The jets are ready, and the flight instructors are waiting, at a new training center in Romania that was created to teach Ukraine’s pilots to fly the F-16 warplane. But there’s a catch: The Ukrainian pilots have yet to arrive, despite declarations last summer that the center would play a crucial role in getting them into the air to defend their country from increasingly deadly Russian strikes.
As the relationship between President Biden and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has grown increasingly fraught and tense, a looming ground incursion into Gaza's southernmost city has emerged as a new flashpoint—threatening to turn the allies even further against each other.
The deadlock in Ukraine is “shifting the momentum” in the war there in Moscow’s favor, U.S. intelligence agencies told senators on March 11. Moscow has made continual, incremental battlefield gains since late 2023 and benefits from uncertainties about the future of military assistance from the U.S. and allies, the top intelligence officials told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee in their annual presentation on the biggest “worldwide threats.”
The U.S. bolstered its position as the world’s dominant arms exporter, accounting for more than 40% of the global trade in weapons over a recent five-year period, while Russia saw its sales abroad drop by more than half because of the war in Ukraine, according to a new report.
The Air Force said March 8 it is postponing the release of its new physical training uniforms until April, 18 months after the uniforms were originally slated to hit shelves and a month later than the service promised late last year. The new delay was prompted by a “previous fabric shortage” and an “ongoing color match concern for the running and all-purpose short,” Air Force spokesperson Master Sgt. Deana Heitzman said in an email.
For the first time, Pentagon officials on March 11 estimated the cost of Replicator, a program to field thousands of drones before August 2025 to counter China. While briefing reporters on the Pentagon’s new budget request, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said her signature initiative would cost a planned $1 billion, divided evenly between fiscal years 2024 and 2025.
The Missile Defense Agency’s fiscal 2025 budget request seeks $10.4 billion, down $500 million from its FY24 request. MDA did not provide its usual background briefing to reporters on its budget, but did make available a fact sheet of major highlights. The fact sheet did not, however, break out planned research and development spending from procurement spending.
The US Navy is delaying about $1 billion of funding into developing its next-generation strike fighter in its new budget, a move senior leaders said was a deliberate choice to sacrifice future modernization to keep current readiness high. The funding delay means any major decisions about awarding a contract on the program will be kicked down the road, unwelcome news to the country’s top three aerospace prime contractors—Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman—which have all signaled their intent to fight for a production contract.
The Pentagon wants $500 million to replenish stockpiles tapped to aid Taiwan—a first for the department’s budget request. But the eventual goal is to pair that ask with supplemental funding stalled in Congress. The funding request immediately calls out China as the pacing challenge, highlighting a larger effort in the Indo-Pacific to bolster relationships and spending to support allied nations and partners. The Defense Department is also asking for about $10 billion for ballistic missile activities to support Guam, increased military exercises, training, and experimentation, cyber operations support, and fielding autonomous systems, according to budget documents.
The U.S. Department of Defense is seeking $14.5 billion for its cyberspace endeavors, including safeguarding information networks with zero trust initiatives, increasing manpower and researching advanced computing. The fiscal 2025 budget request unveiled March 11 is about $1 billion more than the Biden administration’s previous ask. It is also up from fiscal 2023, when it sought $11.2 billion.
The Air Force doesn’t intend to procure or continue research and development of the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) in the fiscal 2025 budget—although the service has not determined whether or not it will end the program altogether.
Unemployed military spouses could have child care fully paid for during their job search under a proposal being crafted by a leading lawmaker. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee's military quality-of-life panel, is advocating for what she has termed a “GI Bill for child care.” The proposal would provide grants of up to $15,000 per kid to cover child care for 6-9 months while spouses try to reenter the workforce, according to a fact sheet provided by her office.
The Pentagon has sent $10 billion worth of weapons to Ukraine that it still does not have the money to replace due to congressional gridlock, according to a top Defense Department official. DOD officials expect funding to replenish the equipment the U.S. has already sent to Ukraine to be included in President Joe Biden’s supplemental request, which provides billions of additional dollars in aid for Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel. But that legislation has languished on Capitol Hill for months amid partisan bickering.
With a $15 billion acquisition budget, Space Systems Command is one of the nation’s dominant military space customers. Housed at Los Angeles Air Force Base like its predecessor the Space and Missile Systems Center, SSC is known for missile-warning satellites and nuclear-survivable communications. While much of that hardware is acquired through the traditional defense contracting process, SSC leaders adopted a new mantra a couple of years ago, “Exploit what we have, buy what we can and build only what we must.”
Many military men and women do heroic things that they can't get credit for because they're involved in classified missions. For Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Richard Loy Etchberger, he finally did get credit in the form of the Medal of Honor 42 years after he lost his life saving others during the Vietnam War.