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The Duffel Brief · the free edition, Monday, Wednesday and Friday

Vol. 15 · No. 133 · Friday, 6 November 2026

Pete Hegseth picks wrong week to stop drinking

Pentagon staffing delays leave secretary sober for worst 48 hours of his career

Pentagon confident U.S. will be ready for 2027 war with China by 2035

Hegseth wears Eisenhower's globe as Halloween costume

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Vol. 15 · No. 133

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Vol. 15 · No. 133 · Deployed worldwide

Friday

6 November 2026

1417 Zulu

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← Front page
Army · Page 4

Army delays Robotic first Sergeant PRC-E8 program

Filed · 1546

The current prototype model of the PRC-E8

ABERDEEN, MD – The commander of the U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Center has officially notified the Pentagon of further delays to an experimental program to deploy robotic First Sergeants to remote outposts in Afghanistan.

Colonel Gordon Graham, who only assumed command of Aberdeen in mid-August, announced on Monday that the Portable Rocker-Chevron Eight, or PRC-E8 program, is still at least six months away from a workable prototype and $20 million over budget.

"At the rate we're going, I think we're going to have trouble just getting the PRC-E8 into service before the planned end of combat operations in 2014," Colonel Graham wrote in an e-mail to Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno.

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