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MT Congress Pentagon
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[l] at 10/23/26 1:39pm
Unmanned systems now inflict more than 90% of Russia’s casualties on the front lines in Ukraine, yet no NATO military, including America’s, has begun the overhaul that kind of war demands, Ret. Army Gen. David Petraeus said Oct. 16, weeks after the Pentagon announced a new command for autonomous warfare.The extent of the drone war is underestimated, with Ukraine and Russia each using roughly 10,000 drones a day, the former CIA director and onetime commander of U.S. Central Command said, speaking at an American Primary Aluminum Association event in Washington.“This is an unmanned systems war,” Petraeus said. “Tanks aren’t survivable there anymore.”For Ukraine, drones and unmanned weapons have become central to how the country has leveraged a smaller, outgunned force against a much larger, better-financed adversary for almost five years. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered the creation of a new Unmanned Systems Forces military branch in 2024, and the Defense Ministry has said time and again that developing more autonomous weapons is a top priority.But for the rest of the world, Petraeus said, the fighting in Ukraine is a window into the future and a warning about the dangers of being underprepared for the battles to come.“Really, no NATO country and not even the United States is undertaking yet the urgent revolutionary institutional change that should be taken based on what we see in Ukraine, which is the future of war,” he said.The U.S. needs a new concept of warfare that runs through force structure, training, procurement, personnel policy and bases, the general said, replacing much of the legacy, heavily manned equipment with unmanned systems that are cheaper and far more numerous.“What’s going to happen is we’ll see the introduction of autonomous systems really for the first time in warfare,” Petraeus said.Washington is making “some commendable steps” toward developing these weapons, according to Petraeus, including establishing a new Autonomous Warfare Command that requires each military branch to stand up its own component command.“But my hope is that they will not just create an unmanned systems force in terms of force structure, but that they will also spur the initiation of true institutional change,” Petraeus said.That includes how the U.S. buys weapons, Petraeus said, calling for “very, very substantial manufacturing capacity but not necessarily producing all the time.”“You want it to be able to make software changes every week, hardware changes every few weeks, which is what’s going on in Ukraine because the enemy continues to evolve and Russia’s been innovating very substantially as well,” he said.Ukraine will produce as many as 20 million unmanned systems this year, Zelenskyy said in a July speech, with a shortage of trained operators and the acquisition of some weapons components — including optics, gimbals, brushless motors and fiber-optic cable — becoming the domestic industry’s production bottleneck. The general also rejected the idea that the U.S. war with Iran has hurt Washington’s ability to help Kyiv, though he acknowledged the U.S. has used “a fair number of missile interceptors,” which “makes it more difficult to share those with others around the world.”The war has consumed between one-half and two-thirds of the U.S. inventory of certain missile-defense interceptors, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released in September.“We can help the Ukrainians in any way in which we decide to assist them,” Petraeus said. “These are policy decisions.”

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[l] at 10/23/26 7:54am
A group of nonprofits alleges the federal government illegally transformed more than 100,000 acres of public land along the New Mexico-Mexico border into a military installation so U.S. troops could assist in immigration enforcement.In a federal lawsuit, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, Battalion Search and Rescue and Southern Border Communities Coalition argue the Trump administration is misusing so-called “national defense areas” to circumvent longstanding restrictions on military participation in civilian law enforcement.In a statement, Brian Netter, legal director at Democracy Forward, one of the teams representing the plaintiffs, called the “national defense area” designation “an extraordinary abuse of power with devastating consequences for the people who live, work, worship, recreate, and carry out lifesaving humanitarian work along the border.”“Public lands do not become military installations simply because the president says so, and the military cannot be handed sweeping new authority to police civilians by drawing a line around land that belonged to the public,” he said, adding, “Our Constitution and laws impose clear limits on the use of the military for civilian law enforcement for a reason.” The Trump administration began sending troops to the area in March 2025 to support border security and has since expanded the military’s presence along the border in other states. By April of that year, the Defense Department assumed jurisdiction over the 109,651 acres from the Department of the Interior.The designation made the land, officially named the New Mexico National Defense Area, an expansion of Fort Huachuca for three years. The Defense Department said the designation allowed troops to detain people accused of trespassing in the military area after crossing the border illegally.However, the lawsuit argues that the federal agencies exceeded their authority to transfer public land through emergency powers. “No statute authorizes the creation of ‘national defense areas,’ let alone permits carving one out of formerly public land,” the lawsuit says. The lawsuit adds that the Defense Department has historically used such land restrictions only temporarily to protect people or property during accidents or emergencies. “Creating a semi-permanent military zone along the southern border for purposes of immigration enforcement is directly contrary to the agency’s longstanding practice,” the lawsuit says. Beyond alleging violations of federal law, the plaintiffs say the military zones are disrupting their work by limiting access to public lands used for recreation and conservation; supporting border communities; and providing humanitarian aid.James R. Holeman, founder of Battalion Search and Rescue, said his organization leads volunteers who search for people in distress in remote areas and recover the remains of migrants who died crossing the border. Over the past three years, he said, the group’s monthly searches along the Arizona and New Mexico border have uncovered more than 100 death sites.“Imagine how many more people could be found if we had the access, resources, and support to search systematically. Instead, we’re being locked out,” he said, adding that vast stretches of borderlands are “virtually inaccessible to humanitarian searchers” because of federal designations. “Now the government is closing off even more territory. We don’t find weapons or drugs. We find Bibles, prayer cards, love notes, and the belongings of people simply trying to survive,” Holeman said. “There is no meaningful, systematic government effort to search for the missing and the dead. They don’t search, and now they’re preventing us from searching.”

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[l] at 10/22/26 1:50pm
The error of Veterans Benefits Administration staff has resulted in approximately $5.6 million in overpayments to veterans, a VA watchdog found.During a review period from June 1, 2024, through May 31, 2025, the VA made at least one error in 17,900 cases, roughly 38%, regarding disability decisions for painful scars, according to a recent VA Office of Inspector General report.920 of those decisions, per the report, led to millions in overpayment and will continue to accrue without “corrective action.”For service-connected painful scars, as a result of burns, surgeries, shrapnel and gunshot wounds, among other sources, the VA requires a physical examination to support a veteran’s claim. However, the OIG found that the Disability Benefits Questionnaire “does not clearly define objective versus subjective evidence. Therefore, claims processors sometimes provided evaluations for painful scars without objective evidence to support the evaluations, which led to overpayments in disability compensation.”In addition, the report found that physical manifestations of the disability were often evaluated under two separate diagnostic codes, often resulting in “pyramiding” and overpayment. The report notes that more than a half-million veterans currently receive VA disability benefits for painful scarring caused or worsened by military service, but it took a random sample of 70 decisions from a review population of 47,300. It further notes that the OIG took the findings to the VBA in February 2026 and following the briefing, “30 additional decisions completed from January 1 through January 31, 2026… identified a 43 percent error rate.”The VBA, while agreeing with many of the OIG’s recommendations, including revising the “Scars/Disfigurement” section of the DBQ; ensuring employees understand how to accurately evaluate painful scars; and reviewing and correcting the processing errors on decisions the Office of Inspector General team identified, took issue with the statistical sample and the contextualization of those estimates. “The OIG examined 130 decisions, representing approximately 0.27 percent of the total review population of about 47,300 decisions, and identified 60 errors, which form the basis for the projected 17,900 errors referenced throughout the report,” per VA comments in the report. “Importantly, only seven of the 60 errors OIG found resulted in improper payments, which represents about 5.4 percent of the sample, and when viewed across the full review population, only about 0.015 percent of all decisions reviewed. The remaining 53 errors, more than 88 percent of the sample, were technical or procedural issues that did not result in improper payments.”The VA is working to complete the OIG’s suggestions by February 2027 at the latest.

