“President Trump’s declaration of a potential increase in U.S. defense spending to $1.5 trillion in 2027 has renewed long-standing debate over the appropriate scale of defense outlays and, more importantly, what such funding could realistically deliver,” writes retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
President Trump is exploring options for diplomacy with Iran even as he weighs whether to attack the country to try to deter its leaders from killing more protesters, U.S. officials said on Jan. 12.
Russia and China are increasingly working together in the Arctic region, and their presence there will be a growing threat to NATO allies, said Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, speaking at a Swedish national security conference on Jan. 11.
As demand for munitions like the Army’s Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System and the Navy’s Standard Missile family has skyrocketed in recent years, so too has demand for the solid rocket motors that power them, prompting new entrants to dive into the market and traditional standbys to rapidly expand. But that growth hasn’t yet been replicated across the fragile SRM supply chain, several senior industry officials told Breaking Defense, raising questions about whether the scale exists to support the sector.
The Defense Department has added more context to provocative comments Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made about aggressive and even physical troop training in his address to the military’s general officers and admirals in late September.
“What if the Department of War had a tool that could draft a battle plan, analyze intelligence reports, and generate mission briefings in seconds? While that future isn’t here yet, the department has taken a significant first step with the recent launch of GenAI.mil,” write Sean Rugge, a Senior Educational Technologist and eLearning Strategist for the U.S. Marine Corps who is leading the service’s efforts to integrate artificial intelligence into its educational platforms, and Dr. Silas Schaeffer, a contractor for the U.S. Marine Corps.
The Pentagon is officially ditching height and weight tables in favor of using a waist-to-height ratio to estimate troops’ body fat, according to an official memo released on Jan. 12. And to pass, a service member’s waist measurement can be only slightly more than half of their height.
Openly acknowledging gaps in protecting its population, Sweden has announced plans to invest 15 billion Swedish kronor (about $1.6 billion) in new homeland air defense units. Additionally, Stockholm is bolstering its space-based intelligence capabilities with new investments.
The last of the 52 service members killed in a 1952 transport plane crash in Alaska have been identified, closing a project begun 13 years ago when glacier movement first revealed remains of the missing.
