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[l] at 3/7/26 6:29pm
President Donald Trump, wearing a white USA baseball hat, rendered six salutes at Dover Air Force base on Saturday as six flag-draped cases of the fallen were returned to U.S. soil – the first American casualties of Operation Epic Fury. First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Second Lady Usha Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, Chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine and other top officials assembled alongside the president as the troops’ remains were solemnly transferred from the C-17 transport plane to a waiting vehicle. The service members were killed when an Iranian drone evaded American air defenses and struck a makeshift operations center in Port Shuabia, Kuwait. The attack was among the opening salvos of the war between a U.S.-Israel alliance and the Islamic Republic. The slain soldiers were identified as Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa; Capt. Cody Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, 45, of Indianola, Iowa; and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, 54, of Sacramento, California.Trump, speaking from his golf resort in Miami before the dignified transfer, vowed to keep American deaths in the campaign “at a minimum” — though he has previously acknowledged that more losses may be inevitable. “Very sad situation to greet the families of the heroes coming home from Iran. Coming home in a different manner than they thought they’d be coming home,” he said, adding, “They are great heroes in our country.”More than 6,000 miles away from Dover, American and Israeli forces continued their bombardment on Iran. Tehran has launched a series of retaliatory strikes directed at Israel and Gulf nations with U.S. military bases. Trump on Saturday warned that the Islamic Regime would soon be “hit very hard,” signaling an expansion of the aerial campaign to include new “areas and groups of people.” The end goal, he says, is complete destruction. The White House rebuffed reports that Trump is leaning toward a ground invasion of Iran, but emphasized that no military option has been ruled out. “President Trump always, wisely keeps all options open,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Military Times. “But anyone trying to insinuate he is in favor of one option or another proves they have no real seat at the table.” Iran’s foreign minister affirmed that the country is prepared to confront American forces should the U.S. expand its campaign by mounting a ground invasion. “We are waiting for them,” Abbas Araghchi said. “Because we are confident that we can confront them, and that would be a big disaster for them.” At this stage, Iranian ground forces do not stand a chance against the Americans, argued Sina Azodi, the director of Middle East Studies at George Washington University. But he noted that in the long-term, a full-scale ground invasion might work to Iran’s benefit. “[The regime] thinks if they can impose more casualties on the United States and public opinion changes, then they will be able to force the U.S. to end the war sooner than later.” “Iran is not Iraq,” he explained. “It is larger, it has a strategic depth, and it would take a lot more resources for the United States to invade.” Trump, as he returned to Florida late Saturday afternoon, declined to commit on whether he was considering putting U.S. troops on the ground in Iran. “I don’t think it’s an appropriate question,” the president told reporters on board Air Force One. He added, however, that there “possibly” could be such a presence. “If we ever did that, [Iran] would be so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight at the ground level.”

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[l] at 3/7/26 1:28pm
DORAL, Fla. — President Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States and Latin American countries are banding together to combat violent cartels as his administration looks to demonstrate it remains committed to sharpening U.S. foreign policy focus on the Western Hemisphere even while dealing with five-alarm crises around the globe.Trump encouraged regional leaders gathered at his Miami-area golf club to take military action against drug trafficking cartels and transnational gangs that he says pose an “unacceptable threat” to the hemisphere’s national security.“The only way to defeat these enemies is by unleashing the power of our militaries,” Trump said. “We have to use our military. You have to use your military.” Citing the U.S.-led coalition that confronted the Islamic State group in the Middle East, the Republican president said that “we must now do the same thing to eradicate the cartels at home.”The gathering, which the White House called the “Shield of the Americas” summit, came just two months after Trump ordered an audacious U.S. military operation to capture Venezuela’s then-president, Nicolás Maduro, and whisk him and his wife to the United States to face drug conspiracy charges.Looming even larger is Trump’s decision to launch a war on Iran with Israel one week ago, a conflict that has left hundreds dead, convulsed global markets and unsettled the broader Middle East.Trump’s time with the Latin American leaders was limited: Afterward, he set out for Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, to be on hand for the dignified transfer of the six U.S. troops killed in a drone strike on a command center in Kuwait, one day after the U.S. and Israel launched their military campaign against Iran.Trump called the American deaths a “very sad situation” and praised the fallen troops as “great heroes.”With the summit, Trump aimed to turn attention to the Western Hemisphere, at least for a moment. He has pledged to reassert U.S. dominance in the region and push back on what he sees as years of Chinese economic encroachment in America’s backyard.Trump also said the U.S. will turn its attention to Cuba after the war with Iran and suggested his administration would cut a deal with Havana, underscoring Washington’s increasingly aggressive stance against the island’s communist leadership. “Great change will soon be coming to Cuba,” he said, adding that “they’re very much at the end of the line.”Cuban officials have said on several occasions that they were open to dialogue with the U.S. as long as it was based on respect for Cuban sovereignty, but they have never confirmed that such talks were taking place.Who was thereThe leaders of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago joined the Republican president at Trump National Doral Miami, a golf resort where he is also set to host the Group of 20 summit later this year.The idea for a summit of like-minded conservatives from across the hemisphere emerged from the ashes of what was to be the 10th edition of the Summit of the Americas, which was scrapped during the U.S. military buildup off the coast of Venezuela last year.Host Dominican Republic, pressured by the White House, had barred Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from attending the regional gathering. But after leftist leaders in Colombia and Mexico threatened to pull out in protest — and with no commitment from Trump to attend — the Dominican Republic’s president, Luis Abinader, decided at the last minute to postpone the event, citing “deep differences” in the region.The Shield of the Americas moniker was meant to speak to Trump’s vision for an “America First” foreign policy toward the region that leverages U.S. military and intelligence assets unseen across the area since the end of the Cold War.To that end, Ecuador and the United States conducted military operations this week against organized crime groups in the South American country. Ecuadorian and U.S. security forces attacked a refuge belonging to the Colombian illegal armed group Comandos de la Frontera in the Ecuadorian Amazon on Friday, authorities reported.This joint fight against drug traffickers “is only the beginning,” said Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa.Notably missing at the summit were the region’s two dominant powers — Brazil and Mexico — as well as Colombia, long the linchpin of U.S. anti-narcotics strategy in the region.Trump grumbled that Mexico is the “epicenter of cartel violence” with drug kingpins “orchestrating much of the bloodshed and chaos in this hemisphere.”“The cartels are running Mexico,” Trump said. “We can’t have that. Too close to us. Too close to you.”The challenge from ChinaTrump made no mention of his administration’s insistence that countering Chinese influence in the hemisphere is a top priority for his second term.His national security strategy promotes the “Trump Corollary” to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which had sought to ban European incursions in the Americas, by targeting Chinese infrastructure projects, military cooperation and investment in the region’s resource industries.The first demonstration of the more muscular approach was Trump’s strong-arming of Panama to withdraw from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and review long-term port contracts held by a Hong Kong-based company amid U.S. threats to retake the Panama Canal.More recently, the U.S. capture of Maduro and Trump’s pledge to “run” Venezuela threatens to disrupt oil shipments to China — the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude before the raid — and bring into Washington’s orbit one of Beijing’s closest allies in the region. Trump is scheduled to travel to Beijing later this month to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.For many countries, China’s trade-focused diplomacy fills a critical financial void in a region with major development challenges ranging from poverty reduction to infrastructure bottlenecks. In contrast, Trump has been slashing foreign assistance to the region while rewarding countries lined up behind his crackdown on immigration — a policy widely unpopular across the hemisphere.Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted the leaders for a working lunch after Trump left for the event in Delaware. The lunch gave Kristi Noem, whom Trump fired as homeland security secretary on Thursday, the chance to make her debut in her new role as a special envoy for the “Shield of the Americas.”“We want our hemisphere to be safer, to be more sovereign, and to be more prosperous,” Noem told the leaders.Durkin Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Gabriela Molina in Quito, Ecuador, contributed to this report.

