Just like old times.
This week, the U.S. continued its buildup of military assets in the Middle East reminiscent of the 2003 leadup to Iraq. Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts in Geneva led to little progress and increased expectations that operations could commence within days or weeks.
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In a sign of frayed relations with allies, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the U.K. pushed back on U.S. use of two key locations for potential operations against Iran, including the airfield at Diego Garcia—a strategically important foothold in the Indian Ocean. Read more from the War Zone.
After an interesting week of two presidents tacitly ackowledging extraterrestrial life, President Trump surprised everyone by directing his administration to release files related to UAPs.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski is hoping to succeed outgoing Sen. Mitch McConnell as the next chair of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, at a time when the executive branch is calling for massive spending for defense.
Trump officials this week dismissed Democrats' latest proposal to overhaul federal immigration enforcement as "very unserious."
Compared to last year's appearance by Vice President Vance, Sec. Rubio took a more conciliatory tone with European leaders at the Munich Security Conference.
During Dynamic Front, a recent U.S. Army and NATO exercise in Europe, troops used a homegrown AI system to consume and sort data.
Drone makers are lining up to compete for an ambitious Pentagon program where the total value of delivery orders and the number of systems purchased is expected to increase for each phase.
Elon Musk's company is competing in a new Pentagon contest to produce voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarming technology.
The U.S. has changed its attitude on European allies funneling defense funds to local arms industries, and will be "pragmatic" about governments choosing to buy military equipment domestically.
Boeing announced Wednesday that it will shift its Defense, Space and Security headquarters to St. Louis coinciding with a visit from Sec. Hegseth as part of his "Arsenal of Freedom" tour with industry.
Months-long waits for CMMC audits to ensure compliance and confusion over what information needs protection have made meeting higher standards more difficult.
The startup wants assurance that its models will not be used for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance, according to a report from Axios. The Pentagon has threatened to label the company a "supply chain risk," which would force anyone who wants to do business with the U.S. military to cut ties.
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Anthropic has the only AI model currently available in the military's classified systems. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that Anthropic's Claude model, through its partnership with Palantir Technologies, was employed by the U.S. military during operations to arrest Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela. Read about it from the Guardian.
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Feature Commentaries
Criticism of the defense industry is almost a cottage industry inside the Beltway and is impressively varied. Former acting Director of National Intelligence and Senior Advisor at The Eurasia Group Michael P. Dempsey is pushing back.
To remain militarily credible, the U.S. should establish a new branch of the armed forces focused entirely on unmanned systems, argues William J. Rothwell, State College resident and president of Rothwell & Associates, Inc.
Current policy strongly prohibits the Army from ordering small quantities of spare parts with short notice—an Achilles heel for their Abrams tank fleets, argues Col. Michael R. Mai, chief of the Army Working Capital Fund at Army Materiel Command.
See how Wirescreen is turning investigative journalism into a national security intelligence tool, with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist-turned-CEO, David Barboza, and head of go-to-market, Bradley Martinez.
Andy Yakulis is the co-founder and CEO of Vector, a venture-backed defense tech startup building modern warfare capabilities at startup speed for the U.S. military and allied forces.
Editor's Notes
I’m just going to put a pin in the whole ‘possibly acknowledging the existence of extraterrestrial life’ thing this week. I assume we’ll come back to that. I had the chance to attend a DARPA Connect event Thursday hosted at the Harvard of the Midwest—Washington University in St. Louis. Of course, St. Louis was in the news this week as Sec. Hegseth made a pitstop on his ‘Arsenal of Freedom’ tour with industry that coincided with Boeing’s announcement that they’d made the eminently correct decision to bring their defense headquarters back after nearly a decade in Virginia (don’t mind my editorializing as a proud local St. Louisan).
