A joint US and Afghan investigation into the Koran burning incident at a U.S. military base outside Kabul late last month is now complete, Pentagon Spokesman Capt. John Kirby told reporters Tuesday.

Capt. Kirby said there has been no decision to make the report public, but the U.S. is satisfied with its results, he said.

According to Kirby the report found that "the disposal of religious texts was improper, but not an act of religious malice." He said the report also found that there were written notes inside these books.

Fox News previously reported prisoners were using the Korans at the detention center's library to pass extremist messages.

The investigation also recommends the alleged offenders be considered for potential disciplinary action.

The U.S. military has yet to complete its own investigation into the matter.

Fox News has learned that on Thursday at around 10:00 a.m. the military's Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) shut down access to the internet and blackberry service while they work to fix an unspecified problem. This means no one in the Pentagon has internet and many military downrange, to include combatant commands, don't have internet either.

DISA, according to its website, is a Defense Department agency that provides command and control support to national-level leaders and joint-war fighters "across the full spectrum of operations." The agency sent out a network wide notification this morning via email explaining that "users are experiencing problems browsing the internet due to a DISA-wide outage." As a result, the memo said, "ALL Blackberry, email web-browsing, and VPN services are affected."

People we spoke with in the Pentagon are still able to use e-mail on their computers, but were unable to access the internet. (read more)

Following his long-awaited announcement detailing a proposal for massive defense spending cuts and an overall reduction in military personnel, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta revealed his list of the risks and the most pressing threats to America's security.

"This is going to be tough," Panetta told reporters Thursday. "Obviously it will be a smaller force, and when you have a smaller force there are risks associated with that in terms of our capability to respond."

So in the near future where will the world’s strongest military need to respond?

Panetta says there's a long list of potential problems. Among his top concerns, he says, are: the ongoing war in Afghanistan; the threat of terrorism; the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan; Yemen; a nuclear-capable Iran; a nuclear-capable North Korea; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; turmoil in the Middle East, and the potential for cyber warfare.

The U.S. military's ground forces, specifically the Army and Marines are slated to lose nearly 100,000 troops. The Army will shrink to 490,000 troops down from the current 562,000. The Marines will shrink by 20,000, down to 182,000.

But retired Maj. Gen. Bob Scales says the Pentagon is ignoring the lessons of history. (read more)

President Barack Obama will make a rare visit to the Pentagon Thursday morning when he rolls out the new military strategy tied to deep cuts in military spending over the next 10 years.

Officials in the Pentagon say it's the first time any president will address reporters in the Pentagon briefing room.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t plan on taking questions.

He'll leave that to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Martin Dempsey, two men he has worked closely with to devise this new approach to countering worldwide threats.  "But ultimately," as one senior defense official put it, "it's the president's strategy."

"He was heavily involved in the military strategy," this official said, adding the president also met in recent weeks with every Combatant Commander to review it.

The new strategy is based purely around the roughly $490 billion in cuts to the defense budget over 10 years that Congress decided on last summer.  According to those familiar with the report, the future U.S. military will have the ability to fight only one major land war at a time.  Any addition battles would have to be fought primarily from the sea and air. (read more)

The Pentagon says it will have to eliminate major military programs including ground-based nuclear missiles and the next generation of fighter jets if Congress makes further military cuts.

In a letter to Sen. John McCain written on November 14, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta compiled a list of crucial military programs that would be on the chopping block should the congressional Super Committee tasked with finding government-wide savings fail to reach an agreement, triggering an automatic cutting process known as "sequestration."

The sequestration process would cut as much as $600 billion from the Defense Department over 10 years. That figure would be added to $450 billion in cuts that have already been made, totaling more than $1 trillion.

"Facing such large reductions, we would have to reduce the size of the military sharply," Panetta wrote. "Rough estimates suggest after 10 years of these cuts, we would have the smallest ground force since 1940, the smallest number of ships since 1915, and the smallest Air Force in its history." (read more)

House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., and Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., who chairs the Military Personnel subcommittee have written a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asking him to delay the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell on Sept. 20 because certain regulations regarding benefits to same sex couples have not been revised.

Mr. Secretary, we trust that you will see the risk of moving forward with repeal without giving service members and their leaders adequate time to study, understand and prepare themselves to implement the revised policies and regulations they will need to be successful," the letter reads.

The pair also requests that the Defense Department share with the committee the service chiefs and the views of senior military leaders in memoranda form, a request that has been denied by the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the past.