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[l] at 3/6/26 5:43pm
An American anti-drone system proven to work against Russian drones in Ukraine will soon be sent to the Middle East to bolster U.S. defenses against Iranian drones, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Friday.While the U.S. has used Patriot and THAAD missile systems to take down Iranian missiles successfully, there are limited effective anti-drone defenses now in the Middle East, according to a U.S. defense official, one of two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.Pentagon acknowledges tough quest to counter Iranian dronesThe U.S. response to countering Iran’s Shahed drones has been “disappointing,” the other U.S. official said, particularly because the drones fired by Iran are a much more basic version of the same drone that Russia is continuously refining and updating in its war in Ukraine.The effort to bolster U.S. anti-drone capabilities in the Middle East underscores concerns about the planning for an Iranian retaliatory response across the region to the American and Israeli strikes. Persian Gulf countries have complained they were not given adequate time to prepare for the torrent of Iranian drones and missiles bombarding their territory.The system that is being sent, known as Merops, flies drones against drones. It is small enough to fit in the back of a midsize pickup truck, can identify drones and close in on them, using artificial intelligence to navigate when satellite and electronic communications are jammed.Drones are hard to pinpoint on radar systems calibrated for spotting high-speed missiles and can be mistaken for birds or planes. The Merops system is designed to spot them and take them down. Crucially, the system also is cheaper than firing a missile that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars at a drone that costs less than $50,000.The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, said this week that “we’re pretty good at taking missiles down. What is much more problematic for us is the huge inventory of Iranian drones, which are hard to detect and hard to take down.”Himes said the drone attacks present a “math problem” in that the U.S. cannot keep relying on expensive military interceptors, like Patriot systems, to down the quickly and cheaply made Iranian drones.“It’s really, really expensive to take down a cheap drone,” he said. “A giant missile going after a tiny little crappy drone.”Merops was deployed in NATO nations Poland and Romania in November after Russian attack drones repeatedly entered NATO airspace. The U.S. defense official says America has learned lessons from the deployment of the system and others like it in Ukraine.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that the U.S. asked for his country’s help in combating Iran’s Shahed drones, which Russia has used in huge numbers in Ukraine. Zelenskyy did not specify the type of assistance Ukraine would provide, but the U.S. defense official said the Merops system is a part of it.When asked about Zelenskyy’s comments, Trump told Reuters on Thursday: “Certainly, I’ll take, you know, any assistance from any country.”In the Middle East, Merops will be deployed to various locations, including where U.S. forces are not present, the defense official said. Most of the systems will be sent directly by Perennial Autonomy — the manufacturer backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt — and will not affect defenses in Europe, the official said.Perennial Autonomy did not immediately respond to questions about the use of Merops in the Middle East.Pentagon officials conceded this week in closed-door briefings with lawmakers they are struggling to stop waves of drones launched by Iran, leaving some U.S. targets in the Gulf region vulnerable.“This does not mean we can stop everything, but we ensured that the maximum possible defense and maximum possible force protection was set up before we went on offense,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters this week.Michael Robbins, president and CEO of AUVSI, a drone industry group, said lessons from the Middle East and Ukraine show that the U.S. must accelerate deployment of sophisticated counter-drone technologies, so “our forces can defend bases and populations without spending a million dollars to stop a $50,000 threat.”Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Didi Tang, David Klepper, Michelle L. Price, Ben Finley and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report from Washington.

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[l] at 3/6/26 3:31pm
Trump administration officials conceded during a private briefing on Capitol Hill this week that Iran’s Shahed-136 drone is proving more disruptive on the battlefield than the Pentagon had anticipated, two people familiar with the matter told Military Times. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine led the group of senior military leaders who warned lawmakers that gaps in counter-drone technology could leave U.S. forces and assets increasingly vulnerable.“They were ill-prepared,” one person inside the briefing said, referring to U.S. defense plans in the Middle East. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has launched thousands of one-way drones toward U.S. military bases and diplomatic sites across the region since the start of the war, according to the Department of Defense. While American forces and their allies have thwarted most of the onslaught – largely with the Patriot missile system – some projectiles have still managed to reach their targets. ‘Race of attrition’: US military’s finite interceptor stockpile is being testedOne drone that penetrated air defenses at a U.S. installation in Kuwait on Sunday killed at least six American service members and wounded several others. The Iranian drone barrage has also expanded to 12 other countries in the region, CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper said, adding that on Thursday the Islamic Republic fired seven attack drones at civilian residential neighborhoods in Bahrain. The Shahed-136 is a triangle-shaped munition approximately 11 feet long. It carries an explosive warhead in its nose that detonates on impact. The drones can be assembled from relatively simple components and volleyed from the back of a truck, allowing operators to conceal and disperse launch sites. Shaheds cost between $20,000 and $50,000 apiece – a fraction of the price of the American missiles needed to shoot them down. “Iran knows it can’t match the U.S. or Gulf states plane for plane or missile for missile, but it can change the economics of the conflict,” Patrycja Bazylczyk, an associate director with the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., said in an interview with Military Times. “Drones let Iran punch above its weight, keep its adversaries off balance, and project power across the region at minimal cost.”“We can’t just play whack-a-mole in the sky,” Bazylczyk continued. “Shooting drones down one by one is the most expensive way to fight the cheapest threat. We have to go after the roots – the launch sites, the production lines, and the storage depots.”The Pentagon has surged aircraft carriers and fighter jets to the region – its largest agglomeration of air and naval power in the Middle East in decades – but intercepting swarms of low-cost drones is rapidly draining U.S. missile stockpiles. The U.S. has turned to Ukraine for assistance in countering the drones, the country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Thursday. Drone warfare has become a fixture during the four-year war sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin began deploying the Iranian-designed drone in 2022 and has since launched thousands against Ukraine. Engineers in Kyiv have developed a range of anti-drone laser systems, some of which cost as little as $1,000. “We received a request from the United States for specific support in protection against ‘shaheds’ in the Middle East region,” Zelenskyy wrote in a post on X. “I gave instructions to provide the necessary means and ensure the presence of Ukrainian specialists who can guarantee the required security.” In a statement to Military Times, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly insisted, “The Iranian regime is being absolutely crushed.” “Their ballistic missile retaliation is decreasing every day, their navy is being wiped out, their production capacity is being demolished, and proxies are hardly putting up a fight,” Kelly claimed.

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[l] at 3/6/26 1:46pm
Unemployment rates for veterans fell in February following two months of increases, while the rate for the general population ticked up in a weakening labor market rocked by blue-collar job losses, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.In its monthly jobs report, the BLS stated that the unemployment rate for all veterans dropped from 4.5% in January to 4.1% in February, while the rate for post-9/11 veterans went down a full percentage point from 5.8% in January to 4.8% in February.The drop in jobless rates for veterans came as the rate ticked up for the general population from 4.3% to 4.4%, reflecting the loss of 92,000 jobs cut by employers in February, the BLS said.The manufacturing sector lost 12,000 jobs in February and a total of 90,000 jobs in 2025, the BLS said, despite President Donald Trump’s pledge to boost blue-collar jobs by pressing industries to bring back factories from overseas.The troubling jobs report was based upon BLS data that was mostly compiled by mid-February, which was customary for the BLS and was well before the impact of the Feb. 28 start of the war with Iran and the resulting spike in oil prices and stock market turmoil could be gauged.In her comments on the BLS report, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, placed the blame for job losses on the administration of former President Joe Biden. In a statement, DeRemer said, “I’m optimistic that job growth will continue as we undo the Biden-era catastrophe of soaring prices and stagnant wages.”Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, also sought to shrug off the troubling signs in the BLS report that he said came as “something of a surprise,” since “the economy is really strong.” He told CNBC that the BLS report was influenced by winter storms and strikes on the West Coast but “on average it’s about what we expect to be seeing.”Despite the overall loss of jobs in February, the numbers in the BLS report show that “employers still want to hire veterans,” Kevin Rasch, Warriors to Work regional director at the Wounded Warrior Project, said in a phone interview with Military Times.In previous years, the task was to convince employers that veterans were assets to their workforce, Rasch said, “but now the word is out” that veterans bring reliability, discipline and leadership skills to the job.As a result, the unemployment rate for veterans has consistently been in the 3-5% range, and “that’s a solid place for us to be.” The concern now is on how the conflict in the Middle East will affect the labor market going forward, Rasch said.“There is definitely the potential for impact, so we’re definitely watching to see what happens, but right now all we can do is serve those we’re serving,” Rasch said.The concerns about the jobs market are continuing to pile up, said Heather Long, chief economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union. “The war in Iran only adds more uncertainty to an already uneasy mood. Companies are going to be even more reluctant to hire this spring until the war ends and they can see consumers still spending. It’s a tense time for the U.S. economy,” Long said in a statement to Military Times.

