Message Center

The Independent Television Service (ITVS) and the PBS’s award–winning series POV announced the launch of the Returning Home Project website, an online interactive resource inspired by the ITVS-funded program “The Way We Get By”. In the award-winning documentary, filmmakers Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly follow three senior citizens who have made history by greeting nearly one million U.S. troops at a tiny airport in Bangor, Maine. The Returning Home Project is an offshoot of the film, which allows family and friends to, in effect, become troop greeters themselves, by sending encouraging messages through user-generated content and virtual care packages. The site was launched on Veteran’s Day, November 11, 2009, in concurrence with the POV premiere of “The Way We Get By” on PBS.

The Returning Home Project sets politics aside and focuses on ensuring that American soldiers—both newly returned and those whose service ended many years ago—are not forgotten. Comprised of three components, the Mosaic Of Support, The Vigil Room and the Virtual Care Package, users can share their stories and put a human face on the headlines and statistics.

Check it out and add your own messages and photos to our brave servicemembers!

Before President Barack Obama signed the Military Spouses Residency Relief Act into law, anyone living in Maryland for 183 days legally became a Maryland resident. That meant paying Maryland’s income tax, obtaining a Maryland driver’s license and more.

With the new law, military families are not forced to change their legal residency when the military reassigns a service member to a new state.

Anyone now qualified under this new law will be able to take part, regardless of the state you live in. Read the full story on WTOP’s Web site to see how this affects you and your own family.

From a study done by the University of the Rockies:

According to a University of the Rockies study, more than half (54.4 percent) of U.S. Army Special Forces Operators exposed to combat would not seek treatment while serving in the army, even if they were experiencing Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms or psychological distress…

Of those negative consequences, the stigma attached to soldiers with PTSD was the biggest deterrent to seeking treatment, followed by the fear of being thought of as weak, the fear of being removed from an A-team, the fear of being removed from Special Forces, the fear of being ostracized, the fear of being thought of as a coward, the fear of being discharged from the U.S. Army, the fear of personal distress and the loss of security clearances and job opportunities. The study supports that, of those with PTSD symptoms, only about half will seek treatment due to the stigma attached to PTSD in the military.

MOAA has partnered with the Real Warrior campaign to combat the stigma associated with PTSD and other traumas. Read the full article on the University of the Rockies study in Medical News Today, or visit the Real Warrior campaign Web site for 24 hour assistance, or resources for yourself or someone you know.

Talk about dedication to a cause!

Long-time MOAA member David Mackovjak cycled from Silverdale, WA to Virginia Beach, VA last summer to raise funds and awareness for the Boys and Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound and the Wounded Warrior Project. He and his two twin sons, both 16 at the time, made up the Riding4Hope team.

The Riding4Hope cycling team departed Silverdale, WA on June 28th and arrived in Virginia Beach, VA on August 9th. They averaged 100 miles a day over the course of our journey across America. The idea for the 3,900+ mile journey was conceived two years ago while they were participating in a five day Boy Scout Troop 1506 bike trip in the San Juan Islands, WA.

During the cross country ride, they stopped at five local Boys & Girls Clubs along the way to talk to the youth about the importance of staying healthy and being involved in physical activities. Their trip also included stops at four different military installation (Army, Navy & Air Force) to raise awareness for the Wounded Warrior Project.

The Riding4Hope cycling team raised over $12,000 for these two non-profit organizations and continue to use their abilities to improve the communities and individuals they serve. Since they have returned to Washington state they have done a number of presentations to local civic and community groups to continue to raise awareness and funds for these charities.

Read more about their extraordinary trip on their Web site Riding4hope.org, or in The Flagship!

(Kind of makes you want to get out there and volunteer for a good cause, doesn’t it?)

In this season of hope and giving the American Red Cross and Pitney Bowes, Inc. have joined forces to invite Americans to “send a touch of home” to United States service members and veterans across the country and abroad. In its third year, the Holiday Mail for Heroes program is an opportunity to share joy and thanks with our service members throughout the holiday season by way of a greeting card.

How Holiday Mail works
We have established an extensive process to ensure all cards sent to our service members are safe and arrive in time for the holidays. Holiday cards will be collected through a unique P.O. Box address from Monday, November 2 through Monday, December 7*.

First, cards from across the nation must be sent to this address:

Holiday Mail for Heroes
P.O. Box 5456
Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456

Every card received will be screened for hazardous materials by Pitney Bowes and distributed to participating Red Cross chapters nationwide. Once the cards arrive at the Red Cross chapters, they are sorted and reviewed by volunteers who then distribute them to service members, their families and veterans in communities across the country.

Please don’t forget to follow these guidelines while preparing your holiday greetings!
Do…

• Sign all cards
• Entitle cards “Dear Service Member, Family or Veteran”
• Limit cards to 15 per person or 50 for school class or business group
• Bundle groups of cards in single, large envelopes

Don’t…

• Send letters
• Include personal information such as home or email addresses
• Use glitter – excessive amounts can aggravate health issues of wounded recipients
• Include inserts of any kind as they must be removed in the screening process

Bees swarm to protect themselves during a move to a new hive location — and the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) plans on using the concept of swarming for more offensive operations.

NAVAIR recently demonstrated autonomous operations of multiple swarms of unmanned air, ground and sea vehicles, unattended ground sensors, video cameras, and other devices.

The operations, conducted at a National Aeronautics and Space Administration facility on Wallops Island, Va., were powered by EdgeFrontier, a platform technology developed by Augusta Systems Inc. of Morgantown, W. Va., which was awarded a $1.3 million contract to test and enhance the intelligent network.

The EdgeFrontier network enables the vehicles and devices to act on their own, in an autonomous manner, based on the data sent from their own swarm or other swarms.

“This capability of managing multiple swarms of unmanned vehicles and sensors is a significant achievement,” says Patrick Esposito, Augusta Systems president and CEO.

He points out that during the demonstration, EdgeFrontier “enhanced real-time information sharing and response by enabling intelligent connectivity among the various unmanned vehicles and other surveillance devices. This integration was more robust than basic networking,” he adds, “as EdgeFrontier supported processing and sharing of data in the field and enabled the unmanned vehicles and other devices to respond to events based upon rules and policies configured within the software.”

In the Wallops Island demonstration, the EdgeFrontier system was used to integrate and normalize data and events and control functions from sensors and cameras on-board Aerosonde Mk3 Vice III small unmanned aircraft systems from AAI Corp., inside unmanned ground vehicles, and in the field with video cameras and unattended ground sensors from Crane Wireless Monitoring Solutions.

EdgeFrontier also created an operator system interface, featuring a map based display, relying on third-party geospatial software, for the real-time viewing of the unmanned vehicle locations and the status, as well as sensor and camera data.

Future military conflicts, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s SWARMS project, will see sensors and small, unmanned vehicles networked into groups that need little or no supervision from humans. The challenge will lie in managing large groups of such swarms.

About the author: Alan M. Petrillo is a Tucson, Ariz., freelance writer who works in a wide variety of fields, writing for national and regional magazines and newspapers. He’s also the author of the historical mystery, Full Moon.