Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira pleaded guilty on March 4 to leaking highly classified military documents about the war in Ukraine and other national security secrets under a deal with prosecutors that calls for him to serve at least 11 years in prison. Teixeira, of North Dighton, Mass., pleaded guilty to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act nearly a year after he was arrested in the most consequential national security leak in years.
The ballooning use of unmanned technologies including drones has consequences for the U.S. nuclear stockpile and associated infrastructure, according to the leader of Strategic Command. Militaries and extremist groups around the world are deploying drones and other robotic technology to collect intelligence, aid targeting and even attack from relative safety. Learning how to intercept and neutralize them has quickly become a priority for Defense Department officials, who are monitoring skirmishes across Ukraine and the Greater Middle East.
The U.S. Space Force is reviewing ideas from the private sector on how to augment the Global Positioning System constellation with smaller, lower-cost satellites. The Space Force’s procurement arm, the Space Systems Command, last month issued a request for information probing the capabilities of the private sector to design a more affordable GPS spacecraft that is also interoperable with existing GPS infrastructure.
In Episode 171 of the Aerospace Advantage podcast, host John ‘Slick’ Baum chats with members of the Mitchell Institute team about the latest defense news from the beltway and the broader national security community. The conversation begins by assessing where Congress stands when it comes to passing an actual defense budget and moving past the crippling parade of continuing resolutions. We also discuss the Department of the Air Force’s newly-announced reorganization—all part of their effort to optimize the Air Force and Space Force for great power competition. The team then explores what it means to deter in the Middle East.
When the Air Force launches three new air task forces this summer, it will take its next step toward a long-desired goal: building more capable teams to fight America’s wars while maintaining a more predictable deployment cycle for Airmen and their families. The experiment aims to reimagine how the Air Force responds to unabated demand for airpower in the post-9/11 decades as it gears up for a new era of military competition—and possibly war—in the Pacific.
Iran has made a rare appearance at a Middle East defense show with an extensive stand in Qatar, showing an array of arms, full-sized naval weapons and models of unmanned aerial vehicles, including one named “Gaza.” Iran unveiled the Gaza in 2021, but its current model is making its debut at the Doha International Maritime Defense Exhibition and Conference, known as DIMDEX 2024, equipped with mock-up smart bombs.
An effort to help the Pentagon understand the private sector has been shuttered unexpectedly for lack of funding, officials with the Air Force’s innovation arm have announced. The Defense Ventures Fellowship program embedded officers, enlisted personnel, and DOD civilians with startups and venture capital firms to bring innovation to the Pentagon and make the department a better customer. The program was run by the firm Shift and the Air Force’s AFWERX.
A senior defense official has confirmed that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been briefed on the plans to return the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft to flight after a nearly three-month grounding, but the exact timing of that return remained unclear March 4. Despite the briefing, which is seen as a step closer to lifting the grounding following a deadly crash of an Air Force Special Operations Command Osprey on Nov. 29 that killed eight Airmen, none of the services were answering the question of when it expects to fly the aircraft again.
A civilian employee of the U.S. Air Force has been charged with sharing classified information related to the Russia-Ukraine war on a foreign online dating website, the Department of Justice announced March 4. The indictment alleges that David Franklin Slater, 63, transmitted National Defense Information (NDI) about the war in Ukraine on a foreign online dating platform and over email with an unidentified alleged female co-conspirator.
The life of Robert Warren Dittmer was intertwined with the history of Travis Air Force Base in many ways. Born in Oakland, California, on Nov. 11, 1920, he grew up on the family ranch founded by his great- grandmother in 1857 near Cordelia, Calif. He joined the Army Air Corps on Dec. 8, 1942, at age 22. While awaiting his air cadet training at what was then called Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Base (now known as Travis Air Force Base), he worked for a contractor weighing inbound truckloads of rock and gravel being used to build the first paved runway there. Dittmer would later watch the first aircraft land on that newly paved runway.
