Crooked Bough News Round-up

— US to delay weapons deliveries to some European countries due to Iran war, sources say

 

at 4/17/26 7:20am

U.S. officials have informed some European counterparts that some previously contracted weapons deliveries are likely to be delayed as the Iran war continues to draw on weapons stocks, five sources familiar with the matter said.The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the communications were not public, said several European countries will be affected, including in the Baltic region and in Scandinavia.Some of the weapons in question were purchased by European countries under the Foreign Military Sales program, or FMS, but have not yet been delivered, the sources added. Those deliveries will likely be delayed, U.S. officials told European officials in bilateral messages in recent days, the sources said.The White House and the State Department referred queries to the Pentagon, which did not respond to a request for comment. The delays underline the degree to which the war against Iran, which began with U.S.-Israeli air strikes on February 28, has begun to stretch U.S. supplies of some critical weaponry and ammunition.European officials complain the delays are putting them in a difficult position.Under the FMS program, foreign countries purchase U.S.-made weapons with the logistical assistance and consent of the U.S. government. Washington has pushed European NATO partners to purchase more U.S.-made materiel under President Donald Trump, including through the FMS program, as part of a bid to shift the responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense away from the U.S. and onto European partners.But such weapons deliveries are often delayed, causing frustration in European capitals, where some officials are increasingly looking at weapons systems made within Europe.U.S. officials say the weapons are needed for the war in the Middle East, and they fault European nations for not helping the U.S. and Israel open the Strait of Hormuz.Even before the Iran war, the U.S. had already drawn down billions of dollars’ worth of weapons stockpiles, including artillery systems, ammunition and anti-tank missiles since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and Israel began military operations in Gaza in late 2023.Since the start of the Iran campaign, Tehran has fired hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones at Gulf countries. Most have been intercepted, including with the PAC-3 Patriot missile interceptors that, for example, Ukraine relies ‌on to defend its energy and military infrastructure from ballistic missiles.The sources spoke on the condition that the names of some of the countries affected be withheld. Some share a border with Russia and, as such, the cadence of weapons deliveries can be considered sensitive defense information.The delayed weaponry includes various kinds of ammunition, including munitions that can be used for both offensive and defensive purposes, the sources said.

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

— Combat search and rescue’s uncertain future: As A-10s phase out, US Air Force faces questions of what comes next

 

at 4/16/26 2:21pm

The callsign “Sandy,” used by U.S. Air Force aircraft and pilots conducting combat search-and-rescue operations, traces to late 1965. Capt. J.W. “Doc” George, a U.S. Air Force A-1 Skyraider pilot, arrived at Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand, as part of a CSAR replacement rotation from Bien Hoa, South Vietnam. When asked what callsign his flight would use, he suggested the one he used at Bien Hoa: “Sandy.” The name stuck, was passed to his replacement and soon became the standard callsign for all A-1 Skyraiders flying CSAR missions protecting downed aircrews.The Sandy role was later transferred to the faster LTV A-7D Corsair II in 1972 as the last Skyraiders were withdrawn from Southeast Asia. However, the A-7 struggled in the role due to its higher maneuvering speeds, which made it less effective for low-and-slow visual searches and close helicopter escort than the A-1.In the late 1970s, the Corsair passed the CSAR baton to the A-10 Thunderbolt II Warthog, which offered excellent loiter time, survivability and firepower suited to the mission. The A-10 airframe and its pilots still carry the “Sandy” callsign today.As the Air Force accelerates plans to retire the A-10 Thunderbolt II by fiscal year 2029, the service faces a growing set of unanswered questions about what replaces it in combat search and rescue, one of the military’s most specialized mission sets. More than an analysis of replacement aircraft and their capabilities, the transition raises concerns about the pilots in the cockpit, who for nearly five decades have received specialized training in the combat search-and -rescue mission and built trust within the CSAR community. With congressional oversight and legislation underscoring concerns about CSAR operational readiness, and on the heels of a CSAR mission over Iran that brought two F-15E airmen home, the stakes of those unanswered questions have taken on a new sense of urgency.Highly skilled Sandy pilotsIn the past several decades, A-10s have assumed the Sandy role in CSAR operations in the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo and most recently in the April 3, 2026, operation that recovered two American F-15E Strike Eagle airmen from Iranian territory. One supporting A-10 sustained heavy battle damage during the mission; its pilot continued flying long enough to eject safely over Kuwait.During an April 6, 2026, press conference detailing that mission, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the role of a Sandy: “A Sandy has one mission: to get to the survivor, bring the rescue force forward, and put themselves between that survivor on the ground and the enemy,” Caine said. “They are committed to this. This is what they live for. And this is what they’ve trained for, for many, many years.”The rescue mission that brought 2 F-15E Strike Eagle crew members homeOnly the most experienced A-10 pilots are selected for Sandy qualification, which requires specialized training in CSAR tactics and procedures as part of a full CSAR task force, including HC-130 tankers and HH-60 helicopters.This advanced training takes place primarily at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, home of the 357th Fighter Squadron, the Air Force’s formal A-10 training unit. Here, Sandy pilots participate in integrated exercises, local ranges and large-scale events like Angel Thunder, the Air Force’s largest and most comprehensive CSAR exercise. Additional operational integration takes place at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia.In a typical four-ship A-10 Sandy CSAR formation, each aircraft has a specific role, according to USAF documents. Sandy 1 is the lead pilot, serving as the rescue mission commander and on-scene commander, responsible for overall command, survivor authentication and threat suppression. Sandy 2 provides cover and backup leadership. Sandy 3 and Sandy 4 focus on the escort mission, protecting the HH-60 rescue helicopters throughout.For nearly five decades, the A-10 has proven ideally suited for the Sandy role. Still, the Air Force is moving forward with plans to retire the A-10 by fiscal 2029. What replaces it in the Sandy role, and whether any other platform can replicate what the Warthog and A-10 Sandy-qualified pilots bring to the CSAR mission, are questions the service has not yet answered.CSAR in a world without WarthogsThe Air Force has confirmed there is currently no formal or informal transition underway for the Sandy 1 rescue mission commander role — the on-scene command function of every CSAR operation — to any other specific airframe. “Discussions are still ongoing regarding the use of multi-role platforms serving in the A-10’s Sandy 01 RMC role,” an Air Combat Command spokesperson said. The same applies to the Sandy 2, 3 and 4 escort roles, the spokesperson said.The service’s stated transition strategy centers less on the aircraft and more on the expertise of A-10 pilots themselves, suggesting the F-35A as the likely destination platform for Sandy-qualified A-10 pilots. “The Air Force is leveraging the extensive experience of its A-10 pilots to ensure a successful transition to other aircraft,” the 355th Wing Public Affairs office said. “A-10 pilots bring a wealth of expertise in close air support and combat search and rescue experience, which is invaluable as the A-10 continues to divest and they transition to 5th generation assets like the F-35.”The service also acknowledged that standards for validating successor-platform performance in the CSAR mission are a work in progress. The Pentagon “is carefully reexamining future Close Air Support and Combat Search and Rescue requirements,” the 355th Wing Public Affairs office said, “including how the Air Force will validate the effectiveness of its multi-role fighter fleet in performing all aspects of the CAS mission.”No specialized Sandy qualification program for any successor platform, such as the one that existed for the A-10 for many years, has been confirmed to exist or be under development.Lt. Col. Joel Bier, a retired U.S. Air Force Weapons School instructor pilot and Sandy 1 instructor with more than 2,500 hours in the A-10, said the service’s transition strategy underestimates the complexity of the Sandy mission. “No other pilots train to Close Air Support, Forward Air Control (Airborne), and Combat Search and Rescue with the ferocity of the A-10 community,” Bier said.The challenge, Bier said, is not simply whether the F-35A, F-15E or F-16 airframes are capable of performing the Sandy mission, but whether the pilot is properly trained for it. “A jack of all trades is master of none. Each of the fighter communities trains to a half-dozen or more equally complex missions, but CSAR is fundamentally different. It is friendly-centric and combines elements of air superiority and contingency planning at lower speeds and longer durations that fighter platforms do not routinely train to.”A-10 versus F-35In 2016, the Air Force conducted testing to evaluate potential Sandy replacements at the 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. Lt. Col. Joshua Wood, the squadron’s commander at the time and an F-35 pilot, was on record expressing skepticism about direct platform comparisons.“When you try to have a comparative analysis of a single-mission platform like the A-10 against a platform like the F-35, which is fundamentally designed from the ground up to do something completely different,” Wood told Combat Aircraft magazine, as reported by War is Boring in 2016, “you run the risk of drawing unrealistic conclusions.”Still, Wood described what happened when a former A-10 Sandy 1 instructor who had recently cross-trained into the F-35 stepped into a lackluster CSAR exercise. “No kidding, he shows up and within five minutes on station he’s quarterbacked the whole thing,” Wood told the magazine. “They’ve rescued the survivor and everyone goes home.” Wood attributed the result not to the F-35’s capabilities, but to the pilot’s CSAR background and Sandy training. “I would say 75% is the pilot,” he said.Bier said the test results underscored the importance of Sandy training more than the F-35’s suitability for the mission.“Would the F-35 pilots have stepped in if an F-16 or F-15E CSAR test had been going smoothly? Would they have intervened at all if they weren’t both recent A-10 Weapons School graduates and Sandy 1 instructors who had only transferred to the F-35 six to nine months earlier? And in the decade since, has anyone in the F-35 community created a single new Sandy qualified for the mission? The answer to all three is no,” Bier said. “Those F-35 pilots, who I personally know and respect, never even flew another CSAR in the F-35 outside that test environment — a fact that speaks volumes about how the Air Force has prioritized the Sandy transition plan," he added.A separate 2022 Pentagon test report comparing the F-35A and A-10C, obtained through Freedom of Information Act litigation, found that F-35A pilots reported a significantly higher workload than A-10C pilots in the forward air control mission, a role closely aligned with the on-scene command demands of Sandy. The report also noted that pilots from both aircraft found that the A-10C and F-35A performed more effectively together in contested CSAR than either platform did alone, pointing more toward a combined model than a direct replacement.The test report was completed in February 2022, nearly three years after testing concluded in 2019. The report was finally made public more than six years after the tests took place — years after Congress had already begun approving the A-10 retirement the test was meant to inform.CSAR community trusts the WarthogThe flight characteristics that define the Sandy mission present their own challenges for potential successor airframes. “It’s fast enough to stay ahead of the rescue force, but slow enough to scour the ground for threats to it, and rugged enough to take hits from that threat when necessary,” Bier said of the Warthog.The A-10’s unique capabilities extend to the rescue helicopter crews the Sandy pilots are tasked with protecting. “A-10 Sandys serve HH-60W Jolly Green crews as their Rescue Escort — ensuring they arrive safely and with all the pertinent information at the downed aircrew,” Bier said. “Fighters will struggle to expose the small arms and AAA threats from medium altitude, while shifting to rotary wing fires sacrifices speed, armor and communications relay. These shortfalls increase risk to both the Jollys and the isolated personnel.”The relationship between the A-10 and the accompanying CSAR aircraft is not incidental, Bier said, but rather by design. “Calling the HH-60W or HC-130J flawed in the Sandy role is like saying the A-10 is deficient in the Jolly or Crown missions. It’s not intended as disrespect, nor is it a design flaw — it’s an intentional symbiosis. That’s precisely why Sandy, Jolly and Crown are synonymous with the CSAR mission.”Lt. Col. Ryan Rutter, commander of the 357th Fighter Squadron at Davis-Monthan, described the relationship between the A-10 community and the rescue force in a recent 355th Wing release. “The trust between the A-10 and the rest of the rescue community is absolute,” Rutter said. “They know we will do whatever it takes to protect them while they work to bring our teammates home.”On April 3, 2026, the same day A-10s in the Sandy role helped recover Dude 44 Alpha from Iran, the 357th Fighter Squadron graduated its last class of A-10 pilots. In official photo captions, the Air Force called the ceremony “the end of an era for A-10 training.” Air Combat Command confirmed the 357th is on track to inactivate in fiscal 2026, although specific timelines were not available.Whether the closure of the 357th marks the end of the Sandy qualification pipeline entirely, or whether the Air Force plans to establish a similar program for successor platforms, remains unclear. Neither the 355th Wing nor Air Combat Command Public Affairs responded specifically to questions about the future of Sandy qualification training by the time of publication.Congressional oversightThe fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law in December 2025, was the latest in a series of congressional measures aimed at slowing the A-10’s retirement. The measure required the Air Force to deliver a detailed briefing to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees no later than March 31, 2026, on the status of A-10 aircraft inventory and the service’s transitional plan for divesting all A-10s prior to fiscal 2029.That deadline has passed. The Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs office could not confirm whether the briefing had been delivered. Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., a member of the House Armed Services Committee who has pushed to stave off the A-10 retirement, did not immediately respond to questions about whether the committee had received the briefing.It is unclear whether the A-10’s recent effectiveness in Operation Epic Fury factors into the Air Force’s transition briefing or divestment plans.The NDAA also mandated that the Air Force maintain a minimum inventory of 103 A-10s through Sept. 30, 2026, an amendment authored by Scott, reflecting congressional concerns about the service’s transition planning and potential gaps in mission readiness.In a statement provided to Defense News, Scott cited the A-10’s recent performance in Iran. “For 50 years, the A-10 Warthog has reliably supported critical military missions. I was proud to lead an amendment in the FY26 NDAA blocking the premature retirement of A-10s currently in service today. Because the fleet is alive, the A-10 is proving why it’s critical to our forces, providing air power for freedom and leading the rescue efforts for our airmen that were recently secured from hostile forces in Iran,” Scott said. “I will continue to work diligently to ensure that our military is properly equipped with the best weapons systems available.”Scott pressed the issue at an April 15 HASC Subcommittee on Readiness hearing, when he asked Gen. John Lamontagne, Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, what the service was doing to prepare for CSAR operations when the A-10 retires. Lamontagne responded: “It’ll be a mix of platforms, just like it’s been a mix of platforms in the past with HH-60s and overhead folks doing that coordination role that the A-10s have done very well over the years.”Scott noted that the HH-60 is a helicopter, the rescue platform, not the Sandy escort. Lamontagne clarified he had understood the question to be about CSAR broadly, rather than the fixed-wing Sandy escort role specifically.Despite these unanswered questions, Lt. Col. Bier offered a potential path forward.“If the Air Force proceeds with final A-10 divestment in fiscal year 2027, significant CAS and CSAR capabilities risk being lost due to the compressed timeline,” Bier said. “Extending the remaining A-10 squadrons until a viable replacement is identified offers a logical bridge.” Bier noted that, barring congressional intervention, an indefinite extension is unlikely given the service’s well-documented intention to move on from the A-10.Absent extending the A-10 platform, one of the multi-role fighters already slated to replace A-10 units would likely inherit the Sandy mission. But platform selection alone is not enough, he said.“The key is selecting an aircraft to deliberately carve out dedicated squadrons with a Designed Operational Capability statement for the Sandy/CSAR mission,” Bier said. “This must include a dedicated training mandate — modeled on the A-10’s current Ready Aircrew Program tasking — and unique Air Force Specialty Codes to prevent diluting that training in the larger multi-role platform community. These actions protect the Sandy community from mission creep and preserve its unwavering commitment to the CSAR covenant: that others may live.”Bier warned that the Air Force cannot afford to ignore the hard-won lessons of the past.“As the old military saying goes, lessons are written in blood,” Bier said. “Sacrificing over 50 years of hard-won institutional knowledge dooms our future warriors to relearn them the hard way.”

