Just like old times.
The U.S. and Iran agreed on the ceasefire just an hour before President Trump's deadline to attack Iranian infrastructure only after outreach from Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Briefing press Wednesday, Sec. Hegseth said "We'll be hanging around. We're not going anywhere."
Dig Deeper
An initial agreement to open the Strait of Hormuz was short-lived as Iran effectively closed the narrow geographic chokepoint in response to Israeli strikes in Lebanon. See the latest from Axios.
Top Headlines
President Trump, upset at NATO allies failure to help secure the Strait of Hormuz and angry that his plans to acquire Greenland have not advanced, has discussed with advisers the option of removing some U.S. troops from Europe, a senior White House official told Reuters on Thursday.
A cybersecurity group known as FlamingChina successfully infiltrated China's military supercomputer and operated undetected for six months, ultimately extracting 10 petabytes of data.
A three-judge panel Wednesday left in place at least part of the DOW's decision to label Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" — a designation never before applied to a U.S. company.
Automatic registration into the U.S. military draft pool for eligible men is slated to begin in December, following efforts from lawmakers and the selective service agency to streamline the previous self-registration process.
Iran-affiliated hackers are targeting internet-exposed Rockwell Automation programmable logic controllers across U.S. energy, water, and government networks, exploiting a vulnerability that federal agencies ordered patched by March 26, according to a joint advisory issued Tuesday.
Recently released budget documents show that the Army is asking for nearly $2 billion to purchase more Precision Strike Missiles in FY27. The Army's request comes amid concerns over the Pentagon draining its weapon stockpiles during Operation Epic Fury.
As the Army works to gather and organize data to support battlefield decisions, it has created a task force to help with small, short-term problems — and in the longer term, to shape the service's overall approach to data management.
The administration has rolled out a budget for the U.S. military that is more than $400 billion more than it received during the current fiscal year. This article goes into detail about where that money is landing among different programs.
An unnamed expert close to Air Force issues said the service's asks are paltry compared to the massive $1.5 trillion topline the Pentagon requested and would represent a historic lost opportunity to invest for the long term.
Last weekend's harrowing mission to rescue a downed F-15 pilot included helicopters, an armada of A-10s, drones, and other tactical aircraft that took part in "violently suppressing and engaging the enemy in a close-in gunfight," according to JCS Chairman Gen. Caine. The pilot of one of the A-10s had to eject due to damage sustained during operations.
Dig Deeper
The Pentagon is seeking a software solution to improve aircraft survivability amid rising losses. This initiative aims to provide pilots with better situational awareness, specifically to counter threats in degraded visual environments. Read more from Defense One. And Breaking Defense reported that the HH-60W helicopter used in the rescue mission may be on the Air Force's chopping block.
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Feature Opinions
China's Unitree Robotics signed a 2022 pledge against weaponizing its robots, yet within two years its machines were shown armed in Chinese military exercises and parades. The company isn't really lying, and understanding how and why is the most urgent analytical gap in the American response to Chinese military-civil fusion, argues Charles Sun, a China-focused policy analyst at the Yale School of Management.
Too many government change efforts are still designed from the top down without enough input from the practitioners who actually run systems, hiring processes, and day-to-day operations. Michelle Sutter, director on the Board of the Senior Executives Association, argues modernization should begin with clearly defined outcomes and operating models shaped early by frontline practitioners, not with abstract policy ideas alone.
Government performance systems often reward documentation, activity and procedural defensibility more than real-world impact. Federal managers must ask three critical questions to eliminate counterproductive rules. Read more from Robert Choi, former government executive and public-sector consultant.
Worth a listen
What does it take to get the exact commercial data a mission team needs before the decision window closes? In this episode, Jen Obernier joins Callye Keen to explain why speed in defense data is not just a technology problem. It is an acquisition, trust, and integration problem, and the teams that solve it will have a major advantage in decision-making, AI adoption, and mission execution.