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[l] at 10/22/26 12:57pm
President Donald Trump suggested that monetary compensation for victims of contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, hinges on Republicans winning control of Congress, telling a crowd at a Tuesday political rally that outstanding claims would be settled if his party wins the House and Senate in the midterm elections.Addressing a crowd in Greenville, North Carolina, Trump claimed his administration had already distributed $1 billion in cash settlements to victims of the pollutants. He also pledged to direct the Justice Department to resolve unsettled claims; however, he tied the possibility of future payments to partisan politics.“If we win the House and the Senate, I am directing the Department of Justice to settle all remaining legitimate claims as soon as possible and get it off the books and get it finished,” Trump said amid a slew of attacks on Democrats. He later added, “If we don’t win, there’s no money. If we do win, you’re getting it.”Trump also said, “We don’t want to give any [money] to the trial lawyers.”From the early 1950s to the late 1980s, service members and families drank and used water contaminated with trichloroethylene, a chemical that leaked into the water supplies from a local dry cleaning firm, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Underground storage tanks and industrial pollution also contributed, the National Research Council reported. Military authorities were unaware of the pollution until 1982, nearly three decades after it started.The toxic compound has been linked to a slew of devastating health consequences — including deaths — and led to dozens of lawsuits.A study released in 2023 found that veterans and family members stationed at the base are 70% more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than other veterans, and those who spent time at the base have linked cancer diagnoses to the exposure.In 2022, President Joe Biden’s administration passed the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxins (PACT) Act, which expanded care for veterans exposed to different toxins and enabled affected individuals to pursue compensation. In March, the Justice Department pledged to expedite settlements under the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, part of the PACT Act.The U.S. Navy and Department of Justice opened a settlement option for faster payout in 2022, with applicants agreeing to waive litigation.The Justice Department announced in March that it approved 649 settlement offers totaling $175 million over three weeks for those affected by the contaminated drinking water. Since the program began, the department said it has approved more than 2,500 offers worth around $706 million. Individual payments range from $100,000 to $550,000.

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[l] at 10/22/26 11:15am
The Defense Department and Lockheed Martin agreed to a 10-year framework that the Pentagon says guarantees at least 850 F-35 Lightning II fighters for the U.S. military, pending congressional approval and funding.The framework, announced Thursday, includes initial spare parts plus 10 years of modification kits and sustainment. It also covers orders from foreign customers, with production continuing at 156 aircraft per year, according to Lockheed.In exchange for the decade-long commitment, Lockheed will self-fund at least $7 billion in initiatives supporting the F-35 program, the Pentagon said.“With the greater certainty that comes from the U.S. government’s transformative approach to F-35 production and sustainment, we can make the upfront investments needed to expand capacity, improve efficiency, and build a more resilient supply chain,” Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet said in a statement. “That’s good for the taxpayer, good for our suppliers and, most importantly, good for the United States and its allies.”Neither announcement gave a total value or per-jet price. Lockheed said the F-35 Joint Program Office and the company will work out terms, pricing and schedules in a formal contract if Congress approves a multiyear buy and provides the money in the coming months.A multiyear buy lets the Pentagon purchase a weapon across several years under one contract instead of negotiating annually, which generally lowers unit cost. Lockheed said the framework is expected to save taxpayers billions of dollars through “long-term pricing and industry volume discounts.”“We have fundamentally changed how we stabilize the American defense industrial base to produce at speed and scale,” said Michael Duffey, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment. “This agreement with Lockheed Martin proves it. By aligning financial incentives with actual performance, we are ensuring our warfighters are equipped with the lethal capabilities they need to fight and win.”Neither the Pentagon nor Lockheed described those performance-based incentives.At 850 jets over 10 years, the framework averages 85 U.S. aircraft per year. That matches the Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 request for 85 F-35s across the services. In fiscal 2026, Congress funded just 47 F-35s.The framework comes days after the Air Force told Congress it needs 1,509 combat-coded fighters, or jets assigned to combat units, by 2035. The request came in a force structure report sent Oct. 16. F-35As would make up about 40% of that fleet.The House and Senate versions of the annual defense policy bill would both let the Pentagon sign multiyear F-35 contracts. The House passed its bill in July. Senate Democrats blocked theirs from reaching the floor that month, and leaders have put it off until after the November midterm elections. The framework can’t become a contract until both bills pass and are merged into a single law.The framework also faces a funding hurdle. Congress has not yet approved a full-year defense budget. A stopgap funding law keeping the government open through Dec. 11 holds spending at last year’s levels and generally bars the Pentagon from starting new programs or multiyear buys.Lockheed pitched the framework as a readiness fix, saying steady orders will improve the F-35’s mission-capable rate, the percentage of time jets can fly at least one assigned mission.“Predictable demand from long-term contracts with suppliers will enable bulk procurement of raw materials and critical parts, slashing turnaround times and reducing logistics bottlenecks,” Lockheed said. “This will result in better mission-capable rates by eliminating the annual contracting cycle that has historically strained the industrial base.”A Government Accountability Office report in June found that the rate fell from 67% in fiscal 2021 to 44% in fiscal 2025, while the share of time jets could fly all assigned missions dropped from 38% to 25%. Later that month, F-35 program chief Lt. Gen. Gregory Masiello told senators the fleet had outgrown its support system.The F-35 deal follows a string of Pentagon framework agreements aimed at speeding up weapons production.In January, Lockheed reached an agreement to speed PAC-3 MSE output, then signed another weeks later to quadruple THAAD interceptor production. The THAAD deal led to a contract worth more than $35 billion in June. Last year’s defense bills had already approved multiyear buys for both interceptors.On Oct. 19, the Pentagon announced a framework with BAE Systems covering up to seven years of buys of Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System laser-guidance kits.Lockheed said the program will support 317,000 U.S. jobs and roughly $79 billion in yearly economic activity over the decade.

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[l] at 10/22/26 7:45am
The Pentagon wants ketamine wafers. And it seems to want them now. Earlier this year, the Defense Department awarded a nearly $41 million development contract to Singapore-based iX Biopharma to develop Wafermine, a small, ketamine-packed wafer that dissolves under the tongue.Recently, the drug’s manufacturer announced that it is pursuing an emergency authorization that could make the medication available to troops before it receives full Food and Drug Administration approval, citing a September U.S. declaration of a military emergency that justifies the emergency use of drugs deemed necessary by the Pentagon. A federal emergency use approval declaration by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Sept. 3 opened the possibility of early official authorization, giving the FDA a route to use unapproved medications to treat war wounds. According to the notice, on July 15, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth determined “a military emergency, or significant potential for a military emergency, involving a heightened risk to U.S. military forces of an attack with a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agent or agents,” or an attack with agents that would cause life-threatening injuries. The declaration continues: “Injuries arising from these attacks may cause those forces to experience moderate to severe acute pain and place them at risk of developing life-threatening hemodynamic instability, including shock or respiratory distress.”Because of Hegseth’s determination, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. declared that “circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use of drugs” identified by the Pentagon. The notice did not elaborate on the emergency circumstances or state which drugs would be identified for emergency authorization. A Politico investigation published Tuesday found that iX Biofarma’s domestic manufacturing partner lacks the Nevada license required to operate. iX Biofarma called the non-opioid medication the “world’s first sublingual ketamine for acute moderate to severe pain,” and said the wafer enables a different delivery mechanism, letting patients absorb the ketamine through the mucous membrane into the bloodstream. Typically administered via injection, ketamine can alleviate pain, increase euphoria and cause dissociation and amnesia. A 2023 study found that opioid use to alleviate battlefield injuries decreased between January 2010 and December 2019, while ketamine use increased. The researchers found that “ketamine is generally used first for more severely injured patients and has increasingly been employed by the U.S. military as the primary analgesic for combat casualties.”The company said it received a “sole-source” award for Wafermine development, meaning it did not solicit other vendors.

