President Donald Trump said the U.S. bombed military sites March 13 on an island vital to Iran’s oil network, while an American official said 2,500 more Marines and an amphibious assault ship are being sent to the Middle East nearly two weeks into the war with the Islamic Republic.
Two top military commanders have praised what they said was the critical role of space operations in the early days of Operation Epic Fury, but they were loathe to say what, exactly, the U.S. military was doing in the highest, at times most secretive domain.
The Defense Department is planning more multiyear deals and expects they’ll help smooth kinks in fragile supply chains. But the way prime contractors manage their suppliers, and the potential for bottlenecks, could stall progress.
Following their success in Ukraine, Arctic nations are assessing whether first-person-view drones could be deployed on Arctic battlefields.
Ukraine is giving international partners and defense companies access to its vast trove of real combat data to train artificial intelligence models for autonomous drone systems—a move Kyiv is calling “the first initiative of its kind in the world.”
The Army has awarded a mega contract to Anduril Industries that the U.S. military hopes will boost its ability to defeat drone threats. The Pentagon unveiled the $20 billion firm fixed-price deal March 13 as part of its daily list of contract announcements.
The U.S. and Gulf Arab states have sent multimillion-dollar Patriot missiles and jet fighters streaking through the skies to intercept Iranian drones costing a fraction of that. Ukraine, which has faced similar attacks by Russia for four years, prefers a hail of bullets and other cheaper methods to get the job done.
The Pentagon said March 13 it has opened a formal command investigation into the Feb. 28 strike in Minab, Iran, where Iranian regime officials claim dozens of children were killed in a strike at a school beside a military compound.
Amid the strain of extended deployments, the Navy told Breaking Defense it has officially decided to keep its oldest active aircraft carrier in the water a little longer, prolonging the service life of the USS Nimitz to March 2027.
President Trump claimed on March 14 the U.S. and several other countries will send warships to the Gulf to reopen commercial shipping in the strait of Hormuz. ... "Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a Nation that has been totally decapitated," he added.
“To be clear, there is certainly a legitimate policy discussion to be had about whether or not the attacks on Iran make strategic sense for the U.S., but that is a rather different question from an objective determination of legality (or illegality). I find that there are three independent bases that plausibly justify the strikes," writes retired Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr., the former deputy judge advocate general of the U.S. Air Force.
A Navy fighter jet that got the United States’ first air-to-air kill against another plane in nearly 20 years in 2017 is currently taking part in combat operations against Iran. The specific F/A-18E, Modex or identifying number 402, was seen launching from the USS Gerald R. Ford in a video posted by U.S. Central Command earlier on March 14, showing a variety of the airpower being used during Operation Epic Fury, the military’s name for combat operations against Iran.
