Defense news

• No decision made on second round of reconciliation for defense: OMB director

  07-12-2025 00:42 via breakingdefense.com
  Whether another temporary multi-billion-dollar add on is in the Pentagon’s future, Russel Vought attempt to assuage concerns, saying, “There will not be a hole” in the defense budget.
  
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• Pentagon would have to explain future JAG firings under NDAA provision

  08-12-2025 18:44 via defenseone.com
  Nearly a year after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth purged the top judge advocates general of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, lawmakers are poised to require an explanation if it happens again.A provision in the compromise version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act would require the defense secretary to provide Congress with notice and a reason for the removal soon after a top JAG’s dismissal.“If the Judge Advocate General is removed from office before the end of the term &
  
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• The D Brief: Higher spending on the way?; Anti-boat effort’s lopsided costs; Security-strategy reax; Navy’s next frigate program; And a bit more.

  08-12-2025 17:04 via defenseone.com
  Last summer’s $156 billion defense spending boost through the reconciliation bill is likely “only just the beginning,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told an audience at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California on Saturday.“We need a revived defense industrial base. We need those capabilities. We need them yesterday. And so, resource-wise, I think this room will be encouraged by what we'll see soon. But I don't want to get too ahead,” Hegseth said in his keyn
  
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• ‘No warehouses anymore’: Ukrainian troops get drone deliveries to the front

  08-12-2025 13:00 via breakingdefense.com
  “For those who believe it’s about technology, I tell you the solution is about human capital and processes,” Marco Criscuolo, NATO’s acting head of strategy and policy, told the conference.
  
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• And just like that, the Navy’s frigate program is back on—sort of

  08-12-2025 08:36 via defenseone.com
  SIMI VALLEY, California.—The White House has greenlit a plan to design and build a frigate domestically as part of its proposed “Golden Fleet,” Navy Secretary John Phelan announced at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday.President Donald Trump “has signed off on what we are calling the Golden Fleet…We will continue to build ships that are the cornerstones of the fleet—carriers, destroyers, amphibs, submarines. But we need new ships and we need modern
  
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• Compromise NDAA released with bigger topline, funding for F/A-XX

  08-12-2025 02:14 via breakingdefense.com
  The NDAA language comes in around $8 billion over what the Pentagon requested.
  
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• Hegseth hints at higher defense budgets as OMB says another reconciliation bill is possible

  07-12-2025 22:18 via defenseone.com
  SIMI VALLEY, California—Last summer’s $156 billion one-time boost for defense spending through the reconciliation bill is likely “only just the beginning,” the defense secretary said on Saturday.“The President has said, and continues to say, he's committed to rebuilding the military, and that requires spending, and substantial spending,” Pete Hegseth said during his keynote address at the Reagan National Defense Forum Saturday. “Just this week, and I was
  
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• From Hegseth to the Hill, defense budget talk at the Reagan National Defense Forum

  07-12-2025 21:22 via breakingdefense.com
  Catch up on highlights from the high-powered event in California.
  
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• Sinking speedboats with a supercarrier: the lopsided cost of Operation Southern Spear

  07-12-2025 14:00 via defenseone.com
  Wars have long been weighed by their expenditure of “blood and treasure”—their human and financial costs. Indeed, Donald Trump has long used the phrase as a metric to judge the wisdom of deploying U.S. forces, dating to his 2013 critiques of the war in Afghanistan. Now Trump has launched his own military operation in which the United States is outspending its opponent by several orders of magnitude. History suggests that a decision point is coming soon: escalate or go home.Deba
  
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• Hegseth endorses National Security Strategy, outlines military priorities focused on the West

  07-12-2025 00:55 via breakingdefense.com
  “We will instead put our nation’s practical, concrete interests first,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. “We will deter war. We will advance our interests. We will defend our people. Peace is our goal.” 
  
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• ‘It’s alive’: Biden-era Replicator drone initiative lives on as DAWG, looking at bigger UASs

  06-12-2025 23:35 via breakingdefense.com
  Renamed the Defense Autonomous Working Group, the drone initiative is now conducting wargames and working on larger, longer-ranged attack drones, Adm. Sam Paparo and Pentagon CTO Emil Michael said.
  
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• Congress eyes $8B boost over Trump’s Pentagon budget in NDAA

  06-12-2025 22:11 via breakingdefense.com
  Rep. Adam Smith, the House Armed Services Committee’s ranking Democrat, said Congress is aiming to release a compromise defense authorization bill in the next 24 hours.
  
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• Navy’s Caudle: F/A-XX fighter decision needs to come ‘quickly’

  06-12-2025 22:05 via breakingdefense.com
  “My job is to pressurize that decision, because the war fighting imperative, I think, is there, and and I’m trying to build a compelling case to get that decision made quickly,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said.
  
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• Army stands up Western Hemisphere Command as new strategies highlight domestic operations

  05-12-2025 21:50 via defenseone.com
  The Army’s push to reduce headquarters and general officer positions made more progress Friday with the activation of U.S. Army Western Hemisphere Command, which will replace Army Forces Command and eventually absorb  U.S. Army North and U.S. Army South.The new command will take on FORSCOM’s mission of preparing troops for deployment and combine it with Army North’s experience in supporting civil authorities and Army South’s expertise in working with allies across th
  
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• Army will seek new airborne jammer, lightweight ground EW in 2026

  05-12-2025 21:24 via breakingdefense.com
  “Once you emit, you are a target,” warned Laurence Mixon, the senior civilian in Army Intelligence, Electronic Warfare, & Sensors (IEWS).
  