"The Department is not ready to implement the repeal because all the policies and regulations necessary for the transition are not yet final," the letter that's dated Sept. 12 reads. "We would ask that the senior military leaders' memoranda immediately be made public and transmitted to the Committee on Armed Services."

Despite the letter, the Pentagon intends to implement the policy on Sept. 20 as originally planned. (read more)

Two planes carrying the remains of U.S. service members killed in Saturday's Chinook helicopter crash in Afghanistan have landed at Dover Air Force Base this morning and president Obama canceled his schedule to travel to Dover and pay respect to the 30 U.S. service members killed of Saturday's chopper crash in Afghanistan.

Military officials say a rocket-propelled grenade took the Chinook down in Afghanistan's Wardak Province, killing all those aboard. It was the deadliest incident for American forces since the war began in 2001. Among the victims were 22 Navy SEALs, Air Force troops and an Army air crew.

"Their loss is a stark reminder of the risks that our men and women in uniform take every single day on behalf of their county," Obama said of the fallen soldiers. "Day after day, night after night, they carry out missions like this in the face of enemy fire and grave danger."

President Obama canceled a visit to Springfield, Va. to make the trip to Dover which is the home of the largest military mortuary for fallen Americans. It's his second unannounced trip to the base for a dignified transfer since becoming president. The last time he visited Dover was in October, 2009.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen are also attending Tuesday's ceremony at Dover. (read more)

House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., told Fox News Tuesday that he rejects the deficit reduction plan proposed by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., because it calls for more than $800 billion in defense budget cuts over the next decade.

"$800 billion cuts in defense - there is no way I can support that," McKeon said.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a fiscal hawk and member of the Senate's so-called Gang of Six calls for same amount in defense cuts. But he bases a majority of his defense cuts on raising the amount of health care premiums paid by retired veterans. But McKeon says the military is too vital to make massive defense cuts.

"Looking forward, looking back, going forward what missions would you like to eliminate from the military that they are performing right now? Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, relief efforts in Japan, the relief efforts in Pakistan, the flood, Haiti? All of these things the military are called upon to do, and then we take away all the resources," he said.

And McKeon pointed to the toll those missions have taken on military members and their families, arguing their benefits shouldn't take a major cut.

"[W]e've been at war now for 10 years. We have people who have six or seven deployments," he said. "It's caused great stress on their families and people at home. We've lost many of our young people, young men and women and there's been a tremendous stress put on them." (read more)

Fox News has confirmed with military officials that the White House plans to award the Medal of Honor to another living recipient. This time the highest award for valor will go to Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer for his heroic actions in Afghanistan on Sept. 8, 2009. He's credited with running into the "kill zone" to recover the bodies of 4 fallen comrades under intense fire.

"I feel the furthest thing from a hero," Meyer said in an interview with the Marine Corps Times. "I went in there to do a job and the way I viewed it is that I let those guys down."

Meyer's story is one of extreme heroism and bravery, but unlike the stories behind the only other two living medal of honor recipients from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, his does not have as much of a happy ending. Meyer and his fellow service members were able to recover the bodies of their comrades, but they were unable to save their lives.

"[T]he award would be for them and for the corps ... and for marines that didn't get recognized because there wasn't enough witnesses," Meyer added. That's what it would be for."

Meyer has since left the Marine Corps and shows signs of war fatigue. In the Marine Corps Times interview, he says it's still very difficult to talk about the events of that September day in Afghanistan. (read more)

As the Defense Department weighs spending needs in the face of a budget crunch, a bipartisan group of Senators is urging Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to clean up schools on U.S. military bases that are reportedly falling apart from leaks, corrosion, and mold, not to mention the pressures of overcrowding and a reliance on temporary facilities.

The Department of Defense estimates it will cost $3.7 billion through 2016 to bring 134 of its schools to a "fair" or "good" standing in its self-developed ranking system. The Senators said in a letter sent Monday they want Panetta to make the repairs a "high priority."

"Our military children should have educational facilities that enhance their learning, not facilities that cause distractions from learning or present real or potential hazards." wrote Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., co-chairs of the Senate Military Family Caucus.

Defense department schools are run by the DoDEA or Department of Defense Education Activity, a civilian agency that oversees all schools on U.S. military bases. More than 86,000 students attend 192 DoDEA schools in 12 foreign countries, 7 U.S. states, Guam, and Puerto Rico.

At the start of the 2010-2011 school year, the DoDEA reported that 70 percent of its schools were considered "poor" or "failing." That's a slight improvement from the 2009 DoDEA report the Senators quoted in their letter that 79 percent of schools were considered "poor" or "failing." (read more)