Ukrainian and Russian officials began a new round of U.S.-brokered peace talks on Feb. 17 in Switzerland, though hopes of a breakthrough to end the war were low. Fighting rages on, past negotiations have produced little, and major hurdles to a deal are unresolved.
The United States plans to deploy more high-tech missile systems to the Philippines to help deter aggression in the South China Sea, where the treaty allies on Feb. 17 condemned what they called China’s “illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive activities.”
Procurements of certain elements of the U.S. military’s low-Earth orbit satellite constellation known as the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture are on hold as the Pentagon reviews acquisition options and shifts responsibility for parts of the program outside the Space Development Agency.
A little-known joint center for integrating cyber operations proved instrumental during the operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, a top Navy cyber official said this week.
General Atomics’ LongShot program is aiming to have its first flight test “as early as the end of 2026,”—three years after the company first said tests would begin, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced Feb. 17.
The Pentagon released a solicitation Feb. 17 as it continues its quest for new artificial intelligence tools to assist with back-office functions. While AI capabilities developed for battlefield use often garner headlines, the Defense Department also wants technology to help with more mundane activities. The call for solutions for a Joint Enterprise Task Management System is one of the latest examples.
U.S. Southern Command announced Feb. 17 that the military launched strikes on three alleged drug smuggling boats in the eastern Pacific and the Caribbean on Feb. 16, killing 11 people.
Prime Minister Mark Carney says Ottawa’s new “Buy Canadian” defense strategy is aimed at reducing Canada’s reliance on the United States while ramping up domestic production after years of underinvestment in the military.
[Anthropic] is the maker of Claude, the only large-language-model that can be used in classified settings, a status from the Defense Department that has been a competitive advantage. Anthropic forged a partnership with data company Palantir in 2024 and won a military contract worth up to $200 million last summer. But it has recently found itself in the Pentagon’s crosshairs—a conflict that could send shock waves through the U.S. defense complex.
A top Trump administration official on Feb. 17 disclosed new details to support its claim that China conducted an underground nuclear explosion during Donald Trump’s first presidency, a contested assertion that, nevertheless, has become a catalyst for his push to resume such testing by the United States.
The Nazis drove Abraham Wald, a Jewish mathematician, out of Romania and Europe. He emigrated to the United States, where he would serve in the Statistical Research Group. The SRG was a bunch of eggheads that used math to make the military better at everything from firing rockets to shooting down enemy fighters.
