The United States is selling weapons to its NATO allies in Europe so they can provide them to Ukraine as it struggles to fend off a recent escalation in Russia’s drone and missile attacks, President Donald Trump and his chief diplomat said.
Service members are on track to get a 3.8 percent pay raise next year under versions of the annual defense policy bill moving through the House and Senate this month.
The Defense Innovation Unit will hand over the reins to its Blue UAS List to the Defense Contract Management Agency by Jan. 1 of next year, but the tech-outreach organization still expects to play a role in engaging with vendors and continuously updating the list.
The Air Force increasingly needs a broader set of munitions to achieve mission effects in the modern age. Join Heather Penney as she speaks with Raytheon’s retired Maj. Gen. Jon Norman about how he and his team are responding to this new paradigm.
Treat small drones like ammunition, not airplanes, the defense secretary told the Pentagon in a July 10 memo that just might boost production where many other efforts have failed. “There's a chance for this to go really fast,” said Allan Evans, CEO of Unusual Machines, a company that manufactures drone parts.
The Senate Armed Services Committee wants the Department of Defense to examine its use of cyber power beyond the forces of U.S. Cyber Command. A provision in the committee’s version of the annual defense policy bill, of which an executive summary was released July 11, would require the secretary of defense to review future force employment concepts for cyber operations. The full text of the bill has yet to be released.
“The U.S. bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear sites was an impressive military feat, but don’t let that success fool you. The B-2 bombers are nearly 30 years old, and the U.S. has only 19 of them in service. The military is in worse shape than President Trump claims, and he’s ducking the second-term rearmament he promised,” writes the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
The U.S. State Department on July 11 cleared the potential sale of up to nine HH-60W helicopters to Norway, a deal valued at $2.6 billion, according to a notice from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
The head of the Department of the Air Force’s recruiting efforts, who has overseen the service’s turnaround from missing its goal for the first time since 1999 to hitting it three months early, believes those slumps are solidly in the rearview mirror.
U.S. special operations Long Endurance Aircraft (LEA) surveillance drones, which are based on a popular civilian powered glider design, are set to gain the ability to launch smaller uncrewed aerial systems. An air-launched drone capability is a huge force multiplier for the ultra-quiet LEAs, with their innocuous outward appearance, that opens up the possibility of employing them in new ways, including using them to conduct kinetic strikes.
A federal appeals court on July 11 overturned a plea deal to resolve the Sept. 11, 2001, case with life sentences, a decision that could restart lengthy proceedings toward a death penalty trial at Guantánamo Bay.
A four-person rescue team from the U.S. Coast Guard were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal for their actions helping to rescue almost 200 flood victims in Texas last week.