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

— Advocates press for preventive programs, VA benefits for struggling vets

 

at 4/16/26 1:32pm

With more than 100,000 American veterans incarcerated in the United States, advocates say more investment is needed for the transition from military to civilian life and services for those who have run afoul of the law. Representatives from specialty courts and veterans’ legal organizations pressed Congress Wednesday for expansion of the Veterans Treatment Courts system and reinstatement of some Veterans Affairs benefits for imprisoned former service members. They argued that while not all veterans convicted of serious crimes would benefit, those with other-than-honorable discharges or service-connected mental health or substance use disorders should have opportunities to change their lives. Corey Schramm, an Army veteran who developed post-traumatic stress disorder after three deployments to Iraq and later was arrested following a blackout that involved a weapon, said a Kansas Veterans Treatment Court, where he underwent two years of treatment and mentorship, saved his family. “I was on and off probation before I went to Veterans Treatment Court, and when I showed up, I thought I was going to play the system, go through the motions. Boy was I ever wrong. … VTC is not a shortcut,” Schramm said during a hearing Wednesday before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. The first Veteran Treatment Court was established in 2008 in Buffalo, New York, to provide medical treatment, supervision and mentorship to former service members with non-violent criminal convictions related to service-connected addiction or mental health conditions. Today there are more than 600, and the Department of Veterans Affairs employs hundreds of Veterans Justice Officers to support veterans in jails or who are on parole, probation or in the court system. But many veterans remain unaware of programs tailored to them or lack access to available services because they were discharged from the military with general or other than honorable discharges, rendering them ineligible for many Veterans Affairs programs and benefits. Others may have lost access to their VA benefits when they were sentenced, since disability compensation is reduced when a veteran is convicted of a felony and incarcerated for more than 60 days and VA health care benefits stop when they enter a prison health system. Rose Carmen Goldberg, director of the Veterans Clinic at the University of Washington School of Law, argued that incarcerated veterans should have access to VA behavioral health care, which provides expertise in combat-related mental health issues, sexual trauma or other service-specific concerns. “Access to VA mental healthcare can literally be lifesaving. Veterans with a less-than-honorable discharge who are unable to access VA mental healthcare have a significantly elevated risk of suicide, a difference that disappears if they gain access,” she said. Goldberg proposed that imprisoned veterans have access to VA services through telehealth and she supports a bill, the “Get Justice-Involved Veterans Behavioral Assistance and Care for Key Health Outcomes to Maintain Empowerment Act,” sponsored by Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, and Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., that would do that. “VA-furnished mental healthcare is critical because it is more effective than private sector care,” Goldberg said. Another key to improving outcomes for veterans who leave the service is reforming the Defense Department’s Transition Assistance Program, which several panelists argued was ineffective for preparing service members for non-military life, the panelists said. According to retired Army Brig. Gen. David “Mac” MacEwen, director of the Veterans Justice Commission at the Council on Criminal Justice, the Defense Department spends billions on recruiting and training but just millions per year on TAP. A commission found that TAP did not prepare 44% of its attendees for transition and 22% of transitioning service members never attended. “The result is a fragmented and under-resourced system that leaves too many service members ill-prepared for civilian life. This lack of preparation increases their vulnerability to involvement in the criminal justice system,” MacEwen said. Committee Chairman Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., conducted the hearing to better understand how to help veterans in judicial system and prevent them from entering it in the first place. Moran sponsored a bill that was approved in January to fully fund Veterans Treatment Courts and provided $4 million to establish a National Center for Veterans Justice. “We need to make sure that veterans who carry scars, with wounds — visible and invisible — are not forgotten,” Moran said. Yet many jurisdictions do not have a veterans treatment court or those in law enforcement or the court system aren’t aware of these programs. Former Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Lawton Nuss, a former Marine, said more courts are needed, noting that in Kansas, of the 89 veterans who have graduated in the past decade from the VTC program, just five have later been arrested, a 95% success rate. According to Nuss, one of the first graduates from the Johnson County VTC was a combat veteran who told him he would “have been better off being killed in Afghanistan instead of coming home and being arrested for committing a violent crime.” “He described his shame to me [as], ‘I went from hero to villain,’” Nuss said. “This justice-involved veteran suffered from unhealed PTSD. As has been said about such veterans, the painful paradox is that fighting for one’s country can render one unfit to be its citizen.” The panelists also pressed for changes to the GI Bill that allow more veterans to access education benefits. According to MacEwen, the original GI Bill called for all veterans except those who received dishonorable discharges to receive education benefits. MacEwen said that since the original language for the GI Bill was written in 1944, the VA has changed eligibility requirements. “Congress explicitly wrote that individuals who were not discharged under dishonorable conditions should be eligible for VA care and benefits. However, the VA’s implementation has not aligned with this plain text, resulting in the unlawful denial of services to hundreds of thousands of veterans with other than honorable discharges,” MacEwen said. Moran said he believes the VA and Defense Department must improve services for transitioning veterans but community organizations are vital to supporting veterans as well. “All of our witnesses provide examples of why we work to support veterans when they transition out of the military, and the value they add to our communities and our country after their service when that transition goes well,” Moran said.

