses who testified at commission meetings in 2025 and 2026 included former military chaplains and veterans. The commission’s primary members include a mix of activists, faith leaders and politicians. Chaired by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and former Trump cabinet member Ben Carson, the committee includes four Christian clergy, a Rabbi, several prominent figures in Christian activist and legal circles, and talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw.

The commission’s review of Pentagon policies emphasized expanding the presence of religion across the Defense Department.

“The more authority the military exercises over the lives of service members, the greater its obligation to ensure that those individuals can live in accordance with their sincerely held beliefs,” the commission wrote in its final report released last week. 

The commission said the Pentagon should “standardize” so-called “religious liberty training” for “all levels” of the military, including commanders, judge advocate generals and recruiters.

The commission also suggested the military increase enforcement of existing federal religious freedom laws, endorsed legislation that would allow chaplains to advise on policy and command decisions, and called for military logos and emblems to be allowed for use on religious texts like the Bible.

The report also said the Pentagon should take another crack at producing a so-called spiritual fitness guide. A 2025 Army effort was scrapped by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just five months after it was launched. Hegseth noted the guide “mentions ‘God’ one time,” but “mentions ‘feelings’ 11 times.”

Recommendations but no immediate training changes

Left unclear was what annual religious freedom training regime would entail, but the report noted recent Supreme Court cases on religious expression and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Passed in 1993, that law prohibits government rules that “substantially burden” the exercise of religion. Critics of the law have argued that it has sometimes been used to “discriminate or to impose” religious beliefs onto others. 

Mikey Weinstein, a former Air Force lawyer who heads the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said that the commission’s recommendations violate laws separating church and state. He cited a clause in the Constitution which prohibits the enforcement of religion tests for holding public office.

“Whenever you get into the business of trying to have a guide or a test, once again, you’re going back to clause three, article six,” Weinstein said. Military leaders, he said, have “no business in any way, shape, or form guiding anyone to figure out how they should view the metaphysical. Where do we come from? What are we doing here? Where do we go when we die? That is not anything that we should be doing.”

Another commission recommendation calls for the Pentagon to “restore the use of military emblems on religious texts and materials,” like Bibles and dog tags — an issue that has long sparked debates over trademark laws and church and state separations. Pentagon policy restricts the use of trademarked logos to promote “ideological movements” or “specific interpretations of morality.”

At one point, base exchanges sold Holman Bibles featuring logos from the services, Weinstein said. In 2012, the foundation took credit for the Pentagon pulling the Bible publishing company’s trademark authorization. Then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the plan “[conveyed] a message of endorsement of religion.”

“The whole idea is that it’s simply trying to make [religion] such a fundamental aspect, so inextricably intertwined into the mind of our military,” Weinstein said. 

Pentagon officials did not immediately say what changes, if any, troops can expect from the report, but they signaled that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth supports the commission’s recommendations.

“From day one, Secretary Hegseth has been a continuous and fervent protector of religious freedom and a vocal advocate for First Amendment rights,” Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez told Task & Purpose in a statement. “We welcome the recommendations and insights that the [commission] has provided to us.”

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