Pursuing Agent Orange: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Pacific region tour included a stopover in Vietnam, where among other topics, he talked about the possibility of sharing data compiled by the US military about the health effects of Agent Orange. This was the defoliation chemical sprayed by US aircrews during the Vietnam War and that was later found to be a cause for some forms of cancer. (Read our 2000 article for background on Operation Ranch Hand.)
The final version of the fiscal 2026 defense policy bill calls for adding $1.2 billion to the Space Force’s research and development accounts, an increase that’s mostly split between two efforts: expanding the service’s low-Earth orbit data transport network and boosting its space-based missile warning and tracking capabilities.
