The U.S. military has completed the transfer of thousands of suspected Islamic State fighters to the Iraqi government, setting the stage for the expected withdrawal of many—perhaps even all—American troops from Syria within months despite concerns about the Syrian government’s ability to prevent a resurgence of the group, officials familiar with the issue said.
In the lush, misty valleys of southwest China, satellite imagery reveals the country’s accelerating nuclear buildup, a force designed for a new age of superpower rivalry.
The United States has changed its attitude on European allies funneling defense funds to local arms industries and will be “pragmatic” about governments choosing to buy military equipment domestically, according to a senior U.S. defense official.
Russian drone teams had turned the road supplying Ukrainian troops in the embattled city of Pokrovsk into a terrifying gantlet. Their secret weapon: Elon Musk’s Starlink internet terminals. The Russians piloted cheap drones, jury-rigged with smuggled Starlinks, from a safe distance to smash into Ukrainian vehicles, aiding their advances this winter. Then, Musk’s SpaceX, which produces Starlink, disabled unauthorized Russian access to the satellite internet terminals, and the results were rapid, according to Ukrainian soldiers fighting at the front.
The U.S. ambassador to NATO declared Feb. 14 that “Americans are not leaving” Europe or the alliance, assuaging a concern that has caused panic across the continent.
The U.S. intercepted another oil tanker in the Indian Ocean that had come from the Caribbean, according to the Defense Department. According to MarineTracker, a ship-tracking website, the Veronica III is a Panamanian crude oil tanker. The website also showed the ship in the middle of the Indian Ocean, south of Indonesia, at close to 8 a.m. EST Sunday. The Veronica III has previously been linked to Venezuela.
Roughly 100 American troops arrived in Nigeria on Feb. 16 to help train and support the country’s military, a U.S. official confirmed to Task & Purpose.
Since the end of the Cold War, Air Force resource shortfalls have hit the fighter inventory hard. Fewer tails carry more sortie demand, which is a recipe for burnout. It’s time for a course correction. We explore this crucial topic with Brig. Gen. Shannon “Sinjin” Smith, commander of the Idaho Air National Guard.
Alarmed by the ever-growing vulnerability of the venerable Global Positioning System constellation to adversary attack, the Space Force has quietly been working to shape a future where U.S. and allied troops have other options for navigating the battlefield and targeting the enemy, according to service sources.
The F-35’s ‘computer brain,’ including its cloud-based components, could be cracked to accept third-party software updates, just like ‘jailbreaking‘ a cellphone, according to the Dutch State Secretary for Defense. The statement comes as foreign operators of the jets continue to be pressed on what could happen if the United States were ever to cut off support.
Industrial codevelopment of the French-German-Spanish Next-Generation Fighter is almost certainly headed for collapse, with negotiations between Airbus and Dassault halted on the next phase of the project amid a long-running industrial dispute over leadership and workshare, an industry source said.
Drone makers are lining up to compete for an ambitious Pentagon program where the total value of delivery orders and the number of systems purchased is expected to increase for each phase. But by the time the final phase comes around next year, as few as three vendors could reap shares of the funding allotted for that round, according to documents viewed by DefenseScoop.
Mardi Gras sells itself as pure New Orleans: marching bands, hand-built floats, beads, Muses shoes, Zulu coconuts, Themis umbrellas, and king cakes. The military shows up in that story more often than most people realize, not as a branding exercise, but as a set of long-running working relationships.
