The Associated Press
The military services will take a key step toward getting the V-22 Osprey fleet back in the air as they lay out their plans March 1 to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for addressing safety concerns stemming from a fatal crash in Japan, three defense officials said. The U.S. fleet of about 400 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft has been grounded for 83 days following the crash of a U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command CV-22B on Nov. 29 in Japan that killed eight service members. It’s unclear how quickly Austin would make any decision on the matter.
The New York Times
Hamas officials said on Feb. 27 that there had been no breakthrough in the mediated talks with Israel aimed at pausing the war and freeing the remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip, one day after President Biden said he was hopeful that a cease-fire would be in place by next week.
The Wall Street Journal
In March 2022, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un walked out of a massive hangar wearing a bomber jacket and dark sunglasses. He pointed to the sky and launched his biggest missile yet. “This miraculous victory is a priceless victory,” Kim said. It was classic North Korean theater. But behind it were developments that together have made Kim’s regime a genuinely more capable and more threatening antagonist. Its ability to unleash some form of nuclear attack on the world has never looked so credible, so prone to misperception and so resistant to dissuasion.
Breaking Defense
If Lt. Gen. David Miller, the new head of Space Operations Command (SpOC), had a watchword, it would be “integration”—in how Guardians implement Space Force missions, work with acquisition specialists to bring new kits into the field, and, lastly, train to meet current and future threats. “The real secret sauce in generating readiness—both the standards for warfighting in a contested environment, but also the quality and quantity of forces we need to meet national security threat—always requires an aggregation and integration of all of our force elements,” he told a small group of reporters Feb. 27.
DefenseScoop
Following a series of pilot efforts, the Pentagon’s main network defense command is rolling out a new model for measuring the readiness of the network. Beginning March 1, Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Network (JFHQ-DODIN) will establish the Cyber Operational Readiness Assessment (CORA) program, marking a shift from compliance to operational readiness.
The War Zone
Top Aces, the Canada-based advanced training provider, that specializes in ‘red air’ adversary support, has shown off one of its Cold War-era A-4 Skyhawk jets fitted with an infrared search and track (IRST) system. The development brings the veteran A-4 right up to date in terms of the kind of threat sensor replication it can offer, especially as the company has already been adding advanced active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars to the same type.
The Washington Post
Less than two weeks before Aaron Bushnell walked toward the gates of the Israeli Embassy on Feb. 25, he and a friend talked by phone about their shared identities as anarchists and what kinds of risks and sacrifices were needed to be effective. Bushnell, 25, mentioned nothing violent or self-sacrificial, the friend said.
Military.com
Millions of U.S. veterans will be eligible beginning March 5 for health care with the Department of Veterans Affairs under an accelerated effort to provide benefits and services to those exposed to toxic substances while serving. The VA announced Feb. 26 that all veterans who have served in a combat zone since the Vietnam War, as well as those who participated in training or operations and came into contact with hazardous materials, will be able to enroll in VA health care.
Breaking Defense
The U.S. Navy is seeking industry’s assistance to rapidly prototype and field a new air-launched, stand-off weapon inexpensive enough to manufacture en masse and perform on par with the service’s current anti-ship cruise missile. Dubbed the “Multi-mission Affordable Capacity Effector (MACE),” the service posted a public notice earlier this month that it should have “increased range at lower costs” and “integrated a high-maturity propulsion system with proven payloads.”
SpaceNews
As the U.S. Space Force continues to refine its plan to leverage commercial services, a top general said he expects space domain awareness to be one area where private sector capabilities will be increasingly needed. With more congestion and threats to satellites in orbit, the Space Force will need more sophisticated space tracking data and analytics capabilities that can transform raw data into actionable intelligence on activities in orbit, said Lt. Gen. David Miller, commander of Space Operations Command.
Dayton Daily News
Aggressive plans to make the U.S. Air Force competitive with foreign militaries and produce mission ready airmen could create opportunities for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, U.S. Rep. Mike Turner said. Turner, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, said in an interview with the Dayton Daily News on Feb. 26 that indications he’s received from Air Force top brass are that changes being discussed will not come at the expense of major programs at WPAFB.
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Inside Defense
The Defense Department's cybersecurity chief said that integrating artificial intelligence into military systems is the only way to keep pace with foreign adversaries as DOD moves toward its zero-trust security policy. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done in the AI world and I think it’s offering a great benefit for us, and I think it’s the only way we can keep up at scale with the adversaries throughout the world,” said Dave McKeown.
One More Thing
Task & Purpose
In the annals of history, no secret mission can boast a better codename than Operation Bunghole, which U.S. intelligence launched 80 years ago this month. The mission took place in February 1944 in German-occupied Yugoslavia, where the Partisans waged arguably the most formidable insurgency the Nazis faced in all of Europe — the so-called French “Resistance” pales in comparison. Bunghole’s goal was to establish a weather station in present-day Bosnia to make U.S. bombing raids against targets in Central and Eastern Europe more effective and support efforts to supply the Partisans in the Balkans, according to an official history of U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II.
