Soldiers carry American flags onto the field before the NFL game between the New England Patriots and the Miami Dolphins on Sunday in Foxborough, Mass. | Military Times >>

Today’s Top Stories

Among the highly skilled and elite ranks of military explosive ordnance disposal technicians — the men and women who have been on the front line of the war on terror since Sept. 11, 2001 — suicide is a growing concern. | Military Times >>

Richard Delgado, a Marine Corps veteran and director of the military affairs office, said Tuesday that a greater awareness of military-connected culture and life has paid off in practical ways. | Stars and Stripes >>

Critics of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump are saying his promises to reap big savings through small cuts to nondefense federal spending could have a disastrous effect on Veterans Affairs funding over the next decade. | Military Times >>

Iraq and Afghanistan

President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi will strategize about the upcoming offensive to take back the northern city of Mosul when they meet on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. | ABC News >>

Officials in Afghanistan said Monday an American air attack has killed at least eight policemen in a volatile central province. The police personnel were guarding a security outpost on a main highway outside Tarin Kot, the provincial capital of Uruzgan, on Sunday evening, regional Highway Police Commander Samunwal Rahimullah Khan told VOA. | Voice of America >>

The pilots stared ahead at the night sky, their eyes scanning an expanse of black that was interrupted by the glittering outlines of northern Iraq’s cities and towns. | Los Angeles Times >>

Military Affairs

The US Air Force plans to shrink its total air asset inventory by 235 planes over the next five years, a net drop largely driven by standing down legacy fighter aircraft as the F-35 joint strike fighter comes online.An analysis by analytics firm Avascent of the Air Force’s most recent budget submission, which covers fiscal years 2017 through 2021, showed that the Air Force plans to divest 232 T-38 trainers, 166 A-10 Warthogs and 160 F-16s over the next five years, while adding 185 F-35s. | Defense News >>

The Defense Department will give Northrop Grumman San Diego at least $88 million to develop and test better computer systems for Navy warfighters, including the kind of software that detects and fights cyberattacks.| San Diego Union-Tribune >>

The Air Force’s next stealth bomber will be called the Raider. The aircraft’s name, announced Monday at the Air Force Association’s Air Space Cyber conference in National Harbor, Maryland, hearkens back to one of the service’s most storied moments: the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in World War II, the first raid on the Japanese homeland. | Air Force Times >>

#VetsRising

Event organizers say 16 hunters came out to hunt for some birds in Dunn County. Event organizers say this hunt gives the veterans a chance to come out and have a mini-getaway. | WEAU >>

A retired Army veteran from North Andover has actually done it, but you probably don’t know him. Justin D’Addario is the founder of “Rock ‘N Roll Uganda,” a school that teaches impoverished young people to play the guitar for free. D’Addario is a retired Army combat engineer whose tour in Iraq and Afghanistan was cut short by a roadside bomb on Thanksgiving Day in 2009. | WCVB >>

Glastonbury native Michael Hawley never saw himself as an artist or photographer, but after joining the army and serving in the Iraq War in 2003, things changed. A three-week, anxiety-driven waiting period in Alaska – while waiting to hear if he would be re-deployed – made him question if he was not suffering from PTSD.| Hartford Courant >>