Editor's Notes
Military officer training does a great job of preparing people for the human element of leadership. The curriculum spends a lot of time on character and team dynamics. I should know, I've been through it twice — once as a student and then later as an instructor. Let me tell you what it doesn't prepare people for: spending government money. When I was a seasoned captain, I had the chance to lead a team at the wing level in the Air Force. What that means is I had general authority (day-to-day management) but not command authority. Within my first month on the job, I learned that I had a modest budget that had not been significantly touched ahead of end-of-year spending. The order from my boss was clear: go spend, and do it fast. So, a fancy new set of office furniture and a really cool 360-degree camera later (this was 2018, that was cutting-edge tech btw), I successfully avoided losing any of my budget because I was able to use it — an unfortunate reality of the way spending happens in the government. The metric was not that I bought something particularly relevant to my mission, but that the task of spending was accomplished. Bad on me for not being more prepared, and bad not he system for creating those incentives. But I think significant cultural pushback has generated recently on this front, especially in the era of DOGE-type scrutiny. (I recommend you check out this article from Stacey Kessler we published a few months ago for some evidence of that.) Earlier this week, GovExec published the commentary "Why the federal government needs to stop obsessing over process" that examines the uniquely government challenge of seeing work as an end in itself. Over time, institutions that aren't held to account for their output drift. They create processes because need or incentive structure necessitate it, and eventually those parts of the institution become barnacles cemented to the ship of state. The commentary focuses specifically on the process problem through the lens of OPM's new HR management service, but I was immediately reminded of the military's approach to innovation, which has faced similar challenges. As changes being made to the DoW's acquisitions framework roll out, now is the right time to look at how it develops and fields innovative tech. At the end of March, RAND published "Integrating Innovation into U.S. Department of War Requirements Reform," a study that cited hits some familiar refrains. It cites a GAO report that "found that the Defense Innovation Unit tends to measure success by the number of prototype projects awarded and completed, with insufficient data on transition performance." Imagine my relief that I'm not the only one checking the spending box! By the way, the report beat me to the punch: Mission outcomes (in this case, transition data) is the metric we should be shooting for. That's a particularly thorny issue for military organizations, where the outcomes that matter are not as simple as ROI. It might be number of lives saved. Measurable increase in lethality. Improvements to mission-available rates. For companies on the outside looking in, this shift is critical. It means orienting to a collaborative way of shaping requirements so they can react to demand signals faster and understand where they are most valuable. From their perspective, knowing whether to pursue an opportunity matters as much as how. The re-centering of the discussion about where to prioritize funding fundamentally requires what the GovExec commentary is calling for, and that is overcoming the institutional urge to equate "doing something" with doing something that matters to the mission.
he views represented in this commentary are my own and do not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
In the Weeds
For years, federal agencies have been encouraged to shift their acquisition strategies from buying activities to buying results — yet the distance between aspiration and execution remains wide. This report integrates theory, empirical evidence, acquisition policy analysis, and the lived experience of practitioners across government.
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Marines with III Expeditionary Operations Training Group out of Okinawa, Japan, designed the unmanned surface vessel themselves, officials said, then blew it up with a drone while at sea alongside Naval Special Warfare operators last month.
After canceling a program to modernize the network of antennas that track and manage Pentagon and other U.S. government satellites, the Space Force has issued a notice to industry seeking input on what existing infrastructure might be available to meet that need. The shift in acquisition strategy for the Satellite Communications Augmentation Resource program comes amid a push from defense officials to buy more commercial systems.
Dig Deeper
Space Daily says that all may be easier said than done as the supply chain the Space Force depends on is built on "fragile foundations." Also, GPS jamming incidents are increasing globally as more nations develop counterspace capabilities, a new report indicates. Read more from Breaking Defense.
At its core, Golden Dome is an architecture — or system of systems — designed to detect, track, assess and defeat threats across multiple domains, with several technical thematic areas that will underpin whether the Pentagon can meet the vision outlined for the program.
A British warship and aircraft tracked and monitored Russian submarines trying to survey vital undersea infrastructure in the North Atlantic, ensuring they fled the area, the defence secretary, John Healey, has said.
Even the simplest naval mines can strike fear into mariners or throttle traffic through a choke point, for no weapon has sunk more warships in the past 75 years. Yet the mines of the future will be far more capable and dangerous.
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