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

— Starlink outage hit drone tests, exposing Pentagon’s growing reliance on SpaceX

 

at 4/16/26 11:41am

Last August, U.S. Navy officials carrying out a test of unmanned vessels realized they had hit a single point of failure: Starlink. A global outage across Elon Musk’s satellite network affecting millions of Starlink users had left two dozen unmanned surface vessels bobbing off the California coast, disrupting communications and halting operations for almost an hour.The incident, which involved drones intended to bolster U.S. military options in a conflict with China, was one of several Navy test disruptions linked to SpaceX’s Starlink that left operators unable to connect with autonomous boats, according to internal Navy documents reviewed by Reuters and a person familiar with the matter. As SpaceX rockets toward a $2 trillion public offering this summer – expected to be the largest ever – the company has secured its position as the world’s most valuable space company in part by being indispensable to the U.S. government with an array of technologies spanning satellite communications to space launches and military AI. Starlink, in particular, has proved key to crucial programs - from drones to missile tracking - with a low-earth orbit constellation of close to 10,000 satellites, a scale that provides the military with a network resilient against potential adversary attacks. But the Navy’s mishaps with Starlink for its autonomous drone program, which have not been previously reported, highlight the challenges of the U.S. military’s growing reliance on SpaceX and the risks it brings to the Pentagon.“If there was no Starlink, the U.S. government wouldn’t have access to a global constellation of low earth orbit communications,” said Clayton Swope, a deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Pentagon did not respond to questions about the drone test or SpaceX’s work with the Navy. The Pentagon’s chief information officer, Kirsten Davies, said the “Department leverages multiple, robust, resilient systems for its broad network.”The Navy and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.Despite facing growing competition from Amazon.com, which announced an $11.6 billion agreement this week to acquire satellite maker Globalstar, SpaceX remains far ahead in low-earth orbit communications.Beyond drones, SpaceX has cemented a near-monopoly for space launches and provides satellite communications with Starlink and its national security-focused constellation, Starshield, generating billions of dollars for the company. Last month, U.S. Space Force said it had reassigned its upcoming GPS launch to a SpaceX rocket for the fourth time, due to a glitch in the Vulcan rocket made by the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance.WARNINGS ABOUT RELYING ON SPACEX Democratic lawmakers have warned the Pentagon about the risks of its reliance on a single company led by the world’s richest man to deliver crucial national security capabilities. More recently, the Defense Department’s disagreements and blacklisting of AI startup Anthropic quickly revealed how an over-reliance on one AI vendor could create problems should that vendor be dropped. Reuters reported last year that Musk unexpectedly switched off Starlink access to Ukrainian troops as they sought to retake territory from Russia, denting allies’ trust in the billionaire. In Taiwan, SpaceX faced criticism over concerns it was withholding satellite communications to U.S. service members based there, “possibly in breach of SpaceX’s contractual obligations with the U.S. government,” according to a 2024 letter sent by then-U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher to Musk, reported by Forbes at the time. SpaceX disputed the claim in a post on X.Reuters could not determine whether SpaceX has since provided Starlink service in Taiwan to U.S. service members. The Pentagon and SpaceX did not respond to questions about Taiwan. “As a matter of operational security, we do not comment on or discuss plans, operations capabilities or effects,” an official said in a statement. STARLINK ‘EXPOSED LIMITATIONS’SpaceX’s Starlink broadband has been crucial to the Pentagon’s drone program, providing connection to small unmanned maritime vessels that look like speedboats without seats, and include those made by Maryland-based BlackSea and Austin, Texas-based Saronic.In April 2025, during a series of Navy tests in California involving unmanned boats and flying drones, officials reported that Starlink struggled to provide a solid network connection due to the high data usage needed to control multiple systems, according to a Navy safety report of the tests reviewed by Reuters. “Starlink reliance exposed limitations under multiple-vehicle load,” the report stated. The report also faulted issues linked to radios provided by Silvus and a network system provided by Viasat.In the weeks leading up to the global Starlink outage in August, another series of Navy tests was disrupted by intermittent connection issues with the Starlink network, Navy documents reviewed by Reuters show. The causes of the network losses were not immediately clear. Despite the setbacks, the upside of Starlink – a cheap and commercially available service – outweighs the risk of a potential outage disrupting future military operations, said Bryan Clark, an autonomous warfare expert at the Hudson Institute. “You accept those vulnerabilities because of the benefits you get from the ubiquity it provides,” he said.

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

— Senate Republicans back Trump military sales to Israel

 

at 4/15/26 7:25pm

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday blocked two resolutions that would have stopped the sale of some $450 million in bombs and bulldozers to Israel, as President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans rallied behind his support for the Jewish state.But support for the resolutions from a large majority of the 47-member Senate Democratic caucus underscored growing frustration within that party about the effect on civilians from Israeli strikes on Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.A decades-long tradition of strong bipartisan support for Israel in the U.S. Congress means resolutions to stop weapons sales are unlikely to pass, but backers hope raising the issue will encourage Israel’s government and U.S. administrations to do more to protect civilians.Supporters of the sales say Israel is an important ally to whom the United States should sell military equipment.Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, forced votes on the resolutions, saying the sales violate criteria for foreign assistance in the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act.The first resolution would have prohibited the $295 million sale of D9R and D9T Caterpillar bulldozers, parts and other support. The vote was 59 to 40 against advancing the measure.Seven Democrats voted with every Republican against advancing the resolution of disapproval of the bulldozer sale. Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming did not vote. The second would have prohibited the $151.8 million sale of 12,000 BLU-110A/B general purpose 1,000-pound “dumb” bombs and related logistics and technical support services.Eleven Democrats joined every Republican to block the measure by 63 to 36. Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina did not vote.Israel uses the bombs in attacks on Gaza and Lebanon and uses the bulldozers to demolish homes in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank, Sanders said.“The United States must use the leverage we have - tens of billions in arms and military aid — to demand that Israel ends these atrocities,” he said, urging support for the resolutions.Israel says it does not intentionally target civilians, and that its strikes are intended to neutralize militants and military infrastructure.Wednesday’s vote showed an uptick in support for efforts to limit military sales to Israel. In July, two resolutions that would have blocked arms sales in response to civilian casualties in Gaza were blocked in the Senate.Also introduced by Sanders, they failed by 73 to 24 and 70 to 27 in the 100-member chamber.The Trump administration bypassed the normal congressional review of military sales early in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, saying there was an emergency that made it necessary to immediately transfer the weapons.

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

— White House offers no hint of Iran war cost as it seeks military funding surge

 

at 4/15/26 6:52pm

White House budget director Russell Vought said on Wednesday he could not estimate the cost of the Iran war, as he defended President Donald Trump’s request for a massive $1.5 trillion annual military budget against bipartisan criticism from U.S. lawmakers who cited the Pentagon’s historic lack of financial accountability.“We’re not ready to come to you with a request. We’re still working on it. We’re working through to figure out what’s needed,” Vought told a hearing of the House of Representatives Budget Committee. “I don’t have a ballpark.”The cost of the war with Iran, which Trump began alongside Israel on February 28, has remained an open question on Capitol Hill. An initial $200 billion request for additional funding for the war met with stiff opposition in Congress last month. Vought appeared before the panel to discuss Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2027, with its $500 billion increase in military spending and 10% reduction for non-defense programs. The request is intended to reflect Republican priorities heading into the November midterm elections, in which Trump’s Republicans hope to retain control over the House of Representatives and the Senate but face growing public concern about the cost of living, energy prices and the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. ‘Never passed an audit’Democrats took issue with Vought’s assertions that healthcare, education and low-income energy assistance programs were marred by fraud. “I’m so glad you asked about fraud, because you are coming back to ask for a $1.5 trillion budget for the Department of Defense,” Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington state told the budget director. “The Department of Defense is the only federal agency that has never passed an audit ... But you’re not going after any of that.”Vought said the administration is pursuing “inefficiencies” at the Pentagon.“I don’t think you’re doing enough,” said Republican Representative Glenn Grothman, who called for a Pentagon audit to be completed before Congress votes on defense spending.“There is so much arrogance in that agency,” added Grothman, of Wisconsin. “They just say we don’t have to do it on audit. We’re so damn important. We don’t care what Congress thinks.”Vought promoted Trump’s budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning October 1 as aimed at reducing spending. He promoted Trump’s 2025 tax-cut-and-spending package known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” as an initiative that achieved $2 trillion in mandatory savings through cuts to Medicaid health coverage and food assistance to low-income families. That bill, which extended 2017 tax cuts, will add $4.7 trillion to U.S. deficits over the next decade, while reduced immigration will add another $500 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Straight faceRepresentative Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the budget panel’s top Democrat, pointed to forecasts saying the legislation’s healthcare cuts would mean the loss of health coverage for more than 15 million people. Vought said they were able-bodied adults, people in the country illegally or ineligible for benefits. “You’re going to sit here with a straight face and say they’re all illegals? They were all defrauding the system? That’s actually your position?” Boyle asked.“Yes,” Vought replied.Democratic Representative Scott Peters of California pointed out to Vought that the watchdog Government Accountability Office has found the administration illegally withheld billions of dollars allocated for National Institutes of Health grants, public schools and Head Start early education programs nationwide.“Do you dispute GAO’s findings?” Peters asked. “Yes. GAO is typically wrong. They’re very partisan,” Vought replied. To become law, Trump’s proposed budget needs approval from Congress at a time when Republicans are trying to overcome Democratic opposition to funding for Trump’s immigration crackdown, just months after the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Democrats have already declared the budget proposal dead on arrival, leaving government funding to closed-door negotiations between appropriators.

