President Donald Trump will request a record $1.01 trillion in national security spending for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, more than 13 percent over the current year’s figure, according to administration officials familiar with the matter.
President Donald Trump said May 1 that he is nominating national security adviser Mike Waltz as United Nations ambassador while Secretary of State Marco Rubio would take over Waltz’s duties on an interim role. He announced the major shake-up of his national security team shortly after news broke that Waltz and his deputy are leaving the administration.
President Trump is done waiting for Boeing. Frustrated by delays on Boeing’s work to deliver a new Air Force One, Trump has commissioned a smaller defense contractor to ready an interim presidential plane by year’s end. Boeing will continue plugging away on a pair of Air Force One replacement jets, which have fallen so far behind that Trump might not get to fly on them while in office.
A week after a deadly terrorist attack in Kashmir, diplomatic efforts to ease rising tensions between India and Pakistan have ramped up, as global jitters grow over the possibility of a military confrontation between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
In recent written testimony before Congress, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command revealed that the military’s newest service was getting its own special operations element. Testifying to a panel of the House Armed Services Committee in April, Gen. Bryan Fenton said that SOCOM was partnering with the U.S. Space, Cyber and Strategic Commands “to advance the convergence of SOF, space, and cyber effects,” a collaboration he called “a critical nexus.”
Non-operational F-16s are being pulled from the boneyard and sent to Ukraine to support the growing fleet of European-donated fighters that the country is now using in combat against Russia. This development was confirmed to TWZ by the U.S. Air Force after photos recently emerged showing partially disassembled F-16s being loaded onto a Ukrainian charter An-124 transport aircraft in Arizona.
The Army got a long list of marching orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on May 1, with deadlines for fielding new weapons and technology, directives to unload old equipment, and orders to merge the service’s futures and doctrine organizations.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has recommended the president nominate Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the Joint Staff’s director for operations, to lead U.S. forces in Europe, according to a senior U.S. defense official, U.S. official, and two congressional aides.
Following an award from the Air Force Research Laboratory, rocket startup Ursa Major plans to take its new Draper engine to flight, which the company says can pave the way to a new generation of liquid fuel-based hypersonic propulsion for defense and commercial applications.
If air superiority is crucial to modern warfare, then the U.S. Air Force is not up to the task. That's the gist of a detailed look by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Among the findings, the Air Force is short by—get this—2,000 pilots. The Air Force itself is what the report calls the oldest, smallest and least ready in history
On April 29, 1975, communist Vietnamese forces of the People’s Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong began a final attack on the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon. Nearly 100 aircraft were destroyed on the flight line of Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Just one airworthy aircraft remained: a C-130A Hercules, tail number 56-0518.
