The Senate Armed Services Committee on Oct. 28 advanced the nomination of Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach to serve as the next Air Force chief of staff. The panel approved Wilsbach alongside 3,475 other military promotions, sending the nominees to the full Senate for a vote that could come as soon as this week.
Vice President JD Vance said Oct. 28 he believes U.S. military members will be paid at the end of the week, though he did not specify how the Trump administration will reconfigure funding as pain from the second-longest shutdown spreads nationwide.
The Israeli military carried out airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, according to local health officials, throwing the fragile U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas into question. ... An official from the Israel Defense Forces told NBC News that the command is a result of Hamas' allegedly attacking soldiers in Rafah in an Israeli-controlled area.
A Russian transport aircraft of a type linked to the country’s military and former Wagner mercenary group has landed in the Venezuelan capital over the weekend, signaling heightened Russian interest in the Latin American country.
Future operations in the Indo-Pacific will require persistent activity inside the enemy’s reach, according to a top naval commander. “Just as speed is a defining characteristic in our modern battlespace, we also need persistence. And what I’m talking about here is persistent power projection and persistent domination of the battlespace leading to a denial of the adversary’s objective,” Adm. Stephen Koehler, commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, said during a presentation at AFCEA’s TechNet Indo-Pacific conference in Hawaii.
A second prototype of China’s very heavy J-36 ‘fighter’ has emerged with major refinements. These alterations, compared to the first J-36 airframe, point to the program very much being iterative in its process.
The Pentagon removed key protections for defense civilian workers and directed that managers move with “speed and conviction” to fire employees with “unacceptable” performance reviews last month, just a day before the government shut down.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has hailed the first long-distance test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile that the Kremlin leader said has no equal in the West. The claim sent a warning to the West about risks of escalation in Ukraine and could yield a bargaining chip in potential arms negotiations with Washington. While Western diplomats said the test represents a dangerous new capability for Russia, the announcement sparked more head scratching than fear for some missile-technology and nuclear-proliferation experts.
NASA's X-59 has finally taken flight. The X-59 is NASA's experimental new jet built to break the sound barrier without generating the thunderous sonic booms typically associated with supersonic flight. After taxiing out of the U.S. Air Force's Plant 42 facility, the X-59 took off from the Palmdale Regional Airport in California on Oct. 28.