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— Amid focus on Strait of Hormuz, experts sound warning on Yemen’s Houthis and Red Sea

 

at 4/14/26 4:04pm

The world’s attention is fixed on the Strait of Hormuz now that the U.S. Navy is blockading the crucial shipping channel at President Donald Trump’s behest. But some foreign policy experts warn that the strait is not the only potential choke point that Iran and its proxies could leverage. In particular, they cite the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which sits at the mouth of the Red Sea just off the coast of Yemen. The waterway is highly susceptible to attack from the Iranian-backed Houthis, who control most of Yemen.“The Houthis are the ones who pioneered, in a way, this idea of using asymmetric capabilities to disrupt maritime traffic,” Mona Yacoubian, the director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview with Military Times. “It has to be the right set of circumstances, but we could potentially see a situation in which they choose to engage on Red Sea shipping and ships attempting to cross the Bab el-Mandeb and also — by virtue of which way the water flows — the Suez Canal.” Skeptics fear that if the Houthis stepped fully off the sidelines and into an aggressive posture on Bab el-Mandeb, another economic shock would result. This, in turn, would greatly complicate Trump’s desire to claim a victory in the war on Iran that began with combined U.S. and Israel strikes on Feb. 28.Elisabeth Kendall, president of Girton College at the University of Cambridge, said that the Houthis’ restraint thus far should be seen as strategic patience, not avoidance. “The reality is that asymmetric warfare suits the Houthis. They don’t need to be accurate or sophisticated. They just need to harass shipping to achieve their goal of disrupting trade and pressuring the U.S.,” Kendall told Military Times. “The Houthis are seasoned fighters. They have been at war — on and off — for over 20 years. Their battle logic is unlike our own inasmuch as war has become a way of life and they are relatively comfortable with absorbing casualties." Kendall explained that a Houthi attempt to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait would “likely prompt a further spike in oil prices and, in time, inflation,” significantly ramping up pressure on Trump. This all takes place against the backdrop of a fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran. After peace talks reached an impasse over the weekend, Trump recalibrated his strategy, aiming to turn the tables on Iran’s economy by seizing control of the Strait of Hormuz. On Sunday, the president said the U.S. Navy would begin blockading “any and all ships trying to enter, or leave,” the strait. By Monday, U.S. Central Command had refined the operational scope to only apply to vessels bound for or departing Iranian ports. CENTCOM stressed that it would not impede on the freedom of navigation and will be “enforced impartially.” The Pentagon has not explained how the mission would be carried out.Under international maritime law, naval forces have the right of visit and search, which authorizes them to board vessels — regardless of flag — to determine their “enemy character.” This categorization hinges on whether ships are materially supporting Iran’s war effort, including through arms transfers or financing. If so, they may be subject to diversion or capture by U.S. forces. James Kraska, professor of international law at the Naval War College, told Military Times that the approach essentially constitutes an expansion of longstanding bipartisan sanctions targeting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “The U.S. sanctions are so aggressive that it’s sanctioned other entities that aid or facilitate transactions that benefit Iran,” Kraska said.He added that he sees the blockade and the American assertion of the right of visit and search as “simply a wartime extension of what we’ve been doing for a decade. It’s economic warfare.”Trump’s blockade is expected to cost Iran roughly $435 million a day — or $13 billion a month — Miad Maleki, a former official with the Treasury Department, wrote in a post on X.Vice President JD Vance has argued that with this move, Trump has flipped the script on the Islamic Republic.“What [the Iranians] have done is engage in this act of economic terrorism against the entire world,” Vance said in an interview with Fox News on Monday. “They’ve basically threatened any ship that’s moving through the Strait of Hormuz. Well, as the president of the United States showed, two can play at that game.”

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— Pentagon’s women-in-combat review reassigned; deadline extended

 

at 4/13/26 9:42pm

A Pentagon-ordered review on the effectiveness of women in combat is now under new management, Military Times has learned.The six-month independent review, commissioned by Undersecretary of Defense Anthony Tata in December, was originally set to be performed by the Institute for Defense Analyses, a Washington, D.C.-area nonprofit that administers three research centers supported by federal funding. The effectiveness study, according to a Pentagon official, was set to kick off with the 10-year anniversary of Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s lifting of the ban on women in ground combat roles at the end of 2015. This review, the official told Military Times on Monday, is “in line with standard [Department of War] practice for evaluating the effects of significant policy changes.”But a reevaluation of study requirements has led to a reassignment of the work, the official said. “The Department has since recognized the need to incorporate combat-relevant field tests, based on established tasks, conditions, and standards, into the independent review to produce the comprehensive data required for this effort,” the official said. “DoW has engaged the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to assume responsibility for the study from IDA, effective April 2026. JHU/APL, a University Affiliated Research Center, has the capability to examine existing personnel and operational data, as well as conduct the field tests, ensuring a unified effort that will further posture our warfighters to meet mission objectives.”JHU/APL will now complete work over the next 12 months to inform what’s now being called the “Performance, Readiness, and Integrated Mission Effectiveness Assessment,” according to the Pentagon. The assessment will use established analytical techniques “to identify the dominant drivers of combat performance variance in ground combat units and provide evidence-based findings to inform force design, training, physical standards, and readiness decisions,” the official said. A request for information to JHU/APL for more details on the study and data collection milestones did not receive an immediate response.Pentagon officials emphasized the long tradition of conducting reviews of policy changes, citing specifically an internal assessment of the 2010 Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal that was conducted in 2021, and reviews by the Pentagon-connected Rand Corporation of the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 and the Blended Retirement System of 2015. Historically, these analyses have been used to evaluate major changes and their impacts, but have not carried with them the possibility of reopening the matter for potential reversal. It’s not clear that the same considerations are in play here. In a December memo first reported on by NPR, Tata described the review as gauging “the operational effectiveness of ground combat” elements and the impact of permitting women to enter the roles.Leaders of the Army and Marine Corps were asked to provide the Institute for Defense Analyses with a broad slate of data ranging from training performance to command climate; and metrics showing individual service members’ readiness to deploy.An email from Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson at the time also appeared to open the door to changes based on the review, saying the Pentagon “will not compromise standards to satisfy quotas or an ideological agenda — this is common sense.”Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth expressed opposition to women serving in combat roles in his 2024 book “The War on Warriors,” saying they couldn’t meet the physical requirement and adding, “We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”His Senate confirmation hearing in 2025 softened the stance. He said then that women would continue to have access to ground combat roles, “given the standards remain high.”In September, he announced that ground combat jobs would be reserved for those who meet “the highest male standard.”The Pentagon official said the pending combat effectiveness review, now to be carried out by JHU/APL, showcased the military’s commitment to “continuous learning and improvement.”“These types of studies enable the Department to maximize our efforts in support of peace through strength,” the Pentagon official said Monday. “The ‘Performance, Readiness, and Integrated Mission Effectiveness Assessment’ is expected to further this tradition, increasing the lethality and readiness of the force.”

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— US blockade of Iran will be major military endeavor, experts say

 

at 4/13/26 6:42am

A U.S. naval blockade of Iran is a major, open-ended military endeavor that could trigger fresh retaliation from Tehran and put tremendous strain on an already fragile ceasefire, experts say.President Donald Trump, in a social media post after no deal emerged from peace talks this weekend in Islamabad, said the U.S. Navy “will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz.”The U.S. military’s Central Command later said the blockade will only apply to ships going to or from Iran, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. It will take effect on Monday at 10 a.m. in Washington, CENTCOM said.Trump also said U.S. forces would interdict vessels that have paid tolls to Iran, even if those ships are now in international waters. “No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.The ultimate goal, Trump said, would be to pressure Iran to end its effective closure of the strait, a choke point for about 20% of the world’s oil, to all but the countries that secure safe passage from Tehran. If Trump’s strategy succeeds, he would eliminate Iran’s greatest point of leverage in negotiations with the United States and clear the strait again for global trade, potentially lowering oil prices. But a blockade, experts say, is an act of war that requires an open-ended commitment of a significant number of warships.“Trump wants a quick fix. The reality is, this mission is difficult to execute alone and likely unsustainable over the medium to long-term,” said Dana Stroul, a former senior Pentagon official during the Biden administration now at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.IRANIAN RETALIATIONThe U.S. military has not offered basic details yet about the blockade, including how many U.S. warships will enforce it, whether warplanes will be used and whether any Gulf allies will assist in the effort. Central Command declined to respond to requests for comment.With enough warships, the U.S. Navy could set up a blockade that intimidates many commercial tankers from trying to power through with Iranian oil, experts say.But would the United States be prepared to board and seize — or even damage or sink — ships that try to break the blockade? What if they carry oil for China, a major power, or U.S. partners such as India or South Korea?And what would Iran do? Retired Adm. Gary Roughead, a former chief of U.S. naval operations, cautioned that Iran could fire on ships in the Gulf or attack infrastructure of the Gulf states that host U.S. forces.“I honestly believe that if we begin to do it, that Iran will have some kind of a reaction,” Roughead said.Iran’s threats to shipping have caused global oil prices to skyrocket about 50% since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28. Trump said on Sunday that the price of oil and gasoline may remain high in the United States through November’s U.S. midterm elections, which could see Trump’s Republicans lose control of the U.S. Congress if there is a public backlash. The war has already been unpopular.GAS PRICE PROBLEMFrustrated by Iran’s refusal to end the war on his terms, Trump on Sunday also floated the possibility of a resumption of U.S. strikes inside Iran, citing missile factories as one possibility. U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, questioned the strategy, noting Iran could send speedboats to mine the strait or put bombs against tankers.“How is that going to ever bring down gas prices?” Warner asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”Thousands of U.S. military strikes have severely weakened Iran’s military. But analysts say Tehran has emerged from the conflict as a vexing problem for Washington, with a more hardline leadership and a buried stockpile of highly enriched uranium.Trump threatened on Sunday that “any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!”Iran’s Revolutionary Guards responded with a statement warning that military vessels approaching the strait will be considered a ceasefire breach and dealt with harshly and decisively, underlining the risk of a dangerous escalation.Stroul said the crisis will require a long-term, international effort to resolve.“Over the long run, this will need to be resolved through diplomacy and international political will,” she said.