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[l] at 3/6/26 9:45am
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday escalated discourse surrounding the Iran war, saying the U.S. would be abandoning talks of a deal unless the country capitulates entirely. In a post on the social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote that “IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE” should the Islamic Republic decide to put down its arms. “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” the president wrote. “After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. ... ‘MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!).’”Trump’s comments came less than 24 hours after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper provided combat updates during a press briefing at CENTCOM headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. Discussing the ongoing Operation Epic Fury, Hegseth asserted that U.S. combat power continues to converge upon the region as Iran’s capabilities decline. “When we say more to come, it’s more fighter squadrons, it’s more capabilities, it’s more defensive capabilities and it’s more bomber pulses more frequently,” Hegseth said.With the goal of dismantling Iran’s navy, missile capabilities and nuclear program, U.S. forces over the course of the week-long war have struck approximately 2,000 targets, Cooper previously stated. In the 72 hours prior to Thursday’s briefing, American bombers hit nearly 200 targets and dropped dozens of 2,000-pound penetrative bombs on deeply buried ballistic missile launchers, the CENTCOM commander said. The U.S. has also eliminated 30 Iranian navy ships, Cooper added, including one off the coast of Sri Lanka — in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility — that was the result of the first U.S. Navy submarine torpedo kill since World War II.Iran’s “equivalent of space command” has also been hit, Cooper noted. Now one week into the conflict, actions have resulted in Iran’s military offenses slowing considerably, the admiral said, with the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile attacks decreasing by 90% since the first day of the war and drone attacks diminishing by 83%.“We’re not just hitting what they have,” Cooper said. “We’re destroying their ability to rebuild.”Questions remain, meanwhile, regarding munitions stockpiles and how exactly Washington will accomplish its objectives. On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that over 800 Patriot interceptor missiles had been used over the first three days of the Iran war, more than what Ukraine has used in four years since Russia’s 2022 invasion. The U.S. and other allies have reportedly approached Kyiv with requests for expertise, including from personnel, on more cost-friendly measures to combat Iran’s cheaply-made Shahed drones, which cost an average of $35,000 each.Contrast that sum with an estimated $4 million price tag of a U.S.-made PAC-3 interceptor, and the cost exchange is 114-1 in favor of Iran.Ukraine, however, has been increasingly experiencing success knocking Shaheds out of the sky with systems that cost as little as a used car. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is slated to host a meeting Friday with executives from Lockheed Martin, RTX, L3Harris and other defense firms to discuss surging missile systems production. Amid this backdrop, Hegseth on Thursday asserted that the U.S. military’s munitions stockpile is not only in no danger of dwindling, but said the amount of U.S. firepower surrounding Iran is about to “surge dramatically.”“We’ve only just begun to fight, and fight decisively,” he said.Military Times reporter Riley Ceder contributed to this report.

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[l] at 3/5/26 5:52pm
The Trump administration is following through with its threat to designate artificial intelligence company Anthropic as a supply chain risk in an unprecedented move that could force other government contractors to stop using the AI chatbot Claude.The Pentagon said in a statement Thursday that it has “officially informed Anthropic leadership the company and its products are deemed a supply chain risk, effective immediately.”The decision appeared to shut down the opportunity for further negotiation with Anthropic, nearly a week after President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accused the company of endangering national security.Trump and Hegseth announced a series of threatened punishments last Friday, on the eve of the Iran war, after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over concerns the company’s products could be used for mass surveillance of Americans or autonomous weapons.The San Francisco-based company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. It has previously vowed to sue if the Pentagon pursued what the company described as a “legally unsound” action “never before publicly applied to an American company.”The Pentagon statement said “this has been about one fundamental principle: the military being able to use technology for all lawful purposes. The military will not allow a vendor to insert itself into the chain of command by restricting the lawful use of a critical capability and put our warfighters at risk.“Some military contractors were already cutting ties with Anthropic, a rising star in the tech industry that sells Claude to a variety of businesses and government agencies. Lockheed Martin said it will “follow the President’s and the Department of War’s direction” and look to other providers of large language models.“We expect minimal impacts as Lockheed Martin is not dependent on any single LLM vendor for any portion of our work,” the company said. It’s not yet clear if the designation aims to block Anthropic’s use by all federal government contractors or just those that partner with the military.The Pentagon’s decision to apply a rule designed to address supply threats posed by foreign adversaries was quickly met with criticism from both opponents and some supporters of Trump’s Republican administration. Federal codes have defined supply chain risk as a “risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert” a system in order to disrupt, degrade or spy on it.U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee, called it “a dangerous misuse of a tool meant to address adversary-controlled technology.”“This reckless action is shortsighted, self-destructive, and a gift to our adversaries,” she said in a written statement Thursday.Neil Chilson, a Republican former chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission who now leads AI policy at the Abundance Institute, said the decision looks like “massive overreach that would hurt both the U.S. AI sector and the military’s ability to acquire the best technology for the U.S. warfighter.”Earlier in the day, a group of former defense and national security officials sent a letter to U.S. lawmakers expressing “serious concern” about the designation.“The use of this authority against a domestic American company is a profound departure from its intended purpose and sets a dangerous precedent,” said the letter from former officials and policy experts, including former CIA director Michael Hayden and retired Air Force, Army and Navy leaders.They added that such a designation is meant to “protect the United States from infiltration by foreign adversaries — from companies beholden to Beijing or Moscow, not from American innovators operating transparently under the rule of law. Applying this tool to penalize a U.S. firm for declining to remove safeguards against mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons is a category error with consequences that extend far beyond this dispute.”While losing its big partnerships with defense contractors, Anthropic experienced a surge of consumer downloads over the past week due to people siding with its moral stance. Anthropic has boasted of more than a million people signing up for Claude each day this week, lifting it past OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini as the top AI app in more than 20 countries in Apple’s app store.The dispute with the Pentagon has also further deepened Anthropic’s bitter rivalry with OpenAI, which announced a Friday deal with the Pentagon to effectively replace Anthropic with ChatGPT in classified military environments.OpenAI said it sought similar protections against domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons but later had to amend its agreements, leading CEO Sam Altman to say he shouldn’t have rushed a deal that “looked opportunistic and sloppy.”

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[l] at 3/5/26 3:26pm
The House narrowly rejected a war powers resolution Thursday to halt President Donald Trump’s attacks on Iran, an early sign of unease in Congress over the rapidly widening conflict that is reordering U.S. priorities at home and abroad.It’s the second vote in as many days, after the Senate defeated a similar measure along party lines. Lawmakers are confronting the sudden reality of representing wary Americans in wartime and all that entails — with lives lost, dollars spent and alliances tested by a president’s unilateral decision to go to war with Iran.While the tally in the House, 212-219, was expected to be tight, the outcome provided a clarifying snapshot of political support for, and opposition to, the U.S.-Israel military operation and Trump’s rationale for bypassing Congress, which alone has the power to declare war. At the Capitol, the conflict has quickly carried echoes of the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and many Sept. 11-era veterans now serve in Congress.“Donald Trump is not a king, and if he believes the war with Iran is in our national interest, then he must come to Congress and make the case,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.The House also approved a separate measure affirming that Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism.Republicans largely back Trump, and most Democrats oppose the warTrump’s Republican Party, which narrowly controls the House and Senate, largely sees the conflict with Iran not as the start of a new war, but the end of a government that has long menaced the West. The operation has killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which some view as an opportunity for regime change, though others warn of a chaotic power vacuum.Republican Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, publicly thanked Trump for taking action against Iran, saying the president is using his own constitutional authority to defend the U.S. against the “imminent threat” the country posed.Mast, an Army veteran who worked as a bomb disposal expert in Afghanistan, said the war powers resolution was effectively asking “that the president do nothing.”For Democrats, Trump’s attack on Iran, influenced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is a war of choice that is testing the balance of powers in the Constitution.“The framers weren’t fooling around,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., arguing that the Constitution is clear that only Congress can decide matters of war. “It’s up to us.”While views in Congress are largely falling along party lines, there are crossover coalitions. The war powers resolution, if signed into law, would have immediately halted Trump’s ability to conduct the war unless Congress approved the military action. The president would likely veto it.Trump officials provide shifting rationale for warAfter launching a surprise attack against Iran on Saturday, Trump has scrambled to win support for a conflict that Americans of all political persuasions were already wary of entering. Trump administration officials spent hours behind closed doors on Capitol Hill this week trying to reassure lawmakers that they have the situation under control.Six U.S. military members were killed over the weekend in a drone strike in Kuwait, and Trump has said more Americans could die. Thousands of Americans abroad have scrambled for flights, many lighting up phone lines at congressional offices as they sought help trying to flee the Middle East.Trump said Thursday he must be involved in choosing Iran’s new leader. Yet House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said this week that America has enough problems at home and is not about to be in the “nation-building business.”Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the war could extend eight weeks, twice as long as the president first estimated. Trump has left open the possibility of sending U.S. troops into what has largely been a bombing campaign by air. More than 1,230 people in Iran have died.The administration said the goal is to destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles that it believes are shielding its nuclear program. It has also said Israel was ready to act, and American bases would face retaliation if the U.S. did not strike Iran first. On Wednesday, the U.S. said it torpedoed an Iranian warship near Sri Lanka.“This administration can’t even give us a straight answer of as to why we launched this preemptive war,” said Rep. Thomas Massie, the Republican from Kentucky, an outlier in his party.Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who had teamed up to force the release the Jeffrey Epstein files, also pushed the war powers resolution to the floor, past objections from Johnson’s GOP leadership. Another Republican, Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio, a former Army Ranger, was also expected to back the war powers resolution.Johnson has warned that it would be “dangerous” to limit the president’s authority while the U.S. military is already in conflict.“Congress must stand with the president to finally close, once and for all, this dark chapter of history,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas.Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., said that as the daughter of Iranian immigrants who fled their homeland, she celebrates Khamenei’s death. But she warned that a democratic transition for the people of Iran never seems to a priority for Trump and his officials who briefed lawmakers.“War carries profound and deadly consequences for our troops, for the American people and for the entire world,” she said. “It’s the most serious decision that a nation can make and the American people deserve debate, transparency and accountability before that decision is made.”Other Democrats have proposed an alternative resolution that would allow the president to continue the war for 30 days before he must seek congressional approval. It is not expected yet for a vote.Senators sit in their desks for solemn voteIn the Senate, Republican leaders have successfully, though narrowly, defeated a series of war powers resolutions pertaining to several other conflicts during Trump’s second term. This one, however, was different.Underscoring the gravity of the moment Wednesday, Democratic senators filled the chamber and sat at their desks as the voting got underway.Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said before the vote that every senator will pick a side. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”Sen. John Barrasso, second in Senate Republican leadership, said “Democrats would rather obstruct Donald Trump than obliterate Iran’s national nuclear program.”The legislation failed on a 47-53 tally mostly along party lines, with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in favor and Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., against it.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