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[l] at 10/22/26 7:03am
A pair of Marines filed a class-action lawsuit Tuesday against the Pentagon over a data breach at the Defense Manpower Data Center, or DMDC, arguing it allowed scammers to obtain and use their personally identifiable information, or PII.In the complaint filed in federal court in the District of Columbia, Marine veteran Tristyn Edwards and active-duty Marine Morgan Stampfli allege that they experienced fraudulent charges on their financial accounts and an increase in spam messages because of the breach.In September, the DMDC said it had discovered a vulnerability on July 16 in a file-sharing system that allowed unauthorized users to access unencrypted files containing personal information, including full names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and military occupations.According to the lawsuit, the vulnerability exposed millions of files containing information on service members and people affiliated with the military for approximately nine months before it was discovered. The lawsuit also alleges that the DMDC failed to “promptly notify” affected individuals, some of whom were informed two or three months after the breach was found.“The exposure of Plaintiff and Class members’ PII will cause various types of misuse in the coming months and years, including but not limited to, unauthorized credit card charges, unauthorized access to email accounts, identity theft, and other fraudulent use of their Private Information,” the lawsuit says.The lawsuit argues that the Pentagon violated federal privacy laws by failing to protect personal records and maintain compliant cybersecurity systems, despite internal warnings about issues in its systems.The complaint cites multiple reports from the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General describing failures by both the department and the DMDC to implement adequate cybersecurity controls. In a report published days after the breach, the OIG said that “officials have not taken the necessary actions to demonstrate that they were operating at an effective level for 14 of the 20 [Inspector General Federal Information Security Modernization Act] core metrics.”News of the Defense Department breach emerged alongside reports of a cyberattack targeting FBI personnel files. However, the group responsible for the FBI incident has not been linked to the Pentagon breach. The department offered affected individuals 12 months of credit monitoring and identity-restoration services.“Had [the Defense Department] properly implemented standard cybersecurity controls — such as regular review of accounts, scanning for vulnerabilities, field encryption or tokenization of sensitive PII like SSNs, and routine monitoring of system logs for suspicious activity — the Data Breach could have been avoided,” the lawsuit says.

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[l] at 10/21/26 1:01pm
The U.S. Air Force says it needs 1,509 combat-coded fighters, or jets assigned to combat units, by 2035, according to a new force structure report the service sent to Congress Oct. 16.Lt. Gen. David Tabor, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, described the report at an Oct. 20 Pentagon roundtable with reporters, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported. Reporters did not receive a copy of the report, and the service did not respond to a Defense News request for it by publication.F-35s would make up about 40% of the fleet by 2035, up from about 30% today, according to figures Tabor cited. F-22s and their replacement, the F-47, would make up about 20%. The service plans to replace its F-22s with about the same number of F-47s, Tabor said. F-15s and F-16s would split the remaining 40% about evenly. The figures exclude A-10s, which are not currently part of the Air Force’s plans for 2035.Tabor said the analysis was based on what regional commanders say they need to carry out their missions at medium risk. The military rates risk on four levels: low, medium, significant and high. At medium risk, forces would likely achieve their goals but could be strained in long operations.The analysis began before the war with Iran this year and was not driven by it, Tabor said. He cautioned that the 1,509 figure is likely to change with world events, new requirements and the rise of new technology.Reaching the goal depends on Congress funding the jets and on Lockheed Martin and Boeing building them in time, Tabor said. Industry has “assured us that they can, and we believe them,” he told reporters, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine.Air Force officials have long said the service needs to buy 72 fighters a year. The fiscal 2027 request seeks 38 F-35s and 24 F-15EXs, a total of 62. Tabor said purchases can increase over time.The budget counts on $2.34 billion to pay for 14 of the 38 F-35s. That money would come through a reconciliation bill, a budget package that can pass the Senate with a simple majority. If that bill fails, Tabor said, the service could pull money from other programs or push the buys to 2028.The Air Force is seeking multiyear contracts for the F-35 and F-15EX, a request now pending in Congress. Tabor said such deals would give industry more stability to expand production. Older F-16s reach the end of their service lives in the mid-2030s, Tabor said, but the service has not decided whether to buy a new-build F-16, tentatively called the F-16G. That decision likely won’t come in the fiscal 2028 budget, he said.The 1,509 figure does not count Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCAs, the drone wingmen that will fly alongside crewed fighters. The Air Force plans to field 500 CCAs by 2032. Tabor said the drones are not yet changing the fighter requirement but could reduce it in future reports.

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[l] at 10/21/26 9:55am
The Pentagon office tapped in 2022 to oversee the military’s responsible use of artificial intelligence had filled just three of its 10 authorized positions for the mission as of February 2026, even as the department pursues a strategy to accelerate AI development, a government watchdog found.The Government Accountability Office discovered that 29 of 64 efforts outlined in the Defense Department’s Responsible AI Strategy and Implementation Pathway remained incomplete as of April 2026. According to a report published Oct. 14, the GAO also found that staffing shortages had hindered the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer’s ability to take additional steps to implement responsible AI, which the department uses to help accelerate AI adoption.GAO recommended that the department address staffing needs in its Responsible AI Division, which falls under the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, and issue a formal charter for the working council.“Responsible AI should be considered the same as operationally effective AI,” said Owen Daniels, associate director of analysis at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.Effective testing, evaluation, verification and validation practices can help the military manage risks while ensuring systems operate as intended and operators understand their strengths and limitations, Daniels said.Council ‘at risk of lapsing’The GAO found that the Responsible AI Working Council did not meet from late 2024 until August 2025. Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, or CDAO, officials told the watchdog agency that other priorities, including developing guidance for generative AI and contributing to government-wide AI risk-management resources, had prevented the Responsible AI Division from organizing meetings.Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., raised a related concern about accountability during a May 2025 hearing regarding the Pentagon’s AI posture.“It’s my observation that the Defense Department doesn’t lack in the number of principals, but rather, it often struggles with too little clarity in who is responsible for what.”Officials from four DoD components told the GAO they faced implementation challenges during the hiatus that could have benefited from greater collaboration. Six of the 10 DoD components surveyed said sharing responsible AI resources and best practices would increase their ability to incorporate the department’s six Responsible AI tenets into their AI use cases.The council resumed meetings in August 2025, but the GAO found it still lacked a formal charter defining its responsibilities and specifying how frequently it should meet.“Without a charter that defines roles and responsibilities for the council ... and that specifies the frequency of council meetings, the council is at risk of lapsing again,” the GAO report reads. “Such a lapse could increase the risk of DOD facing Responsible AI implementation issues that it would not have the collaborative capacity to swiftly and effectively resolve.”Slow staffingCDAO officials told the GAO they were unlikely to fill vacant positions or increase staffing while the office underwent restructuring, following its realignment to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. In response, the GAO argued that “by ... taking action to ensure it has staff in place to meet those needs,” CDAO could make better progress toward its goal of accelerating AI across the department.Daniels said the staffing shortfall could make it more difficult to build AI literacy throughout the force.“Operationally, the force needs to become AI literate, as warfighters will be responsible for determining when to deploy AI-enabled systems,” he said.Service members need to understand AI systems’ limitations and recognize when delegating decisions to machines may be inappropriate, rather than defaulting to a machine’s judgment, Daniels said.“Exercising meaningful human control — or to use the department’s term, appropriate levels of human judgment — over a military AI system requires robustly understanding a system’s operating boundaries through development, rigorous testing and evaluation, and training,” he said.Congress’ roleThe DoD agreed with the GAO’s two recommendations to issue a charter for the Responsible AI Working Council and address the Responsible AI Division’s workforce needs, according to the watchdog.The GAO also urged Congress to order the department to implement earlier recommendations, including defining the responsibilities of organizations involved in AI activities and assigning responsibility and a timeline for identifying and managing the department’s AI workforce.In a Sept. 21 letter, Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., Mark Warner, D-Va., and Chris Coons, D-Del., expressed concern that the Pentagon’s AI push could be outpacing its governance efforts.“Recent events have given us growing concern about the extent to which agencies under your oversight have prioritized acceleration of AI capability adoption and ‘experimentation’ over effective governance,” the letter reads.Reed has also called for Congress to establish clearer guardrails for military AI. “Congress must do its job and provide balanced oversight, standards, and rules of the road,” he said.

