Defense news

• OPM proposes requiring all feds to sign an NDA

  26-05-2026 23:56 via defenseone.com
  
  The Office of Personnel Management is set to propose requiring all federal employees to sign a nondisclosure agreement barring them from divulging “confidential” information in most cases, a move that experts warn violate workers’ First Amendment rights and statutes aimed at protecting whistleblowers from retaliation.OPM announced its plan in a filing set for publication in the Federal Register Wednesday. In justifying the requirement, officials cited reporting in Government Ex
  
  Read more

• Lawmakers demand answers about $620M Pentagon loan to firm tied to Trump Jr.

  04-06-2026 03:35 via defenseone.com
  
  A group of lawmakers demanded answers from the White House this week following a ProPublica investigation revealing that a top aide to the president intervened to secure a $620 million Pentagon loan to a startup linked to the president’s eldest son.ProPublica’s reporting “reveals a staggering level of corruption and influence peddling that superseded this process, enriching the President’s son at the expense of U.S. national security and taxpayer dollars,”
  
  Read more

• Trump strips civil-service protections from thousands of feds

  03-06-2026 22:13 via defenseone.com
  
  Some 8,000 career federal workers will be stripped of civil-service protections under a Wednesday executive order to convert their jobs into at-will employment.President Trump's edict marks the culmination of a years-long push to make it easier to fire federal employees in “policy-related” jobs by removing them from the federal government’s competitive service and placing them in a new job category, initially called Schedule F and now referred to as Schedule Poli
  
  Read more

• Trump's choice of acting intel chief threatens fragile surveillance-powers deal

  03-06-2026 18:55 via defenseone.com
  
  President Donald Trump’s decision to name William Pulte as acting director of national intelligence is threatening a fragile Senate deal to extend a contentious surveillance authority.On Tuesday, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., asked Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to press the White House to reverse the appointment of Pulte, who has no national-security background but does have a record of targeting Trump’s political adv
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• New bill aims to regulate military uses of AI

  02-06-2026 20:15 via defenseone.com
  
  A new bill would restrict the Pentagon’s use of AI in operations and heavily regulate its use on fully-autonomous weapons, for domestic surveillance, and with nuclear weapons. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., announced “The Secure and Accountable Military AI Act” on Tuesday. Other lawmakers have not joined the legislation, and her office confirmed she plans to offer elements of the bill as amendments to the Senate’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act.&
  
  Read more

• Trump signs business-friendlier version of AI executive order

  02-06-2026 19:02 via defenseone.com
  
  Federal agencies must expand oversight of advanced AI systems under a cybersecurity-focused artificial intelligence executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Tuesday, the administration’s latest attempt to foster innovation while addressing fears of AI-enabled cyber attacks.The directive orders less federal oversight of AI models than an proposed version that was scuttled two weeks ago after industry complaints of overregulation.The order encour
  
  Read more

• Trump appoints housing official to be acting director of national intelligence

  02-06-2026 16:26 via defenseone.com
  
  President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is appointing Federal Housing Finance Agency director William Pulte to serve as acting director of national intelligence, replacing outgoing director Tulsi Gabbard.The choice is unusual for the nation’s top spy official, who would oversee the CIA, NSA, and 16 more intelligence agencies. Also unusual: Pulte will keep his job at FHFA and his chairmanship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Trump said in a Truth Social post. Pulte, wh
  
  Read more

• Desert e-bike race ‘the perfect’ place to test military-vehicle AI

  02-06-2026 07:29 via defenseone.com
  
  Pilot Racing, a team in the upcoming Baja 1000 dirt-bike race will bring a special advantage: AI that prescribes when a rider should pit, long before the need becomes obvious.The thousand-mile trek through California and Mexico is “the perfect” environment to test GDIT’s logistics-and-maintenance AI before it heads off to rough and disconnected battlefields, a company representative said. GDIT is teaming with AWS on Project Celerity, an AI-enabled platform for managin
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Thanks largely to robots, Ukraine is now talking about winning, not just surviving

  02-06-2026 06:20 via defenseone.com
  
  PRAGUE, Czech Republic–A small but growing number of European officials and analysts are saying what four years ago was unthinkable: Ukraine isn’t just surviving its grueling war with Russia, it is in some ways thriving and may even be on a path to victory.This isn’t yet captured in headlines—for example, about last weekend’s barrage of Russian drones and missiles around Ukraine—but in the details, like how some 90 percent were intercepted.Several long-term tr
  
  Read more

• Ready, fire, aim: Pentagon cut workforce with little analysis before or since

  01-06-2026 22:48 via defenseone.com
  
  Pentagon leaders cut their department’s workforce by more than 10 percent with little regard for the effects—and still has no plans to assess them, according to a congressional watchdog report released on Friday. The department shed 78,000 civilian employees in 2025 through a mix of voluntary resignations, involuntary layoffs, and a hiring freeze that resulted in nearly 60,000 fewer new hires than in recent years.“But we found that DOD didn’t consistently analyze the
  