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[l] at 3/5/26 2:20pm
Democrats are condemning Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after he derided media coverage of the six American service members killed in the war with Iran, accusing the press of focusing on the fallen soldiers to make President Donald Trump “look bad.” “This is what the fake news misses,” Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing Wednesday, in which he also avowed that the United States was “winning decisively” in its battle against the Islamic Republic. “But when a few drones get through, or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news,” he said, adding, “I get it – the press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality."The six fallen soldiers were the first American casualties in the new war. The fatalities came one day after the U.S. launched Operation Epic Fury.Pentagon names 5th soldier killed by Iran drone strike, 6th is ‘believed to be’ ID’dIn a statement to Military Times, Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., a 25-year Army veteran, called Hegseth’s remarks “disgusting and despicable.”“Six brave Americans lost their lives in uniform. Their sacrifice deserves honor,” Vindman said. “Instead, the Secretary of Defense is worried about how their deaths make the president look. That is a grievous insult to every service member who has worn the uniform. As a 25-year Army veteran who served in Iraq, I am appalled.”Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who lost both legs while serving as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot in the Iraq War, told Military Times, “Our men and women in uniform will always show up and execute to the highest levels of professionalism and capabilities. Unfortunately, their Commander-in-Chief is not capable of doing that, and their Secretary of Defense is not capable of it either.”And Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., a retired Navy Captain, wrote in a post on X, “There is nothing more sacred than the lives of our service members. They deserve a president and a Secretary of Defense who respect their service and sacrifice.”The service members were killed when an Iranian drone struck a makeshift operations center in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait. The drone reportedly slipped past American defenses without triggering any alerts and exploded at a military base that appeared unusually exposed and vulnerable – raising questions about the security of U.S. forces across the Middle East. The incident is under investigation, the Army said in a statement. The Pentagon identified the slain soldiers as Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, 45, of Indianola, Iowa; Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; Capt. Cody Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; and Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska. Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, 54, of Sacramento, California, is “believed to be” the sixth individual to die at the scene, according to the Pentagon.Trump expressed condolences for the fallen service members Sunday, while acknowledging the American death toll was likely to rise amid the ongoing conflict.“As one nation, we grieve for the true American patriots who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, even as we continue the righteous mission for which they gave their lives,” Trump said in a video shared on Truth Social. “Sadly, there will likely be more, before it ends. That’s the way it is.”The White House said the president will attend the dignified transfer of the troops’ remains when they arrive at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

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[l] at 3/5/26 2:14pm
President Donald Trump demoted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday, naming Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., to fill the post, which is responsible for overseeing the U.S. Coast Guard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration and dozens of other federal agencies. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said Mullin will take over the department on March 31, although he must go through the Senate confirmation process. Noem will become a special envoy for a new security initiative called the “Shield of the Americas,” which Trump said will be unveiled Saturday. Mullin is a former mixed martial arts fighter and congressman who has served in the Senate for three years. He sits on the Senate Armed Services, Appropriations, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and Indian Affairs Committees. He is a fierce Trump supporter and of the president’s policies, including the immigration crackdown. He also is the only Native American to serve in the U.S. Senate. This week, he drew criticism from veterans after an appearance on Fox News on Monday in which he voiced support for the Iran air strikes but described combat as if he had experienced it. Hey @SenMullin, what the actual fuck are you talking about?Did I miss the part of your bio where you served in combat (or served in uniform at all??).Call of Duty doesn’t count. https://t.co/7iDHvjPwJl— Pat Ryan ?? (@PatRyanUC) March 2, 2026 “War is ugly. It smells bad. And if anybody’s ever been there and been able to smell the war that’s happened around you and taste it and fill it in your nostrils and hear it, it’s something that you’ll never forget,” said Mullin, who has never served in uniform. Veterans responded online, including Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., a former soldier who served in Iraq, and former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran. “Hey @SenMullin, what the actual f--- are you talking about? Did I miss the part of your bio where you served in combat (or served in uniform at all??). Call of Duty doesn’t count,” Ryan wrote. “This is so odd. Mullin is NOT a war veteran,” Kinzinger wrote. Last year, Mullin pledged that he would work together with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and he will have more opportunity to do so as Homeland Security secretary, given that the U.S. Coast Guard is deeply involved in drug interdiction and maritime enforcement operations, conducting high-profile seizures of sanctioned oil tankers and drug boats with the U.S. Navy. The department Mullin will take over is currently in the middle of a government shutdown as a result of a standstill over ICE funding prompted by the killings of two American citizens, Renee Good and Veterans Affairs intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti, during protests in Minneapolis. Noem also has been blamed for the harsh treatment of suspects, including Americans detained without due process and faced widespread criticism for her frequent use of federal assets and questionable contracts at the department. This week, the embattled secretary was grilled by Democrat and Republican lawmakers who questioned her department’s harsh deportation methods, her $220 million in spending on advertisements that prominently featured her and the detention of U.S. citizens. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., called for her resignation. “Quality matters, not quantity — and what we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership, Ms. Noem, a disaster,” Tillis said. Under Noem, the Coast Guard launched its largest modernization initiative in decades after receiving $25 billion from the Trump administration to address longstanding maintenance and infrastructure issues, buy new ships, aircraft and other assets and increase force size. The service’s “Force Design 2028,” as the effort is known, aims to redesign the service’s leadership structure, adding a service-specific secretary and other political appointees and reorganizing the flag officer corps. Noem also worked closely with Sean Plankey, who acted as her senior adviser, on the reforms. Plankey stepped down from his position Wednesday to prepare for the confirmation process to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. “This job was transformational for myself and the U.S. Coast Guard,” said Plankey, a 2003 graduate of the Coast Guard Academy, in a LinkedIn post. “Under the leadership of Secretary Kristi Noem, we established Force Design 2028 and raised a $24.59B capital investment to recapitalize and transform the Nation’s premier maritime fighting force. These efforts led the Coast Guard to its highest drug interdiction totals in history.” Noem currently lives in Coast Guard housing at Joint Base Bolling-Anacostia in Washington, D.C. She moved last summer into the home that is traditionally reserved for the Coast Guard commandant, citing security concerns of living in a neighborhood just across the river from the base. During the hearing this week, Noem pushed back against reports that she was living in the commandant’s house, noting that she pays rent to the federal government and is living in Coast Guard quarters but “the commandant is in his house.” Before being named commandant, Adm. Kevin Lunday was the service’s vice commandant who had designated quarters at the base. It is unclear whether Noem will vacate her quarters with her new position. Mullin’s departure from the Senate will leave Republicans with 52 seats. Oklahoma law allows the governor to appoint a senator temporarily to fill his seat until the next statewide general election in November.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