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[l] at 10/20/26 1:32pm
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appointed Medal of Honor recipient and U.S. Marine Corps reservist Dakota Meyer to the Pentagon’s Barracks Task Force.Meyer will now serve as Hegseth’s senior advisor to the task force, which is tasked with addressing the military’s “unacceptable” living conditions, the defense secretary announced Monday in a video on social media.“Our warfighters should be focused on training, readiness and defending this great nation,” Meyer said during the video. “They shouldn’t have to fight for basic living conditions when they come home at night.”As senior advisor, Meyer will travel to installations across the country, looking at their barracks, meeting with service members and identifying how to curtail any issues blocking the resolutions.The first group of installations Meyer is expected to visit are all located in California, with Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms on Thursday and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar on Friday.If sticking to schedule, Meyer will have visited 21 bases across the country, with most along the East Coast, by the end of December, according to a map displayed during the social media video.“I want you to ask this question for the next couple of months: Where’s Dakota?” Hegseth posed during the video. “Could he be coming to my base, to my installation, to my camp, my fort? Because he might be.”Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth taps the Marine reservist to serve as a senior advisor for the Pentagon’s effort to improve troops’ living conditions.“He’ll be traversing the country on behalf of the Barracks Task Force, on behalf of me personally inspecting, holding town halls, getting real input, and then providing real solutions,” Hegseth continued. “Be on the lookout for him.”Hegseth first formed the task force in October 2025 to be led by the assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment. The group is meant to identify investment opportunities and create department-wide policies for barracks standards. The One Bill Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law in July 2025, gave the Defense Department $1.2 billion for barracks improvement, with $230 million allotted for the Marine Corps Barracks 2030 initiative and $425 million for enlisted boot camp barracks and other related facilities, as well as $1 billion for Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force restoration and modernization of military housing.A Government Accountability Office report from August found that the Defense Department does not request enough funding to meet its installation maintenance and improvement needs, resulting in an estimated $285 billion of maintenance backlogs in fiscal 2025.Previous GAO reports found that some barracks were “chronically neglected,” resulting in poor conditions that impacted enlisted service members’ quality of life. Thousands of service members lived in subpar barracks, with some having potentially serious health and safety risks, according to a 2023 report.Recently, the Barracks Task Force funded various projects at installations across the nation, including modernized housing at Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, and a housing installation at Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton, Washington.“From this point forward, there’s no confusion about who’s accountable,” Meyer posted on social media. “If we don’t get this fixed, there’s only one person to blame. Me.”Former President Barack Obama awarded Meyer his Medal of Honor in 2011 for his service during the Battle of Ganjgal in Afghanistan in 2009 when he repeatedly entered an enemy ambush zone to rescue wounded comrades and recover the bodies of fallen service members. His actions were credited with saving 13 Americans and 23 Afghan personnel.Meyer left the Marine Corps in 2010 and reenlisted in the reserves in April 2025, with his oath of enlistment administered at the Pentagon by Hegseth.

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[l] at 10/20/26 9:56am
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth discussed Iran with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during an unannounced visit to Israel on Monday, three Israeli officials said, as tensions flare between the U.S. and Iran.Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for the prime minister, later confirmed to Reuters that Netanyahu had met with Hegseth at the Uvda Air Force Base in Israel’s southern Negev desert region.Netanyahu and Hegseth discussed “the threats in the region” and the U.S.-Israel partnership in dealing both offensively and defensively with those threats, he said in a brief phone call.Hegseth also thanked Israel for hosting U.S. forces, which Spielman said numbered in the thousands, and discussed President Donald Trump’s support for the prime minister.“There’s a deep personal relationship here that was at the core of this discussion,” Spielman said.On Sunday, Trump endorsed Netanyahu in next week’s parliamentary election in Israel, the country’s first ballot since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel.The Pentagon has not publicly commented on Hegseth’s visit.Hegseth earlier posted on X that he had visited U.S. service members in the Central Command area of responsibility, which covers the Middle East, northeast Africa and parts of Asia. He did not specify where he had met with the forces.Hegseth’s visit comes as tensions flare between the U.S. and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz and as Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthis intensify their attacks on Saudi Arabia. U.S. and Israeli forces launched joint strikes against Iran in late February, setting off the wider Middle East war. Netanyahu told Israeli media this month that he’s not seeking to attack Iran before the Oct. 27 Israeli election. Trump has said he will not attack Iran before U.S. midterm elections in November. Israel has hosted additional U.S. forces, including military aircraft, since at least February as part of the war with Iran.

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[l] at 10/19/26 12:50pm
The Defense Department has signed a framework agreement with BAE Systems to buy up to 25,000 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, or APKWS, guidance kits a year for as long as seven years, the department announced Monday. APKWS kits convert unguided 2.75-inch rockets into laser-guided munitions. All four services field them, and the weapon has become a cheaper alternative to air-to-air missiles for shooting down drones. Congress still has to approve and fund the buy, the department said. BAE said it will increase production while the two sides work out a multiyear contract. Neither side announced the deal’s cost. The framework also outlines a path to increase output to 35,000 kits a year for U.S. allies. The department said that added capacity will come online as partner nations formally request kits through the Foreign Military Sales program. “By securing multi-year demand, this agreement keeps production lines running at capacity, provides our forces with interceptor inventory, and flips the cost calculus in the taxpayer’s favor,” Michael Duffey, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, said in the announcement. BAE, which builds the kits in Hudson, New Hampshire, and Austin, Texas, said in February that it had delivered its 100,000th kit. The 25,000 figure in this framework agreement matches capacity BAE has cited before. A company official said in 2023 that APKWS was in full-rate production with room to grow to 25,000 units a year. “APKWS delivers proven, reliable and affordable precision at scale to counter evolving threats and ensure our warfighters maintain a decisive advantage,” said Tom Arseneault, president and CEO of BAE Systems Inc. The Navy’s current five-year APKWS contract with BAE, awarded in August 2025, is worth up to $1.74 billion. It covers up to 55,000 kits for the Navy, the Army and foreign customers, with work expected to be completed by December 2031. Among allied buyers, Saudi Arabia won State Department approval in July for a possible $1.96 billion package that includes up to 20,000 APKWS kits, split evenly between air-to-air and air-to-ground versions. Italy is also weighing a buy of 5,031 kits for counter-drone defense. The APKWS agreement is the latest in a series of framework deals the Pentagon has signed this year to boost munitions production. In January, Lockheed Martin agreed to more than triple production of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement, or PAC-3 MSE, interceptor.In March, BAE and Lockheed agreed to quadruple production of seekers for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, interceptor. A separate THAAD framework signed in January led to a June contract worth more than $35 billion for the interceptors themselves.