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• Intelligence community should monitor supply chains, says new natsec strategy

  05-12-2025 21:00 via defenseone.com
  The U.S. intelligence community should monitor global supply chains as part of a sweeping goal to decouple the nation’s economy from foreign adversaries and advance American economic interests, according to the Trump administration's newly published National Security Strategy.Published late on Thursday, the 33-page strategy document adds to Trump administration direction to federal agencies to treat economic policy as a national-security matter.U.S. spy agencies &l
  
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• Army shakeup will supercharge simulation, training and network ops: STRI chief

  05-12-2025 20:18 via breakingdefense.com
  The reorganization of the Army’s acquisition offices aims to lessen the number of people in charge of requirements and combine offices who already shared some of the same capabilities and missions.
  
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• Poland says US offering 250 used Strykers for $1, with Warsaw prepared to accept

  05-12-2025 19:18 via breakingdefense.com
  US Strykers currently in Europe would be transferred to Poland rather than shipped back to the US following a force reduction on the continent, under a proposed plan.
  
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• Today’s D Brief: New Natsec Strategy; Boat-strike video shows survivors; Russia’s worrisome template; Ukraine’s tech support to the US; And a bit more.

  05-12-2025 19:14 via defenseone.com
  National Security Strategy, releasedThe second Trump administration posted its National Security Strategy to the White House site late Thursday. Read the 33-page document, which is required by Congress but does not necessarily bind future decisions, here.As expected, it puts unprecedented focus on the Americas and immigrants. A section titled “What Do We Want In and From the World?” [formatting in the original] begins: “We want to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reas
  
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• How private capital and allied investment can refill America’s empty shelves

  05-12-2025 18:49 via breakingdefense.com
  A structured Surge Inventory Purchase Vehicle could be the key to ensuring America’s inventory stays stocked and ready for wartime, writes John Ferrari in this op-ed.
  
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• Air Force CISO: You’re thinking about network resilience wrong

  05-12-2025 17:34 via breakingdefense.com
  Rather than getting networks back online quickly after an outage, focus on more on defending the network in the first place, Air Force Chief Information Security Officer Aaron Bishop said.
  
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• Enemy missile defense is more capable so larger, slower tankers/lifters need better protection

  05-12-2025 17:27 via breakingdefense.com
  [Sponsored] High Value Airborne Assets that fighters depend upon are increasingly vulnerable against advanced air defense.
  
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• Navy, Marine Corps pick Dutch company’s design for new island-hopping vessel

  05-12-2025 16:23 via breakingdefense.com
  “We will competitively award a vessel construction manager to oversee the [program], drive execution and facilitate genuine competition among multiple shipyards,” Navy Secretary John Phelan said.
  
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• Ukraine is helping the US catch up with modern warfare—for now

  05-12-2025 09:30 via defenseone.com
  Even as the Pentagon designs new tactics and tech based on lessons from Ukraine—like the new attack drones it is testing—some say the United States is still undervaluing its relationship with Kyiv.​​Take the Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System, or LUCAS, a one-way attack drone modeled on wrecked Russian Shahed-136s recovered by Ukrainian troops. Developed by Arizona-based SpektreWorks, the LUCAS appeared earlier this year in a Pentagon courtyard display of new programs
  
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• Legal experts fail to see justification for continued U.S. military strikes on drug boats.

  05-12-2025 02:26 via defenseone.com
  Legal experts aren’t buying explanations for the U.S. military’s strikes on alleged drug-runners at sea and fear Congress could be swayed by what they say are the Trump administration’s murky legal justifications for continued action.Hours after a classified briefing for Congress on Thursday regarding a Sept. 2 strike that killed two survivors on a Venezuelan drug boat, legal experts speaking at the Center For A New American Security said the administration has failed to make a
  
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• Thailand to acquire Israel’s IAI Barak MX Air Defense System

  04-12-2025 23:32 via breakingdefense.com
  IAI President and CEO Boaz Levy called the deal a “significant milestone for IAI in East Asia, with Thailand being a key and influential country in the region.”
  
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• NRO extends contracts for 4 providers, readies new acquisition approach

  04-12-2025 22:52 via breakingdefense.com
  NRO Deputy Director Maj. Gen. Christopher Povak said that the spysat agency soon will begin using a new commercial contract vehicle with a five-year “rolling” window for bids.
  
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• Pentagon refines zero trust for OT as Air Force treats its bases as frontline targets

  04-12-2025 22:05 via breakingdefense.com
  A zero trust end state is not redundancy or recovery but an infrastructure that never goes down in the first place.
  
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• Hegseth broke rules, DODIG concludes, even though he said Yemen strike details were ‘safe to declassify’

  04-12-2025 21:42 via defenseone.com
  Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the inspector general investigators looking into his alleged use of Signal to share classified strike plans that he determined the details he shared either weren’t classified to begin with or were “safe to declassify,” according to a written statement included in a report released Thursday by the Defense Department’s independent oversight office.Though Hegseth had the authority to make that decision, the IG found he was still in violati
  
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• F-35As inch closer to carrying Meteor missiles after ‘pivotal’ ground tests

  04-12-2025 21:16 via breakingdefense.com
  Italy is sponsoring integration of the ramjet powered weapon on the F-35A, while the UK is leading integration on the F-35B model.
  
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