  Read more

• The Navy wants next-generation munitions, so it’s spending millions on innovation hubs

  01-06-2026 22:41 via defenseone.com
  
  Updated: June 2.Replenishing munitions stockpiles doesn’t end with simply producing more of them. There are persistent challenges with mixing, manufacturing, integrating and discovering new energetic materials—the chemical compounds that make up explosives, propellants, and munitions. On Thursday, the Navy broke ground on a new facility to help. The Maryland Energetics Innovation Hub is meant to furnish lab space where companies can test new tech, such as high-performance comput
  
  Read more

• Q&A with SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Frank Donovan

  30-05-2026 03:07 via defenseone.com
  
  Until recently, Gen. Frank Donovan ran the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, the white-hot center of the Pentagon’s drive for affordable mass and battlefield robots. Now he’s in charge of U.S. Southern Command, which is working hard to put the DAWG’s products to use. Defense One sat down with Donovan during SOF Week in Tampa. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.Q: You’re an expert in autonomous warfare, as a former leader of the DAWG—for which a ne
  
  Read more

• Cyber Force? Senator pushes to create service branch under the Army

  29-05-2026 22:19 via defenseone.com
  
  A new cyber-focused military service branch would sit under the Army if one senator’s proposal comes to fruition. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is spearheading a markup amendment to the Senate’s 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that would create a “Cyber Force” as the next armed service branch. The senator’s office confirmed that the amendment proposes to establish the branch under the Army, just as the Space Force and Marine Corps sit under the Air F
  
  Read more

• Software patches from Army hackathon going straight to troops in CENTCOM

  29-05-2026 20:22 via defenseone.com
  
  Engineers from top defense contractors have spent days behind their laptops at Fort Carson, Colo., coding up ways to enable weapons, sensors, and command-and-control systems developed independently to share information.Dubbed Project Jailbreak, the effort is part of the Army’s first hackathon to integrate its many proprietary software programs. Some of the fixes have already been pushed to deployed troops, according to the Army’s chief technology officer.“A couple of the softwa
  
  Read more

• Data brokers are helping enemies target US troops. The Pentagon must step up, lawmakers say

  29-05-2026 19:10 via defenseone.com
  
  Adversaries have used commercially available location data to target U.S. servicemembers in war zones, a bipartisan group of lawmakers revealed Thursday. In a letter to Pentagon CIO Kirsten Davies, 14 members of Congress — led by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C. — warned that the department “has not taken basic steps to protect U.S. military personnel from the serious counterintelligence and force protection threat posed by the collection and sale
  
  Read more

• Army’s data-merging cell needs a few years to untangle the mess

  28-05-2026 21:20 via defenseone.com
  
  ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Maryland—Much has been made of the new systems the Army is bringing online as part of its Continuous Transformation efforts, but getting old systems into shape is also part of the effort. In a small office space at Combat Capabilities Development Command, a group of 25 soldiers and civilian engineers, on loan from local units, is fielding requests from across the service to make its many data systems talk to each other.The pilot Army Data Operations Center, launche
  
  Read more

• Iran war needs an inspector general, senator notes

  28-05-2026 21:01 via defenseone.com
  
  A Democratic senator on Thursday requested that an inspector general oversight body designate one of the agency watchdogs to spearhead reviews of the ongoing war in Iran, citing a requirement in federal statute. In her letter, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., pointed to a provision in the U.S. Code mandating that the chair of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency tap an IG to head oversight of a military “overseas contingency operation that exceeds 60 days.”
  
  Read more

• The Navy used drones to sink a retired warship

  28-05-2026 19:03 via defenseone.com
  
  A U.S. warship used aerial and maritime drones to help sink a decommissioned frigate last fall, Fourth Fleet officials have confirmed, adding that the experience is now shaping how the Navy will go into future battles.On or about Sept. 28, somewhere in the Fourth Fleet’s slice of the Atlantic Ocean, the littoral combat ship Cooperstown launched four unmanned aerial vehicles and one unmanned surface vessel against the former USS Simpson, a Perry-class guided missile frigate that was until r
  
  Read more

• How the Pentagon plans to spend $50 billion on drone warfare

  28-05-2026 10:44 via defenseone.com
  
  CAMP ATTERBURY, Indiana—A countdown began as a gaggle of defense officials, soldiers, drone makers, and reporters watched screens in a windowless operations center. Suddenly, a LUCAS drone appeared, moving at rocket speed and showing off a new low-level capability before it crashed through a cement structure on the test range. It was a vivid demonstration of just how quickly the FLM-136 drone is evolving—and of how swiftly Pentagon leaders want to spend the $50 billion they have requ
  
  Read more

• Defense Business Brief: Defense cyber champs?; HASC mark; Navy IW

  27-05-2026 23:29 via defenseone.com
  
  Cyber threats are an increasingly persistent national security concern supercharged by AI—and so is the industry built to help hospitals, financial institutions, and the Pentagon secure their networks. But unlike the defense industrial base overall, there’s no clear prime. Could that change with venture capital?Joe Lin, co-founder and CEO of the VC-backed cyber firm Twenty, said private capital isn’t pouring into cybersecurity at the same rate as other defense tech areas in par
  
