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It was just a few short days before Halloween in 2012. Petty Officer 2nd Class Scott Bourque was stationed in Japan and had just received his mail-in absentee ballot for the presidential election. He knew it would be nearly impossible to fill it out and mail it back in time to be counted by Arizona election officials on Nov. 6.

Tribes in Arizona and New Mexico are sharing in more than $1.1 million in federal funding to help address homelessness among veterans.

The Veterans' Administration hospital in Tucson will soon become the fourth in the country to hold special clinic hours for transgender patients.

A group of Arizona veterans have written to state republicans calling on state Sen. Jeff Dial to release his full military records or face an ethics investigation after he made comments about not remembering his rank at discharge and other details about his service.

Lawmakers reacted angrily this week to reports that the Department of Veterans Affairs may have known about problems at its Phoenix health care facilities years before they came to light this spring.

Arizona state agencies have received enough military equipment from the Department of Defense’s program 1033 to outfit a small country, and have more armored vehicles and military helicopters than 20 of them.

The Veterans Affairs Department said Monday it has reached financial settlements with three employees who faced retaliation after filing whistleblower complaints about the troubled Phoenix VA hospital.

The Marine Corps’ website refers to the bayonet as a Marine’s multipurpose fighting knife and the weapon of choice when shots can’t be fired. Since 2012, several law enforcement agencies in Arizona have acquired 447 bayonets in all through a federal program that distributes surplus military equipment.

Police departments at Arizona State University and community colleges in Tucson and Yuma have acquired 79 fully automatic M-16 assault rifles and nine older M-14 rifles under a Department of Defense program that distributes surplus weapons to local agencies throughout the country.

A 20-member Arizona Army National Guard unit is headed to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.