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[l] at 3/4/26 10:00pm
KYIV, Ukraine – One in every three Russian aerial targets destroyed over Ukraine is now brought down not by a missile or a gun — but by interceptor drones that each cost less than a used car, Ukraine’s air force says.Over the capital, the new class of interceptors is even more effective. Drones were credited with more than 70% of Shahed downings in February, Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi announced on Tuesday.The math tells the story: A single Patriot interceptor costs over $3 million, a NASAMS round slightly over $1 million — and each Shahed costs Russia as little as $35,000 to manufacture, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.That puts Ukraine on the wrong side of an approximately 85-to-1 cost exchange every time it uses a Patriot to defend against a drone.But at $3,000 to $5,000 apiece and an average success rate over 60%, interceptors are now changing the calculus of war, Zelenskyy told Fox News late last year.These drones, a weapons category that barely existed a few years ago, have become the fastest-growing layer of Ukraine’s air defense.“We are the first in the world to have a system of destroying drones with drones in the air,” Col. Yuriy Cherevashenko, deputy commander of UAVs for air defense of the Ukrainian Air Force, said in a video marking the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.Facing an unrelenting adversary whose economy dwarfs its own by nearly tenfold, Ukraine had no choice but to outthink rather than outspend, and interceptor drones — mobile, cheap and scalable enough to answer Russian mass production with Ukrainian ingenuity — have emerged as their biggest bet. Now, what began as battlefield improvisation has become a deliberate war strategy.“Drones now occupy a wide segment of the air defense system,” Cherevashenko said. “In the future, they will be perhaps the most numerous means of destroying aerial targets.”Their rapid development over the last year tracked Russia’s escalating use of Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones, which by mid-2025 were arriving in record-breaking waves that overwhelmed Ukraine’s missile-based air defenses faster than Western allies could resupply them.“We needed to supply a lot of interceptors this year, because without them, the winter would have been even harder for Ukraine,” Alona Zhuzha, director of digitalization at Ukraine’s newly established Defense Procurement Agency, told Military Times.The National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) said the country produced 100,000 interceptor drones in 2025 and reported that production capacity has grown eightfold compared to the prior period.Frontline units received an average of over 1,500 interceptor drones per day in December and January — up from about 1,000 per day during the previous period, the MOD said at the beginning of the year.That supply is translating into operational tempo: Last month, interceptor drones flew approximately 6,300 sorties and destroyed more than 1,500 Russian UAVs of various types, Syrskyi said.Interceptors are now a top priority on the DOT-Chain Defence marketplace, the digital platform through which units order directly from manufacturers.“They are very critical for our defense,” Zhuzha said.Russian tech continues to evolve, too.Moscow’s drones have been equipped with rear-facing infrared spotlights designed to blind interceptor pilots, and some have been armed with air-to-air missiles to shoot back, Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, a radio expert and early advocate of interceptor tech who was recently appointed as an adviser to the Ministry of Defence, wrote on Telegram in January.Russia has also expanded its use of decoy drones — foam-and-plywood models including the Gerbera and Parody — which now constitute roughly one-third of all Russian mass attacks, specifically designed to exhaust interceptors and overload the detection layer, according to Defence-UA.Ukraine now flies several distinct classes of interceptors: cheap FPV airframes built for last-kilometer kills — the kind that catch a Shahed before it reaches a substation or apartment block — and faster pursuit systems tied to forward drone lines, designed to launch immediately upon detection, climb fast, and intercept before the threat crosses into civilian airspace, according to the NSDC.Higher-speed interceptors designed for targets like the jet-powered Geran-3 variants, where the old FPV chase math breaks, are emerging now too, according to Ukrainska Pravda.And networked defense systems are beginning to link interceptor nodes across sectors, sharing tracks so a single incoming target can be handed off from one crew to the next as it crosses boundaries.One unit trying to push forward the development and use of interceptors is Lazar’s Group — a drone formation within the National Guard’s 27th Pechersk Brigade known as one of the most effective interceptor units in the country.Phoenix, who commands the group’s drone operations, told Military Times that the group has destroyed more than $15 billion in Russian military equipment since the full-scale invasion — part of Ukraine’s broader shift away from infantry warfare. Military Times agreed to refer to all active duty soldiers by their nom de guerre for operational security.Strike drones, not interceptors — still account for “60 to 70% of confirmed hits” on Russian equipment and personnel across the battle zone. “Interceptors take out most of the rest.”Lazar’s Group utilizes both. Fixed-wing strike models can engage deep targets and conduct reconnaissance well beyond the battle’s edge, while interceptors are optimized for counter-UAV work at shorter ranges and higher closing speeds. For example: Ukraine’s Wild Hornets “Sting” interceptor — a quad-rotor designed to chase and collide with enemy drones — is reported to reach speeds over 300 km/h and operate out to roughly 25 kilometers in interception missions, with altitude service up to several thousand feet, while fixed-wing interceptor variants such as the VB140 Flamingo are designed with extended pursuit profiles that can engage reconnaissance drones at ranges up to 50 km. The real challenge slowing interceptor innovation now? Sensors.“We just need better radar,” Phoenix said. “It allows you to see your enemy and your plane. You understand where you are and where your enemy is, and you can fly to that position.”Ukraine’s most common intercepts still start with cueing: radar tracks, acoustic spotters and stitched feeds from Ukraine’s master “Mission Control” battlefield management system that put a pilot in the right place at the right time.“Without good radar — durable sensors, strong [electronic warfare] defense, etc. — it’s very difficult,” he told Military Times.To counter Russian electronic warfare, another persistent problem, the unit builds its own interceptor drones with proprietary remote control and video transmitter systems designed to resist jamming.“We create our own models because we understand the technical specifications that we need,” Phoenix said. “So they’re not immediately jammed or located.”Illustrating the problem, SpaceX cut off Russian forces’ contraband Starlink terminals at Ukraine’s request last month — but the disruption also knocked out feeds for Ukrainian units sharing the same network, leaving parts of the front without connectivity or intercept capability, according to CNN.Artificial intelligence has not yet come to dominate interception missions — today it is still manual ramming or close-in detonation.“Our pilots mostly operate manually,” Phoenix told Military Times. “Because AI features are nice, but sometimes they just aren’t working.”Finding solutions to the other common hurdles beyond radar — like battery endurance in freezing conditions or operator fatigue on overnight shifts — tends to be simpler, Phoenix said.“After that, they just keep flying.”Lazar’s Group’s strategy has become a national model for how to institutionalize a new layer of air defense into the existing military structure, both in Ukraine and abroad.The 1,700-strong group is helping construct the country’s Drone Line — an unmanned kill zone stretching 15-kilometers deep across the front, announced by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense a year ago.In Brussels, officials have been pushing their own version of a drone wall to bolster defenses along Europe’s eastern flank, but the effort has run into political and technical hurdles, according to Reuters.Kyiv has taken note, and begun leveraging its country’s battlefield tech, skills and data as a major benefit of remaining its staunch ally as peace trilateral negotiations to end the war continue between Ukraine, Russia and the United States.“As we work together to protect lives in Ukraine, we are building a new system – a new security and response architecture, new approaches – to protect lives in any European country when needed,” Zelenskyy told his counterparts at the Munich Security Conference in February.“Our wall of drones is your wall of drones.”