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

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[l] at 10/19/26 12:20pm
The Pentagon claimed success Monday in its push to have American universities sever ties with foreign entities deemed potential security threats. In August, the Defense Department ordered 30 private and state universities to review their ties with foreign institutions listed under Section 1286 of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which seeks to restrict nations like China and Russia from gaining access to American research and technology. Failure to comply could have resulted in a cutoff of federal research funding. “All 30 universities have fully mitigated identified relationships with foreign entities of concern,” according to a DoD announcement on Monday. “Overall, the audits resulted in more than 80 termination-related actions across the 30 universities.”The Pentagon did not publicly list the 30 institutions but hailed seven of them on Monday for going “above and beyond” by “quickly terminating problematic relationships.” Those seven included: Oklahoma State University, The Pennsylvania State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of South Carolina, University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin and Virginia Tech.“These academic institutions that went above and beyond deserve immense credit for setting the benchmark in domestic research security,” said Joseph Jewell, assistant secretary of defense for science and technology. ”Rather than settling for minimum compliance, these institutions took bold, self-initiated steps to protect their labs, faculty, and intellectual property from foreign exploitation.” In addition to auditing their ties with foreign institutions listed in the 2019 NDAA, the Pentagon ordered the universities to review partnerships with “organizations associated with rebranded Confucius Institutes” that teach Chinese language and culture — but which the U.S. government fears actually spread Chinese government propaganda on college campuses. The August review followed the July release of DoD’s fiscal 2025 update of “foreign institutions engaging in problematic activities.” The list named 130 academic and research institutions located in China, Russia and Iran. “These institutions have been confirmed to engage in activities that increase the likelihood of U.S. government-funded research and development efforts being misappropriated,” the Pentagon said. In addition to severing ties with the designated entities, American colleges also conducted “precautionary terminations involving entities not specifically identified on the list,” the Pentagon said Monday.The U.S. government has been cracking down on both military and civilian research collaboration with China. In August, Ohio State University agreed to a $2.1 million settlement after civil allegations that it failed to disclose employee affiliations with Chinese institutions regarding NASA and National Science Foundation projects. Other nations are also scrutinizing ties between local universities and Chinese colleges. Last month, the UK ordered British universities to cease working with the China General Technology Research Institute, which British security services believe to be a front for Chinese espionage. Beijing denied the allegations.

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

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[l] at 10/19/26 8:00am
A group of civil rights organizations sued the Defense Department for records behind its decision to study women’s “effectiveness” in combat roles a decade after the military opened those positions to women.The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, alongside two other groups, asks a federal court to enforce their request for information about why the Pentagon commissioned the study. In a statement, Gillian Thomas, senior counsel for the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, argued that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has “repeatedly, without evidence, questioned women’s ability to serve in ground combat,” aims to deliver research to validate his “biased” views. “Now, without explanation, he has commissioned a study of women’s performance and assigned it to a researcher with a record of criticizing women’s combat readiness,” she said. “The public has a right to know why, and what he plans to do with the results.”In January, the Defense Department commissioned a non-profit research group called the Institute for Defense Analyses, which is largely funded by the federal government, to study the topic for six months. However, according to the lawsuit, the study was reassigned to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, or JHU/APL, in April 2026, where the lead researcher, Jane Pinelis, authored a 2015 study for the Marine Corps that found “negative effects of mixed-gender units.” The lawsuit adds that the 2015 study “was widely criticized for its flawed design and biased analysis.” Those critics, including the Navy Secretary at the time, described it as attempting to show that men are stronger than women rather than establish minimum standards and see who could meet them. Additionally, The War Horse reported that Hegseth relied heavily on that study to support his argument that women shouldn’t serve in combat roles in his book The War on Warriors. “Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes,” he wrote in the book. “We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”In a November 2024 interview on the Sean Ryan Podcast, Hegseth shared his explicit view on the issue: “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles.” Although he has since softened his rhetoric on women in combat, critics say he continues to push the agenda under the guise of military standards.According to the lawsuit, the ACLU, the National Women’s Law Center and the Service Women’s Action Network want Defense Department records showing the scope, purpose, methodology and anticipated use of the study.

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[l] at 10/16/26 10:30am
The order to limit a satellite system used by Ukraine for battlefield communications and drone operations came from inside the White House, according to two U.S. officials and a Western official briefed on the matter.The officials said leaders at the Defense Department received a message that the SpaceX Starshield service for the Ukrainian military needed to be slowed. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not specify who in the White House made the decision or who was responsible for implementing the order. The Pentagon is the biggest customer of Starshield, which is the military-grade version of the Starlink service. Ukrainian officials said this week that military-grade Starlink receptors stopped working in Ukraine when mounted on fast-moving objects, interfering with the performance of ‌Ukrainian drones that rely on them for onboard guidance systems over Ukrainian territory.A person in Ukraine’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday that the receptors were now working when in motion, but only at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour (160 kph). U.S. pressures Ukraine over refinery attacksThe move to temporarily restrict the vital communications system came as President Donald Trump has pressured Kyiv to stop its attacks on Russian refineries, which he has blamed for the soaring energy prices that are denting his Republican Party’s prospects in the November midterm elections. But experts say that surge in energy costs is mainly the result of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which brought Iranian attacks on energy facilities and has largely shut the vital Strait of Hormuz. In response to a request for comment about the order to limit Starshield, a senior U.S. official said: “No such request was ever made by the president.” The White House did not respond to questions about whether other administration officials might have made the request. Starshield was developed by SpaceX specifically for government and national-security customers, particularly the U.S. Department of Defense. Starshield uses the Starlink constellation as its backbone.Ukrainian officials said the restrictions complicated strike missions against Russian forces and logistics in occupied territory and slowed interceptor drones used to shoot down incoming Russian Shahed drones.Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, said on X on Wednesday that because Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the U.S. government, any limits on speed or usage are decided by the U.S. military or the president.SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. The Department of Defense and the Ukrainian embassy in Washington also did not respond to requests for comment. Decline in relationsRelations between Kyiv and Washington have deteriorated in recent days following a meeting in Miami on Oct. 9 that convened representatives from both countries as well as Europe and the World Bank.Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s Middle East envoy, struck a tough tone with Ukraine in the meeting, according to a separate person familiar with the matter. They told Ukrainian officials that the U.S. was frustrated with Kyiv’s continued strikes on Russian refineries despite repeated requests from Washington to stop.The U.S. delegation also explained Washington’s decision to strike a diesel deal with Russia, saying the White House hoped it would soften Moscow’s stance on peace talks.That deal, under which Russia will supply more than 2.25 million barrels of diesel to ​U.S. and global markets, has triggered a backlash from some U.S. lawmakers, who say it will give Moscow cash to pursue its war without forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin to make concessions to end the conflict. In the days that followed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Trump criticized each other, with Zelenskiy calling the U.S. decision on the Russian diesel deal “weak.” Trump called for elections in Ukraine and Zelenskiy’s ouster. Behind the scenes, American officials threatened to stop providing intelligence to Kyiv about Russian missile launches that Ukraine uses to thwart attacks, as Reuters previously reported. Trump said on Tuesday Washington was still sharing intelligence with Ukraine.Following the move to restrict Ukraine’s access to Starshield, the Ukrainians made calls on Tuesday and Wednesday to find answers from senior officials at the White House, State Department and Pentagon, a senior Ukrainian official said, adding that Kyiv was told it was a White House decision. The Pentagon has spent billions of dollars on the Starlink and Starshield services. It has also bought dedicated Starshield satellites, including communications spacecraft ​for missile-warning missions and a spy ​constellation for the National Reconnaissance ⁠Office, Reuters reported in 2024.