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— US Navy to blockade Strait of Hormuz ‘effective immediately,’ Trump says

 

at 4/12/26 8:58am

President Donald Trump said on Sunday the U.S. Navy would immediately start blockading the Strait of Hormuz, raising the stakes after marathon talks with Iran failed to reach a deal to end the war, jeopardizing a fragile two-week ceasefire.Trump also said in a post on Truth Social that the U.S. would interdict every vessel in international waters that had paid a toll to Iran, and begin destroying mines that he said the Iranians had dropped in the strait, a choke point for about 20% of global energy supplies that Iran has blocked.“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.“I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” Trump added.“Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!” he added.Each side had earlier blamed the other for the failure of talks to end six weeks of fighting that has killed thousands, roiled the global economy and sent oil prices soaring.“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” Vice President JD Vance, the head of the U.S. delegation at the weekend talks, said earlier.“We’ve made very clear what our red lines are,” Vance added.IRAN CITES LACK OF TRUST Iran’s Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who led his country’s delegation along with Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, blamed the U.S. for not winning Tehran’s trust despite his team offering “forward-looking initiatives.” “The U.S. has understood Iran’s logic and principles and it’s time for them to decide whether they can earn our trust or not,” Qalibaf said on X.The talks, after a ceasefire earlier in the week, were the first direct U.S.-Iranian meeting in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Vance said Iran had chosen not to accept American terms, including not to build nuclear weapons.“I could go into great detail, and talk about much that has been gotten but, there is only one thing that matters — IRAN IS UNWILLING TO GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR AMBITIONS!” Trump said later.Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said “excessive” U.S. demands had hindered reaching a deal. Other Iranian media said there was agreement on a number of issues, but the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program were the main points of difference.‘IMPERATIVE’ TO MAINTAIN CEASEFIREPakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said it was “imperative” to preserve the ceasefire that was agreed last Tuesday as the sides attempt to wind down a war that began on February 28 with air strikes by the U.S. and Israel on Iran.Israeli security cabinet minister Zeev Elkin told Army Radio that more talks were still an option, but added: “The Iranians are playing with fire.”In a brief press conference, Vance did not mention reopening the Strait of Hormuz.Even as the talks took place, U.S. ally Israel continued bombing Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, insisting that that conflict was not part of the Iran-U.S. ceasefire. Iran says the fighting in Lebanon must stop.The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah rocket launchers overnight into Sunday and black smoke could be seen rising in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday. In Israeli villages near the border, air raid sirens sounded, warning of incoming rocket fire from Lebanon. IRANIAN DEMANDSTehran is demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz, payment of war reparations and a ceasefire across the region, including in Lebanon, according to Iranian state TV and officials, as well as the release of its frozen assets abroad. Tehran also wants to collect transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz.Despite the differences in Islamabad, three supertankers fully laden with oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, shipping data showed, in what appeared to be the first vessels to exit the Gulf since the ceasefire deal.Hundreds of tankers are still stuck in the Gulf, waiting to exit during the two-week ceasefire period. Trump’s stated goals have shifted, but as a minimum he wants free passage for global shipping through the strait and the crippling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program to ensure it cannot produce an atomic bomb.Tehran has long denied seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

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— US-Iran peace talks end without deal as delegations leave Pakistan

 

at 4/12/26 7:27am

The U.S. and Iran failed to reach an agreement to end their war despite marathon talks that concluded on Sunday in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, jeopardizing a fragile ceasefire.Each side blamed the other for the failure of the 21-hour negotiations to end fighting that has killed thousands, roiled the global economy and sent oil prices soaring since it began more than six weeks ago.“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” said Vice President JD Vance, the head of the U.S. delegation.“So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement. We’ve made very clear what our red lines are.”IRAN CITES LACK OF TRUST IN THE TALKSIran’s Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad ​Baqer Qalibaf, who led his country’s delegation along with Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, blamed the U.S. for not winning Iran’s trust despite his team offering “forward-looking initiatives.”“The U.S. has understood Iran’s logic and principles and it’s time for them to decide whether they can earn our trust or not,” Qalibaf said on X.Both the U.S. and Iranian delegations have now left Islamabad to return home, Pakistani sources told Reuters.The talks, after a ceasefire earlier in the week, were the first direct U.S.-Iranian meeting in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Vance said Iran had chosen not to accept American terms, including not to build nuclear weapons.“We need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” he said.“That is the core goal of the president of the United States, and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations.”Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said “excessive” U.S. demands had hindered reaching an agreement. Other Iranian media said there was agreement on a number of issues but that the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program were the main points of difference.‘IMPERATIVE’ TO MAINTAIN CEASEFIREPakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said it was “imperative” to preserve the two-week ceasefire that was agreed last Tuesday as the sides attempt to wind down a war that began on February 28 with air strikes by the U.S. and Israel on Iran.Israeli security cabinet minister Zeev Elkin told Army Radio that more talks were still an option, but added: “The Iranians are playing with fire.”In his brief press conference, Vance did not mention reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point for about 20% of global energy supplies that Iran has blocked since the war began.Vance said he had spoken with President Donald Trump as many as a dozen times during the talks. But even as the negotiations continued, Trump said on Saturday that a deal was not entirely necessary.“We’re negotiating. Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me, because we’ve won,” he told reporters.Even as the talks were taking place, U.S. ally Israel continued bombing Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, insisting that that conflict was not part of the Iran-U.S. ceasefire. Iran says the fighting in Lebanon must stop.The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah rocket launchers overnight into Sunday and black smoke could be seen rising in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday. In Israeli villages near the border, air raid sirens sounded, warning of incoming rocket fire from Lebanon.IRANIAN DEMANDSTehran is demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz, payment of war reparations and a ceasefire across the region, including in Lebanon, according to Iranian state TV and officials, as well as the release of its frozen assets abroad.Tehran also wants to collect transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz.Despite the differences in Islamabad, three supertankers fully laden with oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, shipping data showed, in what appeared to be the first vessels to exit the Gulf since the ceasefire deal.Hundreds of tankers are still stuck in the Gulf, waiting to exit during the two-week ceasefire period. Trump’s stated goals have shifted, but as a minimum he wants free passage for global shipping through the strait and the crippling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program to ensure it cannot produce an atomic bomb.Tehran has long denied seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

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— US military begins clearing Strait of Hormuz, Trump says

 

at 4/11/26 9:59am

U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday posted on social media that the United States military has started to clear the Strait of Hormuz, and that all of Iran’s minelaying ships have been sunk.“We’re now starting the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, adding that “all 28” of Iran’s “mine dropper boats are also lying at the bottom of the sea.” Minutes before Trump’s post, reports started to emerge about the presence of U.S. Navy ships in the strait.An Axios journalist, citing an unnamed U.S. official, posted that “several” U.S. ships had crossed the strait on Saturday, though Iranian state TV soon after reported a denial from an official with Iran’s military. Trump has repeatedly said that American forces have destroyed Iran’s navy and air force while crippling its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. But fear of Iranian attacks on shipping over the past several weeks has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a critical conduit for global oil supplies. Throttling the strait has disrupted global energy markets. U.S. gasoline prices have spiked even though most of the oil that flows through the waterway does not go to the United States. Representatives from the U.S. and Iran began talks hosted by Pakistan in Islamabad on Saturday amid a fragile ceasefire in the conflict.

