The Havok Journal | Military & Veteran News, Commentary, Culture

• The Useless Keep Getting Promoted May 30, 2026
  Author’s Note: This piece is the private-sector sequel to “The Battlefield Is Not a Diversity Workshop,” because apparently the Pentagon didn’t corner the market on confusing virtue confetti with actual competence. Corporate America has been running the same tired magic trick, swapping standards for slogans, leadership for laminated values posters, and achievement for the careful […]
  Tammy Pondsmith
• Firefighters Deal with More Than Just Flames May 30, 2026
  By a Volunteer Firefighter I had been a volunteer firefighter for a few months. I was 16 years old at the time. My father dropped me off at the fire department and I made my way through the door when the alarm went off. It was a medical call, an accidental shooting. It was the […]
  Special Guest
• Morals Under the Gun May 29, 2026
  “Probably all of us have found ourselves in circumstances where our convictions demanded that we speak out for or against certain statements or policies, although we know that by doing so we may anger the group we are with. Such things happen in the councils of government, and they happen on high school sports teams. […]
  Charles Faint
• The Knife-Edge Between Caring and Caring Too Much May 29, 2026
  Editor’s note: This piece is drawn from the author’s Coast Guard correspondence. The dry dock that we endured in the last two months of 2015 was trying. The first patrol of the year, in all honesty, was a mistake and shouldn’t have occurred. This patrol has been an enduring anticlimax. It has been sort of […]
  K.C. Aud
• The Navy Needs Its Veterans Back May 29, 2026
  By Bruce D. Kowal The Proposal in Brief This is a proposal to create a United States Navy Auxiliary, a volunteer organization of U.S. Navy veterans, to boost Navy outreach, assist local Navy Talent Acquisition Groups (NTAGs), support the Department of Veterans Affairs, and partner with FEMA in disaster response. The organizational structure would be […]
  Special Guest