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

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[l] at 3/4/26 8:04pm
Senate Republicans voted down an effort Wednesday to halt President Donald Trump’s war against Iran, demonstrating early support for a conflict that has rapidly spread across the Middle East with no clear U.S. exit strategy.The legislation, known as a war powers resolution, failed on a 47-53 vote tally. The vote fell mostly along party lines, though Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky voted in favor and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted against.The war powers resolution gave lawmakers an opportunity to demand congressional approval before any further attacks are carried out. The vote forced them to take a stand on a war shaping the fate of U.S. military members, countless other lives and the future of the region.Underscoring the gravity of the moment, Democratic senators filled the Senate chamber and sat at their desks as the voting got underway. Typically, senators step into the chamber to cast their vote, then leave.“Today every senator — every single one — will pick a side,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said before the vote. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”Sen. John Barrasso, second in Senate Republican leadership, said during the debate that GOP senators were sending a message that Democrats are wrong for forcing a vote on the war powers resolution.“Democrats would rather obstruct Donald Trump than obliterate Iran’s national nuclear program,” he added.Trump administration scrambles for congressional supportAfter launching a surprise attack against Iran on Saturday, Trump has scrambled to win support for a conflict that Americans of all political persuasions were already wary of entering. Trump administration officials have been a frequent presence on Capitol Hill this week as they try to reassure lawmakers that they have the situation under control.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the war could extend eight weeks, a longer time frame than has previously been floated by the Trump administration. He also acknowledged that Iran is still able to carry out missile attacks even as the U.S. tries to control the country’s airspace.Despite air dominance, US ‘can’t stop everything’ Iran fires, Hegseth saysU.S. service members “remain in harm’s way, and we must be clear-eyed that the risk is still high,” Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the same press conference.Six U.S. military members were killed over the weekend in a drone strike in Kuwait.Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa acknowledged the human costs of the war in her floor speech. Two of the soldiers killed Sunday were from Iowa and a National Guard unit from her state was also attacked in Syria in December, resulting in the deaths of two other soldiers.“But now is our opportunity to bring an end to the decades of chaos,” said Ernst, who herself served as an officer in the Iowa National Guard for two decades.“The sooner the better,” she added.Pentagon names 5th soldier killed by Iran drone strike, 6th is ‘believed to be’ ID’dTrump has also not ruled out deploying U.S. ground troops. He has said he is hoping to end the bombing campaign within a few weeks, but his goals for the war have shifted from regime change to stopping Iran from developing nuclear capabilities to crippling its navy and missile programs.“We should be careful about opening a door into chaos in the Middle East when we cannot see the other side of it,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said in a solemn floor speech after the vote concluded.He said he was praying for “grace to find a path forward together where more do not needlessly join those who have already fallen in this new war in the Middle East.”Lawmakers go on recordThe votes in Congress this week represented potentially consequential markers of just where lawmakers stand on the war as they look ahead to midterm elections and the consequences of the conflict.“Nobody gets to hide and give the president an easy pass or an end-run around the Constitution,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, the Virginia Democrat leading the war powers resolution.Republican leaders have successfully, though narrowly, defeated a series of war powers resolutions pertaining to several other conflicts that Trump has entered or threatened to enter. This one, however, was different.Unlike Trump’s military campaigns against alleged drug boats or even Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the attack on Iran represents an open-ended conflict that is already ricocheting across the region. Several senators who have voted for previous war powers resolutions noted that they opposed this one because it applied to a conflict that is already raging.“Passing this resolution now would send the wrong message to Iran and to our troops,” said GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. “At this juncture, providing unequivocal support to our service members is critically important, as is ongoing consultation by the administration with Congress.”House vote loomsOn the other side of the Capitol, an intense debate over the war unfolded before a vote Thursday. The House first debated a resolution presented by GOP leadership affirming that Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.Rep. Brian Mast, the GOP chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, publicly thanked Trump for taking action against Iran, saying the president is using his own constitutional authority to defend the U.S. against the “imminent threat” of Iran.Mast, an Army veteran who worked as a bomb disposal expert in Afghanistan, said the Democratic resolution was effectively asking “that the president do nothing.”Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs panel, said before the debate that the hardest votes he has taken in Congress have been to decide whether to send U.S. troops to war. “Our young men and women’s lives are on the line,” he said, his voice showing emotion as he emerged from a closed-door briefing late Tuesday with Trump officials.At a news conference Wednesday, several Democratic members who are also veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars spoke about the heavy costs of those conflicts.One of them was Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo. “I learned when I was fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, that when elites in Washington bang the war drums, pound their chest, talk about the costs of war and act tough, they’re not talking about them doing it, they’re not talking about their kids,” Crow said. “They’re talking about working class kids like us.”

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

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[l] at 3/4/26 3:04pm
President Donald Trump will convene defense industry executives Friday for a meeting aimed at rapidly replenishing the U.S. stockpile of munitions and weapons expended in the war against Iran, a White House official and a second person familiar with the plans confirmed to Military Times.Leaders from Lockheed Martin, RTX, L3Harris and other major defense firms are expected to attend.In January, the president signed an executive order pressuring America’s largest defense contractors to boost weapons production and delivery by investing in new facilities. Contractors deemed “underperforming” would be required to submit remediation plans or risk losing government support.The opening salvos of Operation Epic Fury have seen thousands of missiles and munitions rain down on Iran. Trump, who has suggested the campaign would last four to five weeks but could go “far longer,” insists the U.S. military has a “virtually unlimited supply” of weapons. The White House echoed that message Wednesday, arguing America’s arsenal is effectively limitless. By the time of Saturday’s first strikes on Iran, the Pentagon had amassed the largest military buildup in the Middle East since the Iraq War.“The United States of America has more than enough capability to not only successfully execute Operation Epic Fury, but to go much further,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday. “We have weapons stockpiles in place that many people in this world don’t even know about.”Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in a separate press briefing Wednesday, “We have sufficient precision munitions for the task at hand, both on the offense and defense.” Caine offered no further details.According to U.S. Central Command, American forces have struck nearly 2,000 targets with more than 2,000 munitions. The U.S. moved to eradicate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ warehouses, headquarters and military communication capabilities. Dozens of senior Iranian figures have reportedly been killed, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as an individual who Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described as the architect of a 2020 plot to assassinate Trump.The Islamic Republic was estimated to hold roughly 2,000 to 3,000 medium-range ballistic missiles, 6,000 to 8,000 short-range systems and thousands of drones at the outset of the war, U.S. officials said. Tehran has since retaliated with hundreds of drones and missiles targeting an array of American military installations and civilian targets across the region. Six U.S. service members were killed in an Iranian drone attack in Kuwait. Four of the soldiers were identified Tuesday as Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida.; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; and Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa. The Defense Department had not identified two of the deceased as of Wednesday afternoon, pending notifications of their families.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

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[l] at 3/4/26 2:34pm
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged on Wednesday that some Iranian air attacks may still hit their targets even as he asserted that U.S. military superiority is quickly giving it control of the Islamic Republic’s airspace.The United States has spared “no expense or capability” to enhance air defense systems to protect American forces and allies in the Middle East, Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon days after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in a war that has widened throughout the region.“This does not mean we can stop everything, but we ensured that the maximum possible defense and maximum possible force protection was set up before we went on offense,” he said.The acknowledgment that additional drone or missile strikes in the region could cause damage and harm to troops comes as President Donald Trump and top defense leaders have warned that more American casualties were expected in a conflict that began Saturday and could last months. On Wednesday, the Trump administration revealed that a U.S. submarine fired a torpedo that sank an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean.‘The risk is still high’ to American troopsU.S. service members “remain in harm’s way, and we must be clear-eyed that the risk is still high,” Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the news conference with Hegseth.Six soldiers were killed when an Iranian drone strike hit an operations center Sunday in the heart of a civilian port in Kuwait, more than 10 miles from the main Army base. The husband of one of the slain soldiers, who was part of a supply and logistics unit based in Iowa, says the center was a shipping container-style building and had no defenses.Caine declined to answer a question about the possibility of deploying ground troops in Iran, which Trump has not ruled out.“I’m not going to comment on U.S. boots on the ground,” Caine said. “I think that’s a question for policymakers. And I don’t make policy, I execute policy.”White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that it was “not part of the plan for this operation at this time” but noted that “I’m not going to remove an option for the president that is on the table.”Hegseth suggests conflict could last up to 2 monthsHegseth also signaled a possible longer time frame for the conflict than has previously been floated by the administration, saying it could last eight weeks but that the U.S. has the munitions and the equipment to beat Iran in a war of attrition. He declined to set a specific time range, saying the specific duration of the war would depend on how it unfolds.“You can say four weeks, but it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three,” Hegseth said. “Ultimately, we set the pace and the tempo. The enemy is off balance, and we’re going to keep them off balance.”More forces are arriving in the region, including jet fighters and bombers, Hegseth said, and the U.S. “will take all the time we need to make sure that we succeed.”Hegseth and Caine say US forces have enough munitionsSupplies of weaponry are not an issue, Hegseth and Caine said, with the defense secretary noting that the military used more advanced weapons at the start of the campaign but was switching to gravity bombs now that the U.S. has gained control of the Iranian sky. Stockpiles of the advanced weapons remain “extremely strong,” Hegseth said.Caine said U.S. attacks on Iranian missile sites and other offensive targets have been successful enough that forces can strike deeper inland, allowing for the shift from sophisticated weapons that can be launched from far away to more traditional, precision bombs dropped by aircraft.Caine said the U.S. has “sufficient precision munitions for the task at hand, both on the offense and defense.” He noted that the military would not be releasing quantities, citing operational security.“Our air defenses and that of our allies have plenty of runway,” Hegseth said. “We can sustain this fight easily for as long as we need to.”Trump said this week the campaign is likely to last four weeks to five weeks but he was prepared “to go far longer than that.”The number of ballistic missiles fired by Iran is down 86% from the first day of the U.S. military’s campaign, with a 23% drop in the past 24 hours, Caine said Wednesday, and Iran’s use of one-way attack drones is down 73% from the opening days. The decrease could indicate that Iran is holding some weapons in reserve to prolong the conflict.Americans scramble to depart the MideastThe administration promoted its efforts to help Americans depart the region. It abruptly advised those in 14 countries to leave immediately even as the threat of missiles and drones closed airspace in the region and caused widespread flight cancellations.The State Department said it has assisted nearly 6,500 Americans since the start of the war and was working to arrange charter flights or other transportation. Caine said the military has opened up available seats as military transport planes arrive “to try to help folks get out.”The State Department said more than 17,500 Americans have returned to the United States from the Middle East since Saturday, including more than 8,500 on Tuesday alone, although it acknowledged that the vast majority of those used commercial transportation without any government assistance.