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— The president who threatened to end a civilization is supposed to guarantee Ukraine’s survival

 

at 4/10/26 5:39pm

KYIV, Ukraine — On Tuesday, the president of the United States sent a message to the world. The man whose military is supposed to guarantee the survival of a 35-nation coalition in Ukraine posted on Truth Social that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz by his 8 p.m. deadline.He promised to bomb every bridge and power plant in the country. Not as a warning. As an ultimatum, with a countdown, posted for the world to read along with the 93 million people he profanely threatened to annihilate.The next day, civilians in Tehran were standing on the infrastructure he had threatened to destroy. Mothers, students, old men — they linked arms across overpasses, formed human chains around bridges and power plants, shielding them with their bodies, an NBC News video showed.Asked whether he was concerned about war crimes, Trump told reporters he was “not at all.”Retired American military officers said the threats themselves were likely war crimes — and that Trump had handed prosecutors a ready-made record. “He’s essentially self-incriminating,” one retired senior officer told reporters, per The Guardian.Legal experts noted that threatening to systematically destroy civilian power plants and bridges, regardless of whether the strikes occur, can itself constitute evidence of criminal intent under the laws of armed conflict, according to The New York Times.At the same time, White House envoys, billionaire Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were supposed to fly to Ukraine after Orthodox Easter this weekend carrying new security guarantees but were rerouted to Pakistan instead, for talks in Islamabad the same weekend the Kyiv visit was planned.The administration was starting a war with one hand and promising to end one with the other. The same president who threatened to destroy civilian infrastructure in Iran on Tuesday is supposed to guarantee that no one destroys Ukrainian civilian infrastructure ever again.“Is the U.S. going to provide Ukraine something like mutual security assistance? I don’t think so,” Ed Arnold, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a former British military officer, told Military Times.“And even if they did, do the Ukrainians believe in it? And pretty critically — does Putin believe in it?”Moscow already had an answer.“The Americans have a lot of other things to deal with, if you know what I mean,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the Kyiv Independent.“The primary movers in these so-called peace talks — the Americans — are now busy with other things,” a senior European diplomat told Military Times, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security assessments.And they took the interceptors with them. The U.S. military burned through more than 800 Patriot missiles in the Middle East in three days — more than Ukraine has received in the entire war — while the production line makes roughly 600 a year.The White House has since suspended Patriot export sales globally because of supply constraints, according to The Atlantic.Meanwhile, the administration rolled back Russian oil sanctions — the same restrictions that had been slowly strangling Moscow’s ability to finance the war — just as the Iran conflict sent crude past $100 a barrel, opening a window for Russia to sell at wartime prices with no cap and no consequences.“Just this easing by America could provide Russia with around $10 billion for the war,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said alongside French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. “This certainly does not help peace,” according to Al Jazeera.The sanctions rollback did not just weaken Ukraine’s position at the table — it actively financed the war Ukraine was supposed to be negotiating its way out of.“This is throwing a massive lifeline to Putin,” the senior diplomat said.Kyiv has fought harder anyway.Its forces have recaptured more than 480 square kilometers in the southeast since January, pushing the ballistic missile interception rate toward 95%, and sent long-range strikes deeper inside Russia than at any point in the war — and for every short- to medium-range missile Russia fired in, Ukraine was sending more out.Its forces achieved a drone advantage over Russia in what the Institute for the Study of War called a possible first in combat history, striking oil ports from the Baltic to the Black Sea.But the Iran war has made those capabilities impossible to ignore. As Tehran launched waves of drones and missiles across the Middle East, nations scrambling to respond found themselves watching Ukrainian-developed systems do what their own could not — handing Zelenskyy leverage overnight that years of diplomacy never had.Ukraine’s long-range drones have knocked out an estimated 40% of Russia’s oil export capacity, around 2 million barrels per day offline, in one of the most severe oil supply disruptions in the modern history of Russia, according to Reuters.Washington did not celebrate any of it. The administration told Kyiv to stop striking, and the same week, Vice President JD Vance flew to Budapest to campaign for Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán — Putin’s closest partner in the EU — while accusing European allies of election interference.Zelenskyy confirmed that allies had sent Ukraine “signals” about scaling back strikes on Russia’s oil sector, per Reuters. The State Department formally warned Kyiv’s ambassador to quit the attacks.“Having severed most support to Ukraine, undermined the trust of its allies and made clear that it will avoid applying any serious pressure on Russia, Washington is rapidly bleeding leverage,” Arnold wrote in a recent RUSI analysis.But the Iran war may have had the opposite effect on Ukraine’s standing, Arnold told Military Times. The country Washington is pressuring to stop fighting has just demonstrated that its technology works and America’s deterrence does not.In the space of weeks, Washington has eased the sanctions squeezing Russia’s war budget, told Kyiv to stop the strikes crippling its oil exports and conditioned security guarantees on surrendering territory Ukrainian soldiers are still holding — a sequence that, to the allies watching it unfold, has looked less like negotiation than an attempt to dismantle Ukraine’s leverage piece by piece.The war in Iran, the peace deal in Ukraine, stability in the Far East — all of it seems to run through one man in the White House, the senior diplomat said, who does not seem to worry about the long-term consequences of his global actions.“You’ve pushed a domino in the dark,” he said.“You have no idea which other dominos are lined up, who’s in the line of fall, what you’re going to face as a consequence — because you looked at this problem in complete isolation.”

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— Pentagon, FAA sign agreement on deploying anti-drone laser system near Mexico

 

at 4/10/26 4:14pm

The Federal Aviation Administration and Pentagon said on Friday they had signed an agreement allowing the government’s use of a high-energy laser counter-drone system along the southern U.S. border with Mexico.The agreement came after the FAA conducted testing in New Mexico on the laser system used by the Pentagon and Homeland Security Department and validated that proper safety controls are in place and do not pose undue risks to passenger aircraft.Two earlier incidents posed serious concerns.The U.S. military errantly shot down a government drone with the ​laser-based system on Feb. 25, leading the FAA to expand an area in which flights are ​barred around Fort Hancock, Texas.The incident followed the Feb. 18 decision by the FAA to halt all flights for 10 days at the nearby El Paso airport because of the use of ​the Pentagon laser system by a Homeland Security agency without completion of an FAA safety review. The ​El Paso shutdown order was lifted by the FAA after about eight hours following ‌the ⁠White House’s intervention.“Following a thorough, data-informed Safety Risk Assessment, we determined that these systems do not present an increased risk to the flying public,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said on Friday.The Pentagon has said there are more than 1,000 drone incursions along the U.S.-Mexico border each month. ​U.S. security officials have increasingly ​expressed alarm about ⁠the use of drones by Mexican cartels to drop drug packages or surveil trafficking routes.Several media outlets reported last month drones were seen over Fort McNair in Washington where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live.There is no indication the Pentagon plans to deploy the laser at the base, which is close to Reagan Washington National Airport.Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth last month called on federal watchdogs to review the ​decision-making process leading to the use of the systems and the ​FAA’s decision ⁠to close airspace.

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— After three-year hiatus, VA to resume rollout of new electronic medical records system

 

at 4/10/26 2:01pm

Four Veterans Affairs health systems in Michigan will activate the department’s new electronic health records system on Saturday, ending a three-year pause to a program that has been plagued by delays and cost overruns. The VA Detroit Healthcare System, VA Saginaw Healthcare System, VA Ann Arbor and Battle Creek Healthcare Systems will flip the switch from the VA’s legacy digital medical record to the new Federal Electronic Health Record, currently used by six sites across the VA. The department’s adoption of the Oracle Health’s FEHR was halted in 2023 following a year-long pause over safety and functionality concerns. The program, which was introduced to medical centers in Washington, Oregon and Ohio between 2020 and 2022, experienced numerous setbacks, including incidences of harm to at least 149 patients, according to the VA inspector general. The safety problems were tied to a system feature that caused some specialty-care referrals, follow-on appointments and lab orders to disappear from view. VA officials announced in late 2024 that they planned to restart the project in Michigan in 2026, and in March 2025, announced they would accelerate adoption by adding nine more sites this year. Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence said during an event Friday at the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center in Detroit that the VA expects to roll out the system to 26 additional sites next year. “But already, folks in the VA system are knowing how well this is going to go. They’re asking to be moved up,” Lawrence said, according to the Detroit News. Joining Lawrence at the Detroit event marking the “go-live,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said the department’s inspector general would monitor the system to ensure it was functioning. “Our IG office is a wonderful group that helps us do better in what we do,” Collins said, according to the Detroit News. The VA selected the system, made by Cerner, in 2017 after it was chosen by the Department of Defense for the military health system patients. The VA system originally was expected to take 10 years to adopt and cost $10 billion. That estimate was soon revised to $16 billion and now stands at $37.2 billion across the program’s lifecycle, according to Lawrence. During the pause, the VA and Defense Department worked jointly to adopt the system at the James Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago. Between the lessons learned during that rollout and revisions, VA officials have seen vast improvements in performance where it is used, according to Lawrence. The deputy secretary wrote in a blog post in March that Oracle Health had “improved system performance, reliability and usability,” running it without any outages 87% of the time between June 2023 and December 2025. The system also attained “incident free time” for nearly two years from March 2024 to December 2025, Lawrence wrote. “The Federal EHR is now reliably available to end users without system-wide outages. We have reduced disruptions, prevented lost productivity and ensured critical workflows continue without delay,” Lawrence said. Over the last several weeks, the Michigan facilities told patients to expect fewer available appointments and anticipate pharmacy delays in the ramp-up to the switchover. In a message posted on the VA Detroit Medical Center X social media page, officials told veterans they also may see different prescription numbers on medications until they refill their prescriptions in the new system and could expect to see trainers helping staff learn the system. “What is not changing is the same high-quality health care you have come to expect at Detroit VA Healthcare System,” they wrote on X. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have told VA officials they are watching the restart closely and still have concerns about the system’s potential impact on veterans’ medical care and employee burnout. Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich, chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Technology Modernization Subcommittee, said in a hearing in December, that VA physicians and pharmacists continue to have concerns over reliability and safety backstops. “The only acceptable result is a flawless go live because our veterans cannot accept failure,” Barrett said. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., said she was concerned that the VA had not completed all recommendations from the Government Accountability Office. The GAO had made several recommendations on improving and implementing the system and the VA had not fulfilled them.“We need to have the difficult conversations to make sure that both Oracle and VA are accountable to Congress, to VA employees, and most importantly to veterans,” Budzinski said. Dr. Neil Evans, acting program executive director, said the VA is “ready to roll.” “VA remains committed to successfully implementing a modern, interoperable Electronic Health Record system, which we refer to as the federal EHR, and we intend to implement that across the entire VA enterprise. As was mentioned, since our last hearing in February, VA has made significant progress towards meeting that goal,” Evans said the hearing.