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[l] at 10/15/26 4:00pm
KYIV, Ukraine — The U.S. appears to have stopped sharing some forms of key intelligence with Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday, dealing a blow to the country’s capacity to defend its skies and to continue its highly effective mid- and long-range strike campaign.U.S. President Donald Trump has so far denied that there had been any interruption in Starlink connectivity or incoming missile warnings — the two forms of American intelligence that Ukrainian officials say are no longer flowing freely to Kyiv.The crisis comes just days after Trump told allies that the U.S. would ease sanctions on Russian diesel last week during peace talks in Miami. He then reportedly threatened to cut off intelligence and weapons sales to Kyiv if it kept striking Russia’s oil infrastructure, according to CNN. “Ukraine did not strike Russian oil refining and the energy sector in general for two days after the American President announced a ceasefire in the energy sector. But Russia did not listen,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday.“Unfortunately, there was a ballistic missile strike on Kyiv yesterday, and there was no warning from our partners regarding this attack. Usually, such a warning is provided, and it is a crucial factor that aids our defense.”Partner intelligence is an indispensable asset for Kyiv, which relies on NATO and especially U.S. information for both offensive and defensive operations. Curtailing that relationship could cost civilian lives along with the virtual stalemate Ukraine has managed to establish along the frontline, according to Ukrainian officials.“Intelligence data on the launch of Russian ballistic missiles helps save people’s lives, and this is one of the most critical issues. This is what helps prevent people being killed when there is a warning about ballistics,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram.On Sunday, Trump announced an energy ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow — without the confirmation of either party, officials from both countries said. Ukraine initially resisted Trump’s push to spare Russia’s oil network, repeating that it would stop hitting refineries only if Moscow stopped striking Ukrainian power plants. After Trump declared an “energy ceasefire” that Moscow never accepted, Kyiv held its fire for three days. Russia, however, did not. Kyiv residents heard at least five powerful explosions Sunday night before air-raid sirens sounded. Rumors immediately circulated that the missing alert stemmed from a disruption in partner intelligence, but officials initially urged people not to jump to conclusions.“You can call me an optimist, but I don’t believe (I don’t want to believe) that the United States will leave us without this information,” presidential adviser and communications expert Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov wrote Monday on Telegram, noting that Ukraine still relies on partners for reports of ballistic missile launches.“Because it’s about the survival of civilians,” he wrote.But when more missiles and drones struck Kyiv the following day, mainly targeting energy infrastructure and the power grid, reports began surfacing across the country that strike drones, interceptors and frontline vehicles were losing connection above roughly 100 mph (160 km/h), units across the country reported.By Wednesday, multiple officials confirmed that Elon Musk’s SpaceX had restricted Starshield, the military version of its Starlink service, without notice, just as Kyiv struggles against faster Russian jet drones, larger ballistic and cruise missile barrages and a global shortage of missile interceptors.“This complicates UAV missions, particularly those involving interceptors and mid-range strike drones, and hampers capabilities for frontline logistics, reconnaissance, and signal relay,” the Ministry of Defense said in a statement on Wednesday.Zelenskyy ended the pause on hitting Russian energy facilities on Wednesday after Kremlin forces kept striking Ukraine’s grid days after Trump declared a ceasefire. “We’re done,” he told the Financial Times after making the decision.

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[l] at 10/15/26 10:00am
A quarter of troops measured below testosterone thresholds, a study of Army personnel found, with similar results compared to the general U.S. population.According to the research, published Thursday in JAMA, 20% of male soldiers younger than 30 years had testosterone levels less than the threshold established by the American Urological Association of 300 nanograms per deciliter, or ng/dL. Roughly a third of service members — 32.8% — aged 30 and older fell below the threshold.According to the analysis, one-time testosterone testing of troops determined that 100,691 active-duty soldiers had morning testosterone levels of less than 300 ng/dL.The results are an example of what the Department of Defense may encounter under a new program that requires all male service members 30 years and older to be screened for low testosterone, said the researchers from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Massachusetts.The results, the researchers said, “suggest that routine testosterone screening will result in confirmatory testing and clinical evaluation for many male service members.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in July that the Pentagon would begin screening testosterone levels of all service members over age 30 and would be voluntary for those below 30 request it and are experiencing symptoms such as fatigue, low libido, depressed mood, impaired concentration or diminished physical performance.In a video posted to social media, Hegseth said maintaining proper testosterone levels was a way to ensure that troops stay on the “leading edge of lethality.”“This initiative is not about artificial enhancement. It’s about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities, protecting your longevity and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain and fight,” Hegseth said. Environmental exposures, including lead exposure, combat, physical injuries, sleep deprivation and mental health conditions can contribute to low testosterone in service members.Treatment for severe cases — medically known as hypogonadism — can have serious side effects, such as mood swings, irritability and aggression, blood clots and low sperm count that can cause infertility.Under the new Defense Health Agency clinical practice guidelines, service members will be screened in the morning on two separate days and assessed for further evaluation if they fall below the 300 ng/dL standard. They may choose to undergo treatment, which involves once- or twice-weekly injections depending on the medication, or a daily oral medication or gel. Treatment will not be mandatory.The interest in testosterone replacement therapy in the DoD follows a growing $4.5 billion industry centered around testosterone, with the hormone touted as a supplement that contributes to increased physical performance, sex drive, concentration and youthful energy.Studies in 2018 by the NIH on 800 older men demonstrated that testosterone therapy improved erectile dysfunction, libido and mood, but had little or no improvement on measures such as fatigue, memory or overall well-being.The research, published Thursday, was based on an analysis of data from the Military Health and Nutrition Examination study, a survey conducted at five Army bases from August 2024 through January 2026.The authors noted that the low testosterone levels in service members do not indicate that they all had hypogonadism. A study conducted last year of active-duty men found that .43%, or 12,112 of more than 2.8 million service members, were diagnosed with hypogonadism, and those with the highest rates were the most senior, largely general officers and warrant officers.The authors of the JAMA research letter cautioned that testing could result in excess medical visits, costs and treatment.“Positive screening result requires clinical interpretation and typically prompts repeat testing, further evaluation, counseling regarding modifiable factors, and consideration of treatment if indicated. Because testosterone replacement therapy is long term and has potential adverse effects, distinguishing an isolated low screening value from clinically significant hypogonadism is essential,” the researchers wrote.

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[l] at 10/15/26 8:46am
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan would not be livestreamed but that immediate families of the victims would be able to view it in person.“I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device,” Trump wrote.“He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed. That said, the execution may be viewed in person by the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose. They deserve to witness JUSTICE!”Some of Trump’s fellow Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, as well as religious leaders and international observers, had expressed doubts about the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the Dec. 3 execution of Nidal Hasan. Recent polls have also shown a majority of Americans opposed livestreaming it.Hasan, a former U.S. Army psychiatrist, was found guilty in a military trial of fatally shooting 13 people and wounding dozens more at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.

