Just like old times.
Amid the ongoing appropriations battle that will play out this month, President Trump has his eye on a significantly increased defense budget for 2027 to build what he calls a "Dream Military."
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In the same flurry of social posts, President Trump also grilled defense contracting executives, calling for limiting their annual compensation to $5 million and saying their pay is "exorbitant and unjustifiable given how slowly these companies are delivering vital Equipment to our Military, and our Allies," according to reporting from Politico. Read the EO here.
The procedural measure, which would still have to face a full vote in the Senate and House, saw a rare rebuke from several members of the president's own party.
The House on Thursday passed three appropriations bills with broad bipartisan support, moving lawmakers closer to avoiding an end-of-month shutdown.
The effects of policies, especially from DOGE, toward federal workers are becoming clearer as the second Trump Administration approaches its one-year mark.
Formerly known as "Bella 1," the Venezuela-linked ship was captured in the North Atlantic Wednesday after weeks of pursuit, officials confirmed.
Additive manufacturing has been formally brought under U.S. defense procurement restrictions, which prohibits the DoD from entering into contracts for specific additive manufacturing machines produced by adversary nations.
As the Pentagon advances efforts to bring more types of companies into the defense industrial base, it will have to contend with more problems related to intellectual property, William C. Greenwalt, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, warned.
The Pentagon is mounting a six-month review of women in ground combat jobs to ensure what it calls the military "effectiveness" of having several thousand female soldiers and Marines in infantry, armor and artillery, according to a memo obtained by NPR.
According to sources, the Project Maven alum is likely to be the next Chief Digital and AI Officer and would be taking over at a time of major focus on AI for the department.
After days of speculation of to what extent the U.S. would be involved in Venezuela following Saturday's surprise military action, Sec. Rubio said "tremendous leverage" from oil lessens the likelihood of seeing troops in the South American country.
By March, 40% of task or delivery orders done through GSA's schedules program or BPA will have to use at least one “acquisition accelerator.” By September, it goes up to 80%.
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A DoD report released to Congress before Christmas calls China's military buildup "historic," estimating that China will nearly double its nuclear arsenal by the end of the decade and add six aircraft carriers by 2035, amid broader concerns about its actions in space and cyberspace.
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The BBC reported just before the new year that China held a military drill named "Justice Mission 2025" in the vicinity of Taiwan simulating the seizure and blockade of the island's key areas. And in President Xi's New Year address, he signaled "reunification" of China is "unstoppable," prolonging simmering tensions, according to Fox News.
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U.S. strategic planners must confront an uncomfortable truth, writes Sean Gorman, co-founder and CEO of Zephr.xyz, in this op-ed: a core pillar of American military and civilian power is far more vulnerable than many assume.
The next frontier of defense is not in the skies or at sea; it is in the cloud, in our data centers and in the invisible flows of information that keep our societies running, says Riccardo Di Blasio, senior vice president at NetApp.
The framework for video streaming could offer a solution to reconcile the right-to-repair debate between the Pentagon and independent contractors, writes John Ustica, president and CEO of Siemens Government Technologies.
Get an in-depth breakdown of the military operation to arrest and extradite the Venezuelan president, "from the aircraft to weapons systems to the hazy legality of it all."
Dr. Padric Hall shares his inspiring journey from being a teen parent in Las Vegas to becoming the chief data officer at the U.S. Naval Forces Central.
Editor's Notes
We’re back! Fortunately nothing major happened while we were out. Right? Except for the small matter of probably the biggest shift in foreign policy since the Bush Doctrine. For months, we knew tensions were rising with Venezuela. There were statements. There was a massive troop buildup. There were actions against drug boats. Yet when the culmination of all of that reached the point that the geopolitical ground slipped, the resulting earthquake was somehow no less shocking. The (flawless from a military perspective) execution of the mission to capture and extradite Nicolás Maduro from his home in Venezuela brought with it a bold assertion from the Trump Administration that the Monroe Doctrine is indeed still very much alive and well, which was quickly followed by a number of insinuations that America will act in this hemisphere with impunity. When you add that to the president’s surprise announcement (that word almost feels too official) that the FY 2027 defense budget should be upped by more than half to an eye-watering $1.5 trillion … and then an immediate follow-on jab at contractors’ salaries, it’s fair to say the demand signals are all over the place. My take, if we can try to see through the cloudy present, is that the administration is solidifying a doctrine of the use of force that makes it much easier, and therefore much more likely, that the military will be employed in shorter spurts and closer to home. As we start out a midterm election year and what could be the last operable year of an all-Republican-controlled government, the budgetary bluster is at the very least a starting position signaling an intention to grow the Pentagon even under a mixed Congress. For businesses in defense and national security that can weather the instability of the current budget fight, the long-term investment opportunities appear—at least nominally—to favor established nontraditionals. To put it more plainly, the future looks a little brighter than the present. My eye for the next few months will be on how our allies respond to the rapidly changing political ground, and conversely how we respond to them.
BTW, if you read nothing else this week, make it the Breaking Defense roll up of the report released to Congress on Chinese military build-up. While our focus shifts closer to home, China is growing, and at some point we will have to reckon with that.
Happy reading.
| Beau Downey, Editor
Oh, and P.S., next week I’m handing over the editor reins to a surprise guest. Stay tuned for more!
The views represented in this commentary are my own and do not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
More In Depth
As the Pentagon takes on major changes to acquisitions, this article does a deep dive on what lessons we should take from Ukraine's battle-tested processes, including some common sense (but no-less-necessary) recommendations.
Callye Keen, host of The Startup Defense, explores the pitfalls of all-too-common "manufacturing theater," cautioning innovators to build proof before capacity.
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The framework establishes a decentralized “hunting license” for more than 2,100 vendors, creating a technical contrast to traditional, large-scale hardware awards.
This hub would combine and expand existing capabilities into a new platform and program office that would "essentially fuse multiple DOD elements that have come to fruition since the late 2010s."
The Air Force revealed the new offices and the "portfolio acquisition executives" who will run them as part of the reforms announced by Sec. Hegseth in November.
Geoffrey Hinton said he’s “more worried” about the risks of AI today than he was two years ago, when he left his post at Google and began speaking freely about the dangers of the fast-developing technology.
After months of gridlock, a compromise bill seeks to end the impasse with reforms meant to address the national security and accountability concerns raised by Senator Joni Ernst, whose objections have stalled the programs’ renewal.
The BUFF is getting a much needed improvement. Seriously, we're going to be flying these things for centuries.
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