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— Trump weighs pulling some US troops from Europe amid NATO strains, official says

 

at 4/9/26 5:00pm

U.S. President Donald Trump, upset at NATO allies’ failure to help secure the Strait of Hormuz and angry that his plans to acquire Greenland have not advanced, has discussed with advisers the option of removing some U.S. troops from Europe, a senior White House official told Reuters on Thursday.No decision has been made, and the White House has not directed the Pentagon to draw up concrete plans for a troop reduction on the continent, said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.But the discussions alone underscore how sharply relations between Washington and its European NATO allies have deteriorated in recent months. They also suggest that a visit to the White House on Wednesday by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte failed to significantly improve transatlantic relations, which are arguably at their lowest point since NATO’s 1949 founding.The White House has publicly said that Trump has considered withdrawing from the alliance altogether. Removing troops from Europe would allow Trump to dramatically lessen Washington’s security commitments on the continent, without formally withdrawing, a move that would test constitutional law.The U.S. currently has more than 80,000 troops in Europe and has played a central role in Europe’s security architecture since World War Two. More than 30,000 of those troops are located in Germany, with sizeable numbers also stationed in Italy, the United Kingdom and Spain.The official did not say which countries could be affected or how many troops might ultimately be withdrawn if Trump decides to move forward with the idea.Asked for comment, a NATO spokesperson referred Reuters to Rutte’s interview with CNN on Wednesday.In that interview, Rutte said that he understood Trump’s frustrations with the alliance, but that the “large majority of European nations” had been helpful to Washington’s war effort in Iran.Following Rutte’s meeting with Trump, the secretary general told European governments that Trump wants concrete commitments to help secure the Strait of Hormuz within days, Reuters reported earlier on Thursday.Alliance in crisisWhile Trump has long had a tumultuous relationship with NATO — for years accusing European capitals of skimping on defense spending — the last three months have been particularly rocky.In January, Trump provoked a transatlantic crisis when he renewed longstanding threats to annex Greenland, an overseas territory of Denmark. Since the war with Iran broke out on Feb. 28, he has expressed deep frustration that NATO allies have not offered to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for global energy supplies that has remained largely closed despite a fragile ceasefire announced this week.NATO diplomats have previously said the U.S. has not made clear if it expects any mission in the Strait of Hormuz to start during or after the conflict, and they have also said the U.S. has not specified what particular capabilities it expects of each NATO country.The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that senior administration officials were discussing moving troops stationed in Europe out of countries whose leaders had been critical of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and into European countries whose leaders had been more supportive.The White House official told Reuters that Trump was specifically discussing bringing troops back to the U.S., rather than moving them to different foreign countries.The official said Trump was particularly irked about what he perceives as Europe’s attempts to brush off his attempts to acquire Greenland.After meeting with Rutte in Switzerland in January, Trump had suggested a deal was in sight to end the dispute over the Danish territory. No such agreement has come to fruition.“He asked NATO specifically to come up with a plan when we were in Davos, and they’re sort of not taking it seriously,” the official said.

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— Trump again chides NATO for failing to back US operations in Iran

 

at 4/9/26 3:15pm

President Donald Trump on Thursday again chided NATO for its reluctance to support U.S. operations in Iran, just a day after a tense private meeting with Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House.Rutte travelled to Washington to mollify the president, who remains incensed at the alliance for refusing to intervene in the de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical artery that typically carries a quarter of the world’s oil and gas. The strait’s near-closure has prevented roughly ten million barrels of crude oil daily from reaching global markets. But Trump, following the face-to-face talks, was far from conciliatory. He wrote on social media Wednesday that “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN. REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!”In a subsequent post Thursday, he dismissed the response from the bloc as “very disappointing.” Rutte acknowledged the discord with Trump, yet characterized Europe’s initial reticence to get involved in the war in Iran as a consequence of the president’s decision not to consult allies before the launch of Operation Epic Fury. He said the other member nations were taken by surprise by the joint U.S.-Israeli assault against Iran, and slower to respond as a result.“To maintain the element of surprise for the initial strikes, President Trump opted not to inform allies ahead of time. And I understand that,” Rutte said during his remarks at the Reagan Institute’s Center for Peace Through Strength in Washington on Thursday. “But what I see when I look across Europe today, is allies providing a massive amount of support —basing, logistics, and other measures — to ensure the powerful U.S. military succeeds in denying Iran a nuclear weapon and degrading its capacity to export chaos," Rutte said. The NATO secretary general also underscored international efforts, spearheaded by Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, to find a workable plan for a full reopening of the strait as hostilities wind down.“The United Kingdom is leading a coalition of countries that are aligning the military, the political, and the economic tools that will be required to ensure free passage through the Strait of Hormuz. This is evidence of a mindset shift,” he said. The Trump administration has asserted it will reassess its relationship with NATO once the war with Iran concludes, a review that officials say could include relocating American forces away from allies deemed unhelpful. The president has also weighed the possibility of withdrawing the United States from the alliance altogether. At a White House press conference earlier this week, Trump traced the start of the icy relations back to Greenland. The president, around the start of the year, began talking with increasing seriousness about annexing Greenland, the huge, semiautonomous territory under Danish sovereignty. At the apex of the crisis, Trump refused to rule out using military force. He ultimately backed down but the tremors from the episode are still being felt on both sides of the Atlantic. “It all began with, if you want to know the truth, Greenland,” Trump told reporters on Monday, adding, “We want Greenland. They don’t want to give it to us. And I said, ‘bye, bye.’”

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— Pentagon’s ouster of Anthropic opens doors for small AI rivals

 

at 4/9/26 7:38am

Small defense industry artificial intelligence startups are suddenly fielding calls from generals, combatant commanders and deep-pocketed investors, after the souring relationship between the Pentagon and its once-favored AI vendor, Anthropic, reinforced the need to diversify and increase the number of AI providers for the military.In the weeks since the Department of Defense’s troubled relationship with Anthropic burst into public view and led to the company being kicked out of the U.S. military, new defense-focused AI companies like Smack Technologies and EdgeRunner AI say they have experienced a shift in interest that would have been unimaginable just months ago. They have received a surge of overtures about possible contracts and meeting requests and been approached by investors who previously showed no interest. The Pentagon’s growing animosity toward its top AI provider, Anthropic, has opened up opportunities for smaller rivals, who have long sought a foot in the door to the most lucrative government contractor in the world. A defense contract can lead to more business with other branches of the U.S. government, and is a useful signal of trust and safety for potential commercial clients. “We’ve seen a massive increase in demand from customers and the government to get AI solutions fielded since Anthropic was declared a supply-chain risk,” said Tyler Sweatt, CEO of Second Front, a company that helps technology firms meet the requirements needed to operate on secure Pentagon networks. “Our customers are turning to us as the Pentagon turns to them to deploy quickly in the wake of the Anthropic blowup.”Since the Pentagon deemed Anthropic’s products a “supply-chain risk” in March and the two sides became embroiled in a lawsuit, the military has expressed increasing interest in AI startups like Smack Technologies, saying, “We want more, we want demos, let’s talk about how we can move faster,” said Andrew Markoff, co-founder and chief executive of the 19-person startup based in El Segundo, California. In late March, a judge temporarily blocked the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic. Tyler Saltsman, co-founder and chief executive of EdgeRunner AI, described a similar experience. His company had been waiting more than a year for a Space Force contract to clear the Pentagon’s procurement machinery. It was signed within weeks of the Anthropic situation breaking into the open. “I can’t prove that the Anthropic drama sped this up,” Saltsman said, “but I have a sneaky suspicion it did.”“The Pentagon will continue to rapidly deploy frontier AI capabilities to the warfighter through strong industry partnerships across all classification levels,” a Pentagon official said. One Pentagon technologist has previously told Reuters that the falling-out with Anthropic, and the realization that the Defense Department was heavily dependent on one AI provider, forced the department to diversify AI providers. Smack’s Marine Corps contract speeds upFor Smack, the clearest example of the post-Anthropic acceleration involves the Marine Corps. The company won a contract with the Marine Corps in March 2025 and delivered a successful prototype by October — software that compresses what is normally a months-long operational planning process into roughly 15 minutes. Despite the successful prototype, momentum stalled. Full production had been budgeted for fiscal year 2027 — meaning October 2027 at the earliest. Through the 2025 holiday period and into early 2026, there was no clear direction. Hegseth wants Pentagon to dump Claude, but military users say it’s not so easyThen the Anthropic uproar occurred. Within weeks, Smack was invited to multiple meetings with the Marine Corps focused on a single question: how fast can this move into production this year? Markoff said there was “very specific guidance and movement and energy” toward getting the prototype ready for combat operations in 2026 — an acceleration of more than a year.The shift extended beyond the Marines. Smack holds contracts with the Navy and Air Force, and Markoff said interest came in nearly immediately from U.S. Special Operations Command, and others.EdgeRunner, which is deploying with the Army Special Forces groups and has received a contract with the Space Force, said the Navy has also dramatically sped up engagement. Meetings that had been biweekly or monthly are now happening multiple times a week.Both EdgeRunner and Smack are now racing to get their systems operating at higher security classification levels — the gateway to the most operationally significant use cases and the largest military contracts.EdgeRunner said the military has told the company it can get to IL-6, a security designation enabling access to secret and top-secret data, within three months — a timeline Saltsman described as remarkable, given that the process normally takes 18 months or longer. The acceleration, he said, is being driven partly by pressure from Pentagon leadership to cut through procurement bureaucracy, and partly by the urgency the Anthropic situation has injected into the department’s AI strategy.

