German and U.S. officials celebrated the rollout of Berlin’s first F-35 in a ceremony Sept. 18, with both sides praising the moment as a sign of the close defense alignment between the two partners.
The Space Force is planning to develop new prototype software designed to automate the integration of commercial and military space tracking data to provide more timely and more accurate information. Col. Barry Croker, who heads up the service’s Mission Delta 2, said Sept. 17 that the plan is to launch the prototype “software environment” later this fall and to build a “minimum viable product” that can be up and running quickly.
The Defense Department last week announced the winners of the second “Gauntlet” competition under its Drone Dominance Program, the Pentagon’s signature effort to ramp up the U.S. military’s arsenal of small unmanned aerial systems.
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will get new defenses against small drones in coming weeks, part of a “whole-of-government” effort to better protect the nation’s spaceports as the White House pushes for hundreds more launches per year.
As Air Force leaders prepare to hand AI more decision-making power in the years ahead, they're also working to get airmen comfortable with that. “A little bit scary, but we need to lean into it,” Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber conference last week. “Autonomy is one of, if not the key technology enabling cost-effective combat power.”
The Department of Defense on Sept. 17 released clinical guidelines for testing and treating low testosterone in male service members. The initiative, first announced in a July memo by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is part of the agency’s Warfighter Performance Optimization program, which Hegseth announced in May.
An annual award has gone to one of the U.S. Air Force’s most secretive drone squadrons, offering a very rare window into its activities. The 30th Reconnaissance Squadron is one of two units known to operate the stealthy RQ-170 Sentinel, and it is unusual to hear anything about its operational exploits. Much about the RQ-170 itself remains highly classified 17 years after its existence was first officially acknowledged.
A shift by some European nations to more domestically produced aircraft and weapons does not necessarily signify a move away from the U.S. Instead, it shows they are doing what American leadership has requested: Ramp up the industrial base, the top U.S. Air Force officer in the region argues.
Plumes of smoke rose over Moscow on the morning of Sept. 20 after a Ukrainian drone and missile attack on the city in which a major oil refinery was among the targets, according to the Russian capital's mayor. Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said in posts to Telegram that 450 Ukrainian drones were shot down while heading toward the capital overnight from Sept. 19 into Sept. 20, describing the latest attack as "unprecedented."
Pete Hegseth has notched a number of firsts since coming to the Pentagon. The former Army National Guard major has rebranded his agency as the Department of War, waged a culture war against past diversity efforts, and ousted a growing number of senior military leaders. This week, Hegseth narrowly dodged another distinction: He came within a whisker of becoming the first civilian defense chief to face an impeachment vote in the House of Representatives since Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached in 1876.
More American service members have died in the Middle East during the ongoing Iran war than the Pentagon has disclosed publicly, according to six U.S. officials familiar with the Defense Department’s internal casualty accounting data.
A senior official with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels is warning countries against joining Saudi Arabia in Yemen’s revived civil war, telling The Associated Press on Sept. 20 that his group has assured the Trump administration that it won’t attack U.S. vessels in the Red Sea.
A Florida fishing charter boat made a very unusual catch Sept. 19 while operating near Eglin Air Force Base. Located in the western end of the Florida Panhandle, Eglin is home of the U.S. Air Force weapons test wing. Hot Spots Charters pulled a delta-wing aerial drone out of the water during an excursion, according to local charter captain Charlie Green. The recovered drone closely resembles a clone of the Iranian Shahed-136 one-way attack weapon, specifically the U.S. military’s Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System that took center stage during its first combat use in Operation Epic Fury.