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

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[l] at 10/14/26 4:06pm
The Pentagon wants to build its stockpile of autonomous weapons from thousands of units to the millions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed AUSA attendees at the Project Agincourt panel on Wednesday, sharing that the Pentagon is requesting roughly $50 billion in reconciliation funding to support the push to scale autonomous and robotic systems. This request is part of an effort to make the technology available in far greater numbers.The figure is separate from the Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 budget request, which includes $53.6 billion for the Drone Dominance initiative. That request covers $16.9 billion for unmanned-system procurement, $14.4 billion for counter-unmanned systems, $13.5 billion for contested logistics, $4.5 billion for collaborative autonomy and $4.3 billion for institutional systems and personnel. The budget request does not establish that the reconciliation funding Hegseth cited is the same money or that it is dedicated entirely to drone purchasesHegseth characterized the funding as a one-time investment rather than a recurring annual allocation, intended to accelerate the development and production of autonomous and robotic systems.“Ultimately we will be dealing with hundreds of thousands of one-way attack systems this year and into the millions in years to come at a pace that this department’s never ever seen before.”The Defense Secretary said the Pentagon must make it easier for new companies to compete in a defense market long dominated by established contractors and costly platforms. Traditional defense firms remain important, he said, but the department also needs lower-cost systems that can be manufactured at scale.The Army’s Drone Dominance program offers a concrete measure of that ambition. In a December 2025 announcement, the Army said a $1 billion initiative would fund approximately 340,000 small unmanned aircraft systems for combat units over two years. The service said it expected to deliver tens of thousands of drones in 2026 and hundreds of thousands by 2027.Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle said the service is broadening access to its programs for companies outside the traditional defense industrial base. The Army, he said, must make room for new entrants while continuing to work with established suppliers.Telle also described plans to coordinate the Army’s autonomous-systems efforts while distributing capabilities to operational units. The service is developing an approach that incorporates drones, autonomous ground systems, autonomous fires and autonomous lift into future combat operations.“We have an MOS in the Army, 390A, where warrant officers could keep the speciality and the skills over the duration to teach our soldiers how to do robotics,” Telle added.Expanding access to Army test ranges is another part of that effort, Telle said. Greater access gives developers more opportunities to test systems and receive feedback from military users. He also described efforts to share lessons across the force rather than have individual units and organizations solve the same problems independently.Hegseth said the department must remove bureaucratic barriers that slow the adoption of new technology, telling the panel, “I want you to tell me which rules can be signed away.” He urged officials to identify rules and directives that could be changed without involving new legislation to accelerate progress.

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[l] at 10/14/26 2:30pm
If you’re a service member, family member or overseas U.S. citizen and plan to vote by absentee ballot in the Nov. 3 election, it’s time to get serious, if you haven’t already.All of the information about your state’s requirements and deadlines for voter registration, ballot requests and ballot returns is available at the Federal Voting Assistance Program site, FVAP.gov, and at the U.S. Vote Foundation site.Deadlines vary by location, but as of mid-October, individuals could still register to vote in some states. For the best results, use the Federal Post Card Application (FPCA), which allows you to register to vote, as well as request a ballot. Some states allow you to email or fax the FPCA. Federal Voting Assistance Program officials are advising those who have requested a ballot from their state election officials and haven’t received it to fill out a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot, or FWAB, and send it in. States are required to accept these ballots if they meet requirements. The Federal Voting Assistance Program, a Defense Department program, is the organization that is tasked with implementing the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA. This law applies to service members and their families living away from their voting jurisdiction, stateside, as well as overseas. It also applies to U.S. citizens living overseas. The Federal Voting Assistance Program is required to be non-partisan and exists only to provide information and tools for service members, family members and overseas citizens to be able to vote. Voting assistance officers in military units and locations on military bases are also available to provide information.Again this year, the military and U.S. Postal Service are providing free Priority Mail Express service for military ballots coming from the overseas APO and FPO origins to election offices in the U.S. The Military Post Office personnel will attach the USPS EMS Label 11-DOD to the voted absentee ballot. This applies to military family members, too, but is only available at the APO and FPO locations. Post office personnel will provide a receipt with the tracking number, allowing voters to track their ballot all the way back to their local election office. This year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed all commanders and supervisors across DoD to conduct a one-day stand down, no later than Oct. 15, to ensure time for service member training, processing and submission of the Federal Post Card Application, if they choose to vote by absentee ballot. Military Times conducted a spot check of a few states’ UOCAVA deadlines, based on information on the FVAP.gov site:California: Mailed registration requests postmarked by Oct. 19; online or fax registrations received by Oct. 19. No deadline for ballot requests.Maine: Registration and ballot requests received by 12 p.m. Nov. 2.Michigan: No registration deadline; ballot requests received by 2 p.m. on Oct. 31.Minnesota: No timeline for registration or applying for a UOCAVA ballot, but voted ballots must be returned by mail.Texas: Voters who haven’t previously registered can submit a FPCA by the Oct. 23 ballot request deadline.Changes in the FPCAVoting rights advocates have expressed concerns about changes defense officials made to the FPCA this summer before asking for public comment. DoD has since posted notices in the Federal Register for public comment on the changes, open through Nov. 9.A new form removes one of the classifications that voters could check: “I am a U.S. citizen who has never resided in the United States.” Some U.S. citizens who have never lived in the U.S. are legally eligible to vote under some state laws. Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia allow U.S. citizens who were born abroad, but never lived in the U.S., to vote, said Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president and CEO of the U.S. Vote Foundation. Advocates are concerned that these voters who see their former category has disappeared may think they aren’t eligible to vote absentee. The voters are U.S. citizens who have spent most or all of their lives abroad and are passport-carrying taxpayers, she said. This isn’t expected to be a huge change for military families, she said, but noted that military families are sensitive to changes in these forms which could affect voting rights. Military voters are among those who have expressed confusion and concern about whether their old form of the FPCA still counts, said Sarah Streyder, executive director of the Secure Families Initiative. She’s assuring them they do count. FVAP officials have notified state officials that the old form is still acceptable, and voters who have the old form on file don’t have to resubmit a new form. The old form and new form are both available on the usvotefoundation.org website.