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— As US claims victory, Iran emerges bruised but with leverage over Hormuz

 

at 4/8/26 1:05pm

Nearly six weeks of war in Iran have ended, for now, with President Donald Trump claiming victory, but the U.S.-Iran ceasefire locks in a harsh reality: an entrenched, radical government with control over the Strait of Hormuz and a powerful lever over global energy markets and Gulf rivals, analysts say.The shockwaves have rippled outward, contributing to global economic strains and bringing conflict to Gulf neighbors whose economies depend on stability.“This war will be remembered as Trump’s grave strategic miscalculation. One whose consequences reshaped the region in unintended ways,” Middle East scholar Fawaz Gerges told Reuters.Before the war, the Strait, a narrow passage carrying around a fifth of the world’s oil and gas, was formally treated as an international waterway. Iran monitored it, harassed shipping and intermittently intercepted vessels, but it stopped short of asserting outright control.In the new reality, Tehran has moved from shadowing tankers to effectively dictating terms. It currently functions as the de facto gatekeeper of the shipping route, selectively deciding on passage and on what terms. Iran wants to charge ships for safe passage.Additionally, Iran has demonstrated resilience under sustained attack and retained the capacity to escalate further, projecting influence across multiple fronts and strategic choke points. Its reach extends through Lebanon and Iraq via Hezbollah and Shi’ite militias, and into the Bab el-Mandeb in the Red Sea, leveraging the sphere of influence of its Houthi allies.At home, Iran’s leadership remains firmly in control - even though the country’s economy is in tatters and great swathes of infrastructure in ruins from American and Israeli bombs.“What did the U.S.–Israeli war actually achieve?” asked Gerges. “Regime change in Tehran? No. The surrender of the Islamic Republic? No. Containment of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium? No. An end to Tehran’s support for its regional allies? No.”Iran has absorbed the blows while retaining — and in some cases strengthening — its core instruments of power, said four analysts and three Gulf government sources who spoke to Reuters for this story.As well as Iran’s control of Hormuz, the political picture now, they noted, is of a more brutal, empowered establishment, unaccounted nuclear material, continued missile and drone production, and ongoing support for regional militias.Echoing Trump, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday said Washington had won a decisive military victory, and that Iran’s missile program had been functionally destroyed. The State Department and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The United States, Israel and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire and U.S. and Iranian officials are expected to hold talks from Friday to discuss a long-term settlement.While the ceasefire may halt the fighting, the Gulf officials said its durability hinges on addressing the deeper conflicts shaping the region’s security and energy landscape.Any deal that falls short of a comprehensive settlement risks entrenching Iranian leverage rather than constraining it, they add.Ebtesam Al‑Ketbi, president of the Emirates Policy Center described the truce as a fragile pause, one likely to institutionalize new forms of instability unless it expands well beyond a narrow cessation of hostilities.“This ceasefire is not a solution; it is a test of intentions,” Ketbi told Reuters. “If it does not evolve into a broader agreement redefining the rules of engagement - in Hormuz and across proxy theaters — it will amount to little more than a tactical pause before a more dangerous and complex escalation.”“If Trump reaches a deal with Iran without addressing core issues - ballistic missiles, drones, proxies, nuclear concerns, and the rules governing Hormuz - then the conflict is effectively left unresolved and the region exposed,” said Ketbi.HORMUZ IS RED LINE FOR GULF COUNTRIESIran, for its part, has put forward to Washington terms that include sanctions relief, recognition of enrichment rights, compensation for war damage and continued control over the Strait, underscoring just how far apart the sides remain.Trump acknowledged receiving the Iranian plan and called it “a workable basis to negotiate.”For Gulf countries who rely on Hormuz to export their oil, the Strait remains a non-negotiable red line, added Saudi analyst Ali Shihabi. “Any outcome that leaves the waterway effectively in Iranian hands would be a defeat for President Trump,” with the potential repercussions of high energy prices extending into the midterm elections, he said.What the war may nonetheless open up for Tehran, Shihabi added, is the prospect of a negotiated settlement — potentially including sanctions relief.From a Gulf perspective, the picture is deeply unsettling. Mistrust of Iran is running high following Tehran’s strikes on energy facilities and commercial hubs across the region. More troubling still, the war has transformed Hormuz into an explicit instrument of leverage and coercion, analysts say.The economic stakes are equally stark. Iran wants to charge fees for ships passing through the Hormuz shipping lanes as part of any permanent peace deal, a move that would reverberate far beyond the Gulf, hitting global energy markets and the economic lifelines of states along the opposite shore.“If Iran can extract millions per ship, the implications are enormous — not just for the Gulf, but for the global economy,” Ketbi said. “In that sense, the outcome is not just a regional setback, but a systemic shift with worldwide consequences.”More broadly, the analysts warned, it would signal a fundamental change in the regional order, from a strait governed by international norms to one effectively policed by a hostile state emboldened, not weakened, by war.GULF DEMANDSThe ceasefire, brokered by Pakistan, followed a war launched on February 28 by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said they aimed to curb Iran’s regional power, dismantle its nuclear program and create conditions for Iranians to topple their rulers.Both sides declared victory. Trump called the ceasefire a “total and complete victory,” saying U.S. forces had achieved their objectives, while Iran’s Supreme National Security Council claimed Trump had accepted its conditions.But the war has yet to deprive Iran of its stockpile of near‑weapons‑grade enriched uranium or its ability to strike neighbors with missiles and drones. The leadership, which faced a mass uprising months ago, withstood the superpower onslaught with no sign of collapse.A Gulf source said restoring trust with Tehran would require stringent, written commitments — not informal assurances — covering non‑interference, freedom of navigation, and the security of key maritime corridors, including Hormuz, as well as the national security requirements of the Gulf states.Those conditions, the Gulf source said, were conveyed to Pakistani mediators to be included as part of a comprehensive settlement.An Israeli official said senior Trump administration officials had assured Israel that they would insist on previous conditions, such as the removal of Iran’s nuclear material, a halt to enrichment and the elimination of ballistic missiles.Pakistan’s prime minister said Iranian and U.S. delegations were expected to meet in Islamabad on Friday for what would be the first official peace talks since the war began.

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— US forces will be ‘hanging around’ Middle East after Iran ceasefire, Hegseth says

 

at 4/8/26 9:51am

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday emphasized that American forces would be “hanging around” in the Middle East for the duration of the armistice between the United States, Israel and Iran — even as Washington edges toward an offramp from its 38-day campaign.The remarks came one day after President Donald Trump declared a two-week ceasefire with Iran, stepping back from earlier threats to level Iranian civilization. The president said he hopes the pause will pave the way for negotiations toward a longer-term agreement.Hegseth noted that the United States had carried out more than 800 strikes against targets in the hours leading up to the pause in hostilities. He added that if Tehran had refused to agree, attacks would have expanded to include “power plants, the bridges and oil and energy infrastructure.” The defense secretary went on to hail Operation Epic Fury as a “historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield,” painting a picture of an Iranian military in ruins. “Central Command, using less than 10% of America’s total combat power, dismantled one of the world’s largest militaries, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” Hegseth said during a news conference at the Pentagon. “Their mission program is functionally destroyed. Launchers, production facilities and existing stockpiles, depleted, and decimated.” Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, enumerated the claimed results of the U.S. offensive in Iran: 80% of Iran’s air-defense systems destroyed, 800 one-way attack drone storage facilities and 450 ballistic missile storage facilities hit, and 150 ships sunk. “Epic Fury decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat ineffective for years to come,” Hegseth asserted. “Iran’s Navy is at the bottom of the sea...Iran’s Air Force has been wiped out.”But despite the devastation, Tehran has remained defiant. The Islamic Republic, using a decentralized command structure built to survive decapitation, orchestrated an average of 120 drone and missile attacks per day across the region throughout the conflict’s duration. Crucially, it also maintained effective control over the Strait of Hormuz — a strategic leverage that sent oil prices soaring. Since the start of the war on Feb. 28, 13 American service members had been killed in action and more than 365 had been wounded, according to the Pentagon.Caine, for his part, struck a note of more guarded pragmatism. “We welcome the ongoing ceasefire,” he said. “Let us be clear: a ceasefire is a pause, and the joint force remains ready if ordered or called upon to resume combat operations with the same speed and precision as we’ve demonstrated over the last 38 days. And we hope that that is not the case.”Asked by reporters about Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, Hegseth expressed hope that Tehran would hand it over to Washington “voluntarily.” If not, he warned, America might still try to seize the material by force.“It’s buried, and we’re watching it, we know exactly what they have,” Hegseth said. “They’ll give it to us voluntarily,” he continued. “Or if we have to do something else ourselves — like we did in Midnight Hammer or something like that — we reserve that opportunity."

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— B-2s flew 36-hour mission to target Iranian Revolutionary Guard meeting

 

at 4/7/26 2:46pm

B-2 stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, flew a 36-hour nonstop mission over the weekend to drop bunker-buster bombs on an underground compound where commanders from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had gathered, a U.S. official told Military Times.Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, gave the order after intelligence indicated a nexus of senior IRGC leaders was meeting at the location, the official said.The B-2s are equipped to drop 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, also known as GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, to destroy deeply fortified structures. Their immense payload allows them to strike targets at a depth beyond the reach of conventional munitions, while their flying-wing design enables them to penetrate sophisticated defenses with minimal detection.US special forces rescue second F-15 airman from IranThat weapon was key to last June’s Operation Midnight Hammer, when bunker busters battered three of Iran’s nuclear installations. The B-2s made roughly the same 7,000-mile journey this time.At the six-week mark of the assault against Iran, CENTCOM reported that U.S. forces had struck over 13,000 sites across the country. Other bombers in America’s squadrons, such as the B-1 and the B-52, have played prominent roles in the current campaign, Pentagon officials say.Cooper’s directive coincided with a high-stakes search-and-rescue effort focused on two American airmen who ejected from a fighter jet over Iranian territory on Friday. President Donald Trump would later liken that operation to a Hollywood scene during a press conference at the White House. “You would call it central casting if you were doing a movie for location,” he said Monday, revealing that hundreds of personnel were involved in the extraction. “Those pilots came in so fast and so quick and got out of there.” Moments after extolling U.S. forces from the lectern, the president declared that when it came to the reach of the American military, nothing was off-limits. He warned he could destroy Iran’s critical infrastructure, including bridges and power plants. The following day, in a post on Truth Social, Trump escalated the rhetoric even further, threatening to eradicate Iranian civilization if Tehran did not capitulate to his demands by 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump wrote. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Military Times that “only the president knows where things stand and what he will do.”

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As of 4/18/26 2:38am. Last new 4/17/26 8:31am.