Anyway, the DARPA event was great. It was tailored for new entrants to understand pathways, contracting vehicles, and org structure. And the coffee wasn’t bad either. Walking out, I felt strangely energized after seeing what an organization looks like when it actually institutionalizes and embodies innovation. If you’ve dealt with DARPA, you’ve probably heard the phrase ‘DARPA-hard,’ referring to the particular kind of challenging problem they are looking for. Everyone uses it like a common adjective. They’ll say things like “We we don’t want to double efficiency, we want to 10x or 100x it.” They deal in lower TRLs and are very clear about how far in the process they go to kickstart the impossible, which leads them to an agile contracting posture. As an organization, DARPA views contracting vehicles entirely as a means to an end—a tool to be employed for a result. Are you more comfortable with the FAR? We’ll go for a BAA. Do you need funding faster? Let’s check our toolkit. They pride themselves on speed because it’s necessary for the mission. BTW, I think their record for an award is four days.
DARPA is essentially doing what I’ve heard echoed across government for some time: asking for capabilities, not companies. If they need x, y and z, and you only have x, come back to them when you found someone who has y and z. There is an inherent humility in that approach that strips away the do-it-all mentality you see from some companies … which leads me to the Forbes article in this week’s featured commentaries section called Why Criticism Of The U.S. Defense Industry Misses The Mark by Michael P. Dempsey. He briefly served as acting director of national intelligence before going onto a senior job at Northrup Grumman. The article, to borrow the author’s sentiment, misses the mark. It can best be described as prime apology purposefully contrary to the general wisdom. You say primes don’t innovate, but we put man on the moon! I’m paraphrasing, as he does indeed use "industry," though the meaning here is clear. From the top looking down, his visibility of “new entrants” only goes as far down as the Andurils of the world. And before we beat his straw man too hard, let me just say that we know. America is grateful for the incredible leaps that huge investments and technologies have powered—investments only large companies could have made. The more nuanced take that I don’t think the author is too cynical to understand is that primes are big, but they aren’t agile. They’re engines of scale but often not the birthplace of the disruptive ideas.
We obviously need both sides. The way to mission success is not giving industry [again, read: primes] its due props—it’s reorienting our ecosystem and incentive structures around outcomes, regardless of where they come from. How many times have we heard that we need to tap into the whole of American ingenuity? This is where it starts. I hope DARPA’s attitude of focusing on capabilities irrespective of their origin is indicative of the direction we are heading.
Oh, and if you've at all followed the Ask Sage saga, the Hunterbrook article is a must.
Happy reading this week,
| Beau Downey, Editor
The views represented in this commentary are my own and do not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
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In the latest purging of military leadership, Sec. Hegseth reportedly directed the removal of the Army secretary's top public affairs advisor, whose uncertain position had held up a spate of general officer nominations.
The administration unveiled a sweeping maritime action plan last Friday aimed at reclaiming U.S. maritime dominance and reducing America's reliance on foreign-built and foreign-flagged ships that carry the vast majority of its international trade. Senior administration officials warned that nearly 99 percent of U.S. international maritime trade "moves on foreign-built, foreign-owned and foreign-flagged" vessels.
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Breaking Defense reported the administration is pushing for Maritime Prosperity Zones would encourage investment in new waterfront communities separate from the traditional coastal shipyards.
Five military branches just adopted an internal Pentagon AI product partnered with Google and OpenAI. Who lost out? BigBear, which had just spent the equivalent of over half its cash acquiring a military AI tool offering a very similar product.
The initiative is part of a joint effort between the Department of War and the Department of Energy aimed at integrating advanced nuclear technologies into national security infrastructure.
Last week, the Pentagon issued guidance that affected military members' access to some higher education institutions. Here is a sober analysis of both sides of the issue.
The new rule proposed on Tuesday would bar federal agencies from purchasing certain products and services that contain semiconductors tied to Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
AWS will provide credits over three years to help federal agencies, national laboratories, and their supporting organizations develop and deploy advanced capabilities using cloud services and generative AI.
Ottawa wants to more than triple Canadian defense industry revenue, boost defense exports by 50 percent, and create 125,000 jobs over 10 years.
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