The Pentagon released a priority-shifting National Defense Strategy late Jan. 23 that chastised U.S. allies to take control of their own security and reasserted the Trump administration’s focus on dominance in the Western Hemisphere above a longtime goal of countering China.
Engineers studying drone combat at one of China’s top military-linked universities needed a way to simulate clashes between drone swarms in real time. They turned to nature for inspiration. Observing how hawks select prey, they trained defensive drones to single out and destroy the most vulnerable enemy aircraft. On the other side, the attacking drones were taught how to dodge the hawk-trained defenders based on the behavior of doves. In a five-on-five test, the hawks destroyed all the doves in 5.3 seconds.
China’s top general, second only to Xi Jinping, the nation’s leader, in the military command, has been put under investigation and accused of “grave violations of discipline and the law,” the Ministry of National Defense said on Jan. 24, the most stunning escalation yet in Mr. Xi’s purge of the People’s Liberation Army elite.
Ukrainian and Russian officials will meet Feb. 1 in Abu Dhabi for a new round of peace talks, U.S. officials said Jan. 24, after two days of meetings in the city this week failed to produce concrete results.
President Trump warned late Jan. 22 that the U.S. is sending an “armada” toward Iran amid nationwide demonstrations against the regime, but he questioned whether the U.S. would actually take any action against Tehran.
The risk of another partial government shutdown escalated quickly Jan. 24 after federal agents shot and killed a Minneapolis resident who was protesting a Trump administration immigration crackdown. Within hours of the shooting, Senate Democrats pledged to oppose a roughly $1.33 trillion spending package needed by Jan. 30 to avert a shutdown if funding for the Homeland Security Department remains part of it. ... In addition to Homeland Security, the package includes the Defense, Labor-HHS-Education, Transportation-HUD, Financial Services and National Security-State bills, making up the lion’s share of total discretionary spending for the fiscal year that began last October. Current funding for most federal agencies is set to run out Jan. 30.
The U.S. military announced Jan. 23 it had carried out a “lethal kinetic strike” on an alleged drug boat and said there was one person who survived the attack.
A federal immigration officer shot and killed a man Jan. 24 in Minneapolis, drawing hundreds of protesters onto the frigid streets and ratcheting up tensions in a city already shaken by another fatal shooting weeks earlier. ... The Minnesota National Guard was assisting local police at the direction of Gov. Tim Walz, officials said. Guard troops were sent to both the shooting site and to a federal building where officials have squared off with protesters daily.
Pentagon leadership has made “no decision” yet about a potential reorganization that would affect the future of U.S. Africa Command, but a senior official warned that whatever happens, someone needs to keep a close eye on the continent.
Defense officials are redesignating the Permanent Change of Station Joint Task Force into a new Personal Property Activity based at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, with plans to convert it into a standalone federal agency overseeing all military household goods moves.
Air Force officials are reviving a deployment scheme introduced in the mid-1990s and abandoned three years ago. But while the original Air Expeditionary Wing concept quickly assembled airmen and aircraft from across the service to deploy for conflicts, AEW 2.0 aims to give the team up to 18 months to train together.
This year, the Defense Information Systems Agency will prioritize an effort to unify all of the combatant commands’ networks worldwide into a single, cloud-based platform to improve security and interoperability.
Next week marks the start of quarterly earnings calls for the biggest defense companies—and there are likely to be plenty of questions in the wake of President Donald Trump’s Jan. 7 executive order targeting firms the White House says are prioritizing stock buybacks and dividends over investments in their production lines.
The Bolt-M, a machine-learning infused strike drone that puts lethal precision firepower in the hands of individual soldiers, is a system that TWZ has followed closely since it was first revealed back in October 2024. Now, with the recent announcement of a $23.9-million contract to provide the U.S. Marine Corps with more than 600 Bolt-M systems for the next phase of its Organic Precision Fires-Light (OPF-L) program, starting next month, we sat down with its manufacturer, Anduril.
The command is simple: Stand in the door. ... Air Force Capt. Charlene Sufficool first heard those words as a first-year cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy, standing in the open doorway of a Twin Otter aircraft above Colorado Springs as she prepared for her first solo parachute jump. More than a decade later, hovering above central Florida with more than a hundred parachutes filling the sky, she repeated them to herself—this time with a world record on the line.