  Read more

• Defense Business Brief: Cyber force, outlined; Shipbuilding game; USMC’s JLTV plea

  27-05-2026 23:29 via defenseone.com
  
  The military could stand up a separate service branch to handle cyber operations by 2028— should Congress or the White House decide to do so this year, according to a new Center for Strategic and International Studies report released Wednesday. “Regardless of institutional alignment, reaching initial operating capacity (IOC) would take between 12 and 18 months and proceed through several sequential phases: setting conditions; fielding the IOC; iterative growth over several years
  
  Read more

• House draft of defense policy bill leaves some of Trump admin’s top priorities unfunded

  27-05-2026 22:46 via defenseone.com
  
  An initial draft of the annual defense policy bill shows the House is still banking on billions of yet-to-be-approved funds for the Trump administration’s top military priorities.The HASC chairman’s mark of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act released on Tuesday detailed $1.15 trillion in baseline defense spending. But the Pentagon has asked for $1.5 trillion. To fully fund administration efforts like Golden Dome, shipbuilding, and a crucial munitions build-up, Congress would
  
  Read more

• Iran’s hackers are coordinating more closely: Israeli cyber leader

  27-05-2026 21:42 via defenseone.com
  
  Iran’s state-backed hackers are sharing more cyber tools and using AI to polish disinformation and recruitment messages since the U.S. and Israel launched their war on the country, Israel’s top cyberdefense official said in an interview with Nextgov.Yossi Karadi, who leads Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, also said on Tuesday that he is pressing major AI labs for controlled access to powerful models like Anthropic’s Mythos, arguing that governments need the same
  
  Read more

• HASC still waiting for updated E-7 Wedgetail funding request

  27-05-2026 03:23 via defenseone.com
  
  The House Armed Services Committee has not received a budget amendment to fund the E-7 Wedgetail, though the Defense Department recently reversed course and promised to support the next-generation radar plane. Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told House lawmakers that the Pentagon would amend its $1.5 trillion budget request to include Wedgetail—which had been zeroed out in favor of space-based systems. Last week, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told House lawmakers t
  
  Read more

• The military says it’s ready to ‘fight tonight’ in the Pacific. Can it sustain that fight?

  25-05-2026 00:41 via defenseone.com
  
  WAIKIKI, Hawaii—Having the “right stuff at the right place at the right time” in the Pacific theater is “a little bit of a maths problem,” says U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s strategy director for logistics and engineering.“Hawaii is 3,000 miles from the West Coast. Guam is 5,000 miles from Hawaii, and the first island chain”—which includes Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines—“is 1,500 miles from Guam,” Brig. Gen. Jim Bliss of t
  
  Read more

• Smaller, easier, smarter: what special operators want from AI

  24-05-2026 10:37 via defenseone.com
  
  TAMPA, Florida—U.S. special operators want AI tools that offer the power of giant data centers out on the disconnected front lines.SOF units already use generative AI “heavily” for things like resource allocation and force deployment, and are “delving” into its use for tactical operations, said Rob McClintock, the program manager for intelligence for the program executive office for digital applications.But today’s tools typically run in the cloud, connected t
  
  Read more

• Space Force needs to prepare for an ‘in-person’ moon conflict with China, new report argues

  23-05-2026 14:00 via defenseone.com
  The Space Force should prepare to put active-duty troops on the moon and on space stations to counter China’s lunar and military ambitions, a new research paper argues.The Mitchell Institute’s paper, published Thursday, calls for the Space Force to prioritize the creation of a “human spaceflight” program and redefine federal, active-duty Title 10 orders to compete against China’s military-focused space initiatives—such as the reported goal of putting its Taiko
  
  Read more

• The Pentagon’s $54 billion bet on autonomous warfare

  22-05-2026 20:59 via defenseone.com
  The Pentagon announced the Replicator Initiative with fanfare in 2023, aiming to field vast numbers of affordable, expendable drones as a strategic counter to China. However, by 2025, the program was limping along due to congressional criticism over stalled progress and the absence of a permanent institutional home or consistent funding.The Pentagon officially dissolved Replicator in late 2025, absorbing it into the newly minted Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, or DAWG. Orig
  
  Read more

• Loitering munitions, launched effects had strong presence at SOF Week 2026

  22-05-2026 20:16 via breakingdefense.com
  “The [Rogue 1] Block 2 upgrade leverages user feedback to greatly enhance performance, resilience, and operational capability, all while maintaining existing form-factor,” a Teledyne FLIR statement read.
  
  Read more

• Gabbard to resign as director of national intelligence, citing husband’s health

  22-05-2026 20:08 via defenseone.com
  Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard will resign from her role in the coming weeks, her office confirmed to Nextgov/FCW on Friday.Gabbard’s husband, Abraham Williams, was “diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer, and she is stepping away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” Olivia Coleman, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in an email.In a Truth Social post that included Gabbard
  
  Read more

Follow @Defense_news_us on Twitter!