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[l] at 10/12/26 11:00am
The U.S. Army is entering unprecedented territory. Demand for exquisite munitions has skyrocketed as conflicts in Iran and Ukraine — and an ever-tense Indo-Pacific — continue to redefine stockpile demand. So, too, has there developed an insatiable market for cheap systems and interceptors capable of balancing scales that, in regions like the Middle East, have been encumbered by cost-per-kill ratios as lopsided as 114-1 — in the case of a PAC-3 interceptor versus a Shahed-136 drone. If that weren’t enough to consider, there’s the lightning-quick speed of AI integration and unmanned systems into formations, and the reality of having to rethink a simple concept — hiding — that was seldom given a second thought due to the total air superiority of the Global War on Terror. Such frenzied developments, meanwhile, come against a backdrop of new Pentagon policy that aims to eliminate the antiquated red tape of the acquisition process and speed development to the battlefield. A daunting cluster of problems to solve, no doubt. But if encountering such a catalog of to-dos is stress-inducing, one would not know it when speaking to U.S. Army Under Secretary Mike Obadal, who finds himself at the center of many of these discussions. From his office and out on the trail, Obadal oversees the service’s business operations, acquisition strategy, and manpower and personnel systems, among myriad other duties. Obadal assumed the position after a stint in the private sector, which followed a military career that included time as a Special Operations officer, the status of Master Army Aviator and qualifications in nine different aircraft. Obadal spoke to Military Times about how he and the Army are approaching these seismic shifts in warfighting philosophy, and how this year’s AUSA exposition reflects the blistering pace of innovation that catalyzes them.There are many examples of individuals without military experience working in consequential positions within the Pentagon. You are not one. How has your military experience shaped how you approach this role?What I try very hard to do is not let my experience drive the way I do things. I want it to inform the way I do things, whether that’s my experience working with the interagency and seeing how other executive branch agencies operate, my experience in the conventional military or in other parts of the military, doing joint work, working with partners and allies or going out into corporate America. I don’t want any one of those things to be the driver of how I make decisions and conduct myself in the business of the Army, but I do want all of it to come together and inform it. So, it’s certainly very helpful for me when I talk to soldiers or when I look at programs or weapon systems. The biggest thing it helps me with is understanding that there’s no single weapon system that operates by itself anywhere. They are all part of a joint force, and within that, you have a maneuver Army that is reliant — tanks are reliant on infantry, infantry is reliant on fires, all of it is reliant on aviation, medical and logistics. All those components work together as a chain, and you have to make sure every link in the chain is as strong as possible. That’s one of the biggest things that I take away from being in the military: an understanding that all of these things have to work in synergy, and there are no easy solutions.We continue to watch the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran unfold. What do you expect to see at an event like AUSA that reflects what America has learned from them?If you walk around the hall at AUSA, it’ll give you a good indication of the Army’s priorities. Our priorities are reflected in what we’re procuring. Going back several years, when we were in the Middle East and we first saw adversary drones — counter-drone systems became a really important topic. It kind of started in the special operations and then expanded into the larger Army. Ukraine has not just reinforced that counter-UAS is a critical part of operations today; it’s cemented it. So, if you walk around AUSA, you’re going to see an immense number of not only drones but also counter-UAS. That’s a reflection of the procurement and the budget, not just in the Army but in the Pentagon. That’s number one. Number two is software. Being able to see, sense and integrate to understand what your positional advantage is, and understand the adversary and their vulnerabilities. That’s just military operations, but today it’s looking at how we apply the best sensors and best software to bring all of that together to give decision advantage to our commanders. The third one is fires, and when you look at current conflicts, the importance of long-range precision fires is highlighted. So, what you’ll also see at the conference is a reflection of our investment portfolio in our magazine depth, but also the variety of munitions. Expanding out the optionality that commanders have beyond just one or two exquisite munitions, with everything from longer-range artillery, one-way attack and loitering munitions, up into our higher-end missiles. All of those represent our fires portfolio, but that’s just for offensive operations. When we get into the defensive side, we’ll be seeing everything from ballistic missiles down to Group One drones. If you look at those three areas — drones and counter-UAS; software and sensors; and the fires portfolio — and were to roll back the clock to AUSA 10 years ago, the difference is remarkable. At that time, the focus was very vehicle-centric, armor-centric, pieces of kit for individual soldiers. All of those things are important and are continuing to advance, but these newer investment areas represent a noticeable shift in warfare.These conflicts are obviously influencing the speed of acquisition. But that process includes an emphasis on both cost-friendly and exquisite munition stockpiles. What is the best balance to ensure success?The conflicts are definitely influencing and accelerating the way the Army — and certainly the broader Department — are innovating, prototyping, procuring and then fielding different capabilities. If you were to roll back a decade or even less, you would see very traditional models that go from experimentation into writing an initial requirement document, then into prototyping, then selection, then low-rate production and then finally into fielding and high-rate production. That’s years long. That process is very deliberate, and it built our military to where it is today, which is still the most dominant, but with a number of vulnerabilities because of technical innovation in the commercial market that adversaries are able to take advantage of. So, where can we compress this cycle and get it more into a process where we ask the commercial industry to experiment on their dime? A lot of this has to do with private capital being interested in the defense market. They’re making a bet that they can get through some of the experimentation, and then we can follow on with prototyping and quickly get into low-rate and high-rate production before fielding.Fielding then allows us to get immediate feedback that goes back into industry. That is essentially what had to happen in Ukraine because it’s existential to them. So, when we say wartime footing, Ukraine is on the ultimate wartime footing, and there are lessons to draw from there. What are the unnecessary steps in the acquisition process? Where can you smartly accept risk? Probably one of the biggest drivers of speeding things up is acknowledging that we’re willing to accept risk. We know that if we get a tighter innovation cycle, we’re accepting more risk on the battlefield, but we’re also driving down risk on the battlefield because we’re getting it to them much sooner. So, then we get into how that translates to fires. Exquisite versus low cost. It’s a balance, or a high-low mix, essentially, where we have to have both offensive and defensive exquisite weapons. We have to have certain stockpiles to be able to counter the exquisite weapons of our adversaries and have our own effects. Then you get into mass, which comes when we start going beyond the first few days of a conflict, and we’re in protraction. We have to have affordable mass. The cost curve needs to come back in our favor.While balancing the above, how much of a difference has the surge in domestic manufacturing made in having these pre-positioned elements assisting efforts? A massive difference. The Infantry Squad Vehicle is a perfect example. That’s a Chevy Colorado chassis; the drivetrain and suspension are a little different, but it’s nothing unusual. Essentially, it then goes to a detailer that puts the military-specific equipment on top of it. It’s everything that we need it to be. As with anything, it has its vulnerabilities. We’re sacrificing heavy armor and survivability, which we needed throughout the GWOT years, for mobility, transportability and ease of repair.But using this model also allows us to sustain it far more easily because so many of the components are commercial. It especially matters when you get into keeping the ISV — or domestically made equipment — in the decades ahead and needing improvements over the years. With the ISV, as Chevy makes improvements to its chassis and drivetrain, that immediately feeds back into the production line of ISVs. So, we’re now getting upgrades that are just byproducts of the commercial market.With acquisition, there’s a major emphasis on AI. What are you discussing with tech companies to ensure the human-in-the-loop element equates to maintaining final say despite the speed of the tech?Every company that deals with this emerging technology and the military is of the same mindset, which is that the human-in-the-loop factor has to be the default. There are workflows and cycles that human commanders can say, “I need this to run in the background, and I don’t need to see it or be on it.” But when it comes to kinetic kill chains and making decisions on the battlefield, the workflows that enable commanders have to have very hard stops. It’s not just a commander saying yes or no. It’s far more complicated and nuanced. It’s presenting options based on a tremendous amount of computing analysis and saying, “Here are all the courses of action based on the priorities that you gave, based on the environmental factors that the agents have been able to ingest and all of the long-term planning that goes into it. That allows the commanders to then take highly complex tasks like mission planning and distill it down into areas where they can consume it more easily, and then apply what only humans can do, which is context and reason. That context and reason part is what the tech companies that work with us are very focused on enabling, as opposed to taking over entire workflows. Autonomy is important, really, in three areas when it comes to warfighting.Think about combat breaching. That’s one of the most dangerous things we ask a human to do: to breach a linear minefield or barrier. If we can automate that, that removes something inherently dangerous. The second is highly complex, like command and control. How do you distill what would take human staff officers hours or days into seconds, and give a commander not only several options, but the analysis behind it and the confidence in the product being presented? The third is the ability to remove repetitive and mundane things human soldiers are doing. Resupplying via trucks, for instance. If we can automate that, we are removing that task from our logistics soldiers and allowing them to apply their talents to solving real problems with a clear vision and mindset. Beyond weapon systems, something as simple as