[Category: Flashpoints] [Link to media]

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[l] at 3/4/26 9:21am
An alleged mastermind of an Iranian covert unit accused of plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump in 2024 has been “hunted down and killed” amid Operation Epic Fury, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday. “Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh,” Hegseth declared during a press briefing with reporters. “This is not a ‘mission accomplished’ situation. This is simply a reality check.”Iranian animus toward Trump traces back to his first term, when he authorized a January 2020 drone strike that killed General Qasem Soleimani, a powerful commander in the Quds Force. Since then, federal prosecutors have charged multiple people in two separate cases of Iranian murder-for-hire plots during the 2024 presidential campaign, though officials have not presented evidence directly tying Tehran to those schemes. Hegseth did not name the alleged mastermind he said was killed in the ongoing operations.In an interview Sunday, Trump addressed how the threats to his life spurred his decision to wage war on Iran and kill the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “I got him before he got me,” Trump said in a phone interview with ABC News. “They tried twice. Well, I got him first.”Khamenei, who led the Islamic Republic since 1989, was killed Saturday by Israel in a joint operation with the U.S. It was the result of months of close intelligence sharing between the allies, officials told Military Times. Hegseth described the broader U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran on Wednesday as “accelerating.” He indicated the two nations will establish complete control of Iranian airspace within days. “It means we will fly all day, all night, day and night, finding, fixing, and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military,” Hegseth said. “More and larger waves are coming. We are accelerating, not decelerating.” Hegseth dismissed reports that stocks of munitions were running low, noting that the U.S. will deploy 500-pound, 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound GPS and laser-guided precision bombs “of which we have a nearly unlimited stockpile.” As U.S. and Israeli forces advance their offensive, Iran has launched a series of retaliatory missile and drone strikes on American interests and allies across the Middle East. US troops who died in Iran war remembered as devoted parents and soldiersAmerican military installations — including the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates — have been targeted by the Islamic Republic.But Gen. Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that Iranian ballistic missile launches have decreased 86% since the opening day of fighting, including a 23% drop over the past 24 hours. He added that Iran’s one-way attack drones are down 73%. The Pentagon also disclosed that a torpedo from a U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean Tuesday night – marking the first sinking of an enemy warship by an American torpedo since World War II.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

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[l] at 3/4/26 7:53am
JERUSALEM — An Israeli F-35I fighter jet shot down an Iranian Yak-130 in an air combat that lasted “few seconds,” marking the first kill of a manned fighter jet by an F-35, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman said on Wednesday.Israel’s announcement comes amid the ongoing “Epic Fury” military operation, a joint U.S.-Israeli strike against military targets in Iran.In another first, the U.K. reported that its Royal Air Force’s F-35B jets had intercepted Iranian drones above Jordan as part of a defensive mission alongside “Epic Fury,” marking the first targets destroyed by the British warplane type.The Israeli Version of the F-35 is called “Adir,” which means mighty in Hebrew, and is a fifth-generation stealth fighter jet manufactured by the American defense company Lockheed Martin.Israel upgraded the jet to its own specifications, including domestically made electronics systems and adjustments to carry and launch Israeli armaments such as the Python 5 air-to-air missile and Rafael’s SPICE bomb.Israel began receiving its first F-35 aircraft at the end of 2016 — four years after the British received theirs — and currently possesses two dedicated squadrons, totaling at approximately 50 aircraft. In July 2023, Israel placed an order for 25 more to build a third F-35 squadron.The F-35I has participated in several Israeli military campaigns such as operations “Guardian of the Walls” in June 2021, “Rising Lion” last June and the current military campaign in Iran under its Israeli name, “Roaring Lion.” Since that operation began on Feb. 28, the Israeli Air Force reported that it has dropped about 4,000 munitions so far in about 1,600 raids into Iran.The Yak-130 aircraft that was shot down by the Israeli Air Force over Teheran is Russian-made and is also used by the Iranian Air Force for reconnaissance purposes.The type can reportedly be armed with short-range air-to-air missiles. It commonly operates alongside Iranian MiG-29, mainly to intercept drones. The Israeli Air Force notes that the Yak-130 kill is the first time since 1985 that an Israeli fighter jet has shot down an enemy warplane.

[Category: Flashpoints] [Link to media]

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[l] at 3/3/26 1:22pm
House and Senate members, along with prominent veterans’ organizations, hope 2026 will be the year Congress passes legislation to give 54,000 wounded veterans their military retirement pay and Veterans Affairs disability compensation — without one offsetting the other. In the past two weeks, veterans groups, including Disabled American Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars, lobbied lawmakers for passage of the Major Richard Star Act, a bill that would allow medically retired U.S. military personnel to receive both their full retirement pay and VA disability compensation. While the legislation has been a major focus for advocates since 2020, concerns about the estimated 10-year, $9.75 billion cost have stymied its passage. Lingering cost worries cloud plans for veterans disability reform billSen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., the chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the committee’s ranking Democrat, took to the Senate floor Tuesday to support the bill, with Blumenthal calling for the chamber to accelerate its passage by bypassing the committee process. “I’m heartbroken for a nation that can afford to spend tens of billions of dollars, as we are doing right now in a conflict far away, putting Americans’ lives in harm’s way, when we are failing to match [service members’] bravery with our own,” Blumenthal said. “Let’s agree to a vote.” Moran, a cosponsor of the bill, pledged to find a path forward for the legislation, which must be considered by the Senate Armed Services Committee before receiving a vote in the chamber. “I want to make certain that combat-injured veterans receive their full benefits. They have upheld their oath; they have fulfilled their duties. The question before us is whether we will fulfill ours,” Moran said. Currently, the legislation has bipartisan support of 77 senators and 316 representatives. The House version is cosponsored by Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla. Despite the significant support, however, the bill has failed in both Democrat- and Republican- controlled Congresses. Advocates hoped last year they had found a way to pay for the bill by using savings from terminated government contracts or by eliminating wasteful spending. This year, VFW Commander-in-Chief Carol Whitmore argued the money should come from the federal Military Retirement Fund, which finances military retired pay and has more than $1.7 trillion in assets.“The explanation most often given is cost — specifically, the requirement to identify a budgetary offset as though correcting an injustice for disabled retirees must come at the expense of another defense or veterans priority. That framing is misplaced,” Whitmore said in a statement during a joint hearing Tuesday of the House and Senate veterans affairs committees. “Ending the concurrent receipt offset does not require DOD to trade readiness, delay procurement, or sacrifice national security investments.” During Senate floor remarks Tuesday, however, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., said the legislation would affect military readiness, adding that the original estimate of $9.75 billion was now $70 billion. “We all revere and respect those men and women who have served and sacrificed to defend our liberty,” Johnson said. “But we can’t just come down here and talk about how much we love vets and how we want to support them. We have to look at the reality of the situation in dollars and cents. We are $39 trillion dollars in debt.” The legislation was named for Army Reserve Maj. Richard Star, who died in 2021 from lung cancer after being exposed to burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2004, veterans who receive military retirement for serving 20 years or more, as well as VA disability benefits, receive both benefits in full if they have a disability rating of at least 50%. But those veterans who retired early from the service because of military injuries are subject to dollar-for-dollar offsets in their military disability and VA disability benefits, sometimes amounting to thousands of dollars in lost income. If the bill were to become law, veterans eligible for coverage would have to be medically retired, able to qualify for combat-related special compensation and have a combat-related disability of at least 10%. Richard Fetro, national president of the Fleet Reserve Association, said Tuesday during the hearing that passage of the Richard Star Act would restore faith among veterans who suffered debilitating injuries as a result of their service. “Regarding double dipping, that claim ignores reality. Military retirement pay compensates for years of service already rendered. VA disability compensation exists because veterans were wounded during service. Providing both benefits honors service and sacrifice,” Fetro said.

