With silence and precision, six members of an Air Force honor guard brought the silver-colored, flag-draped casket of Staff Sgt. Jacob Galliher down the cargo ramp of an Air Force C-17 Dec. 15 at Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee to his family.
In August, the Pentagon announced an ambitious, two-year plan to develop thousands of drones to swarm and overwhelm China’s much larger arsenal of weapons—and do it cheaply. Four months later, no one seems to be able to explain the plan or how the Pentagon will pay for it.
The top two U.S. military leaders are traveling to Tel Aviv to advise the Israeli government on how to transition from major combat operations against Hamas in Gaza to a more limited campaign and prevent a wider regional war. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who are heading to Israel, served in leadership roles as U.S. airpower and ground forces moved from major combat to lower-intensity counterterrorism operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it is not clear how deeply their advice from lessons learned will resonate with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
Five companies are currently in the running in the Air Force’s effort to field collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) drone wingmen, Breaking Defense has learned. Defense mainstays Boeing, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and startup Anduril are in the pool of vendors so far selected by the Air Force for an early stage of the CCA program, according to a source familiar with the process. A down select could eliminate some vendors by the summer, the source said.
“Hopeful” and “realistic,” but not “optimistic.” That was the assessment on Dec. 15 from America’s ambassador to Beijing about recent efforts by U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration to stabilize the U.S.-China relationship. In a wide-ranging discussion at the Brookings Institution that hit on all the familiar notes about the challenge that China presents for the U.S., Ambassador Nicholas Burns referred to the country as a “systemic rival,” but said that because Washington is both competing and engaging, the relationship “doesn’t render into simple analysis.”
The death of three Israeli hostages in Gaza shot and killed by Israel’s own military Dec. 15 in a case of mistaken identity has sparked fresh anger among the families of captives kidnapped by Hamas and renewed questions about the conduct of the war. That is translating into growing political pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike a deal to get back the hostages, scores of whom were snatched during Hamas’s Oct. 7 deadly assault on Israel and are believed to still be held by the U.S.-designated terrorist group.
The number of unhoused veterans grew to 35,574 in January 2023, up 7.4% from the same point-in-time count in 2022. That’s according to new data released by the departments of Housing and Urban Development and Veterans Affairs. After several years of a downward trend, the number of veterans living in shelters or on the street grew due to a combination of a lack of affordable housing and the end of several supportive measures, including eviction bans.
On Dec. 17, 1903, humanity’s long-held dream of flying came true. The honor of the first sustained and controlled flight of a powered heavier-than-air aircraft went to two bicycle shop owners from Dayton, Ohio, Orville and Wilbur Wright. The brothers combined the mechanical experience from their business with the fundamental breakthrough invention of three-axis control to enable them to steer the aircraft and maintain its equilibrium. Their 12-second flight changed the world forever.