[Category: Veterans] [Link to media]

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[l] at 3/3/26 1:02pm
PARIS — France will send the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier and its strike group to the Mediterranean as war expands in the Middle East, President Emmanuel Macron said in a speech on Tuesday night.With the Strait of Hormuz closed and the Suez Canal and Red Sea threatened, France is also working on a coalition to pool assets, including military, that will allow shipping traffic to resume, Macron said in the televised speech.“Faced with this unstable situation and the uncertainties of the days ahead, I have given orders for the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, its air assets, and its escort of frigates to set course for the Mediterranean,” Macron said.The nuclear-powered Charles de Gaulle and its escorts are being rerouted from the Baltic and the Northern Atlantic, where the carrier group had been set to participate in multiple NATO missions. The air group embarked on France’s only carrier typically consists of Rafale jets and E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft, as well as several helicopters.The deployed carrier strike group included the Italian destroyer Andrea Doria as well as the French frigate L’Amiral Ronarc’h, according to the French Navy. The group also included the frigates Alsace and Chevalier Paul, as well as the oiler Jacques Chevallier, according to French media reports.Macron said France has economic interests to protect, with oil prices, natural gas prices and international trade “profoundly” disrupted by the war between the U.S. and Israel against Iran.“We are taking the initiative to build a coalition to pool resources, including military resources, to resume and secure traffic in these maritime routes that are essential to the global economy,” Macron said. “This is what we were able to do several months ago in the Red Sea. This is what we must do there today.”French forces, which are deployed across several bases in the Middle East, downed drones “in legitimate defense” from the very first hours of the conflict between the U.S. and Israel with Iran, to protect the airspace of its allies, Macron said. France in recent hours sent additional Rafale jets, air-defense systems and radars to the region, the president said.“It’s crucial that we ensure freedom of movement in the Strait of Hormuz because we are all affected,” retired Air Force Gen. Patrick Dutartre said on French television.With European Union member Cyprus also struck in recent days, France will also send additional air-defense assets to the island, as well as the air-defense frigate Languedoc, which should arrive off the coast of Cyprus as early as this evening, Macron said.

[Category: Flashpoints] [Link to media]

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[l] at 3/2/26 8:04pm
Vice President JD Vance — a Marine veteran of the Iraq War who has long been skeptical of American military interventions abroad — insisted Monday that the war with Iran is different because President Donald Trump “has clearly defined what he wants to accomplish.”“There’s just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multiyear conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective,” Vance said in a primetime interview with Fox News. His remarks were his first in public since the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began Saturday.“The president wants to make it clear to the Iranians and to the world that he is not going to rest until he accomplishes that all-important objective of ensuring that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon,” the vice president added. Trump on Monday outlined the administration’s four key objectives for its operations: destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, “annihilating” its navy, preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and ensuring the “Iranian regime” cannot continue to “arm, fund and direct” its proxy groups in the Middle East. The vice president was in the White House Situation Room with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright as Trump launched Operation Epic Fury from his Mar-a-Lago war room in Palm Beach, Florida. It’s quite a shift from Vance’s previous stance. In 2023, while serving as a U.S. senator representing Ohio, Vance endorsed Trump in a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined: “Trump’s best foreign policy? Not starting any wars.” “He has my support in 2024 because I know he won’t recklessly send Americans to fight wars overseas,” Trump’s future vice president wrote. “In Mr. Trump’s four years in office, he started no wars despite enormous pressure from his own party and even members of his own administration.“Not starting wars is perhaps a low bar, but that’s a reflection of the hawkishness of Mr. Trump’s predecessors and the foreign-policy establishment they slavishly followed,” he asserted.Trump, in the first year of his second term, has ordered more airstrikes than his predecessor, President Joe Biden, did in his full four years. Vance’s comments Monday come as the American death toll from the operation mounts. Six service members have been killed in action since the first wave of strikes began Saturday morning Eastern time, according to U.S. Central Command. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have conceded that additional casualties are likely. The U.S. has also signaled it plans to escalate its military offensive against Iran, as it urges Americans in more than a dozen countries in the Middle East to “depart now” due to serious safety risks. “The hardest hits are yet to come,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday, warning, “The next phase will be even more punishing on Iran than it is right now.”

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

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[l] at 3/2/26 1:52pm
President Donald Trump, in his first public comments since unleashing Operation Epic Fury, defended U.S. military operations against Iran as necessary to “eliminate the grave threats posed to America.”The president, speaking Monday at a White House Medal of Honor ceremony recognizing American veterans from the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan, estimated the attacks on the Islamic Republic could last four to five weeks. But he insisted the U.S. has the capability to extend its bombardment far longer.Trump argued the operation was “our last best chance to strike” the Iranian regime, which he described as “sick and sinister.” The U.S. and Israel bombed Iran after three rounds of nuclear negotiations, mediated by Oman, failed to produce a breakthrough. The regime in Tehran, Trump said, posed an imminent threat to the U.S. because it would “soon” have missiles capable of reaching “our beautiful America.” Many experts, however, believe Iran is years away from developing a missile with the range necessary to hit the United States. Trump set forth four objectives of the war: destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, “annihilating” its navy, preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and ensuring the “Iranian regime” cannot continue to “arm, fund and direct” its proxy groups elsewhere in the Middle East, sometimes collectively known as the Axis of Resistance. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Monday the U.S. is sending additional troops and fighter jets to the Middle East to strengthen its military posture. Caine declined to provide specifics on the size of the deployment. “We are just about where we want to be in terms of total combat capacity and total combat power,” he said. Additional troops to deploy to Middle East as Gen. Caine says to expect ‘additional losses’As the conflict escalated, a fourth American service member was killed in action, U.S. Central Command announced Monday. The identities of all the deceased troops are being withheld until after next of kin notifications are complete, CENTCOM said.Trump’s administration acknowledged the war could result in further American casualties. In his speech Monday, the president expressed condolences to the families of the fallen. “Today, we grieve for the four heroic American service members who have been killed in action and send our love and support to their families,” Trump said. “In their memory, we continue this mission with ferocious, unyielding resolve to crush the threat this terrorist regime poses to the American people.”

[Category: / Your Military] [Link to media]

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[l] at 3/2/26 2:32am
BERLIN — Iranian strikes on the weekend targeted regional bases that host European troops, triggering air defense systems and sending soldiers to seek shelter in bunkers.“We can confirm that attacks took place yesterday and today on the multinational military bases in Erbil, Iraq, and Al Azraq, Jordan,” the Operational Command of the German Armed Forces said in a Sunday statement, adding “air defense measures” had been activated.The German soldiers based there were relocated into air raid shelters and were unharmed, the command’s statement continued. Other countries known to have recently been based in Erbil include Norway, Sweden, Italy, France, Hungary and the Netherlands, though some troops were relocated ahead of the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. In their initial statements, European nations were emphatic that they did not participate in the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, although they simultaneously did not downplay their dislike for the Iranian regime.The first European Union statement on Saturday reiterated that the Union was opposed to Iran’s “murderous regime” and had placed sanctions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, which the EU also recently designated a terrorist organization. The EU called for “maximum restraint” and stressed the importance of nonproliferation and its longstanding preference for a diplomatic resolution of the crisis. “For regional security and stability, it is of the utmost importance that there is no further escalation through Iran’s unjustified attacks on partners in the region,” Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission’s president, said on X, formerly Twitter. She scheduled a high-level meeting to discuss the situation for Monday, two days after the initial attacks. Although European nations were not involved in the initial strikes on Iran, their direct involvement in the crisis remains possible, given that European assets and missions are scattered across the region.The EU’s Operation Aspides naval mission, which protects shipping in the Red Sea against strikes from Houthi rebels in Yemen, was extended for another year last week, and is set to receive a reinforcement of two French warships, bringing the total to five. The mission’s mandate was due to expire on Feb. 28, the day that the regional war began. On Monday morning, news broke that an Iranian drone had struck the British Royal Air Force base Akrotiri on the island of Cyprus, per The Guardian. This came just hours after the U.K. government had decided to grant U.S. forces access to its bases for strikes on Iran. No casualties and only “limited” damage were reported. The two large military base areas in the south of Cyprus − Akrotiri and Dhekelia − are considered sovereign British overseas territories. Meanwhile, the French foreign ministry on Monday rejected chatter on X that the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier was being sent to the Eastern Mediterranean.European governments estimate that tens of thousands of their citizens are in the region, also owing to the United Arab Emirates’ popularity as a destination, residence and stopover location. Spain and Germany each estimate over 30,000 of their citizens are currently in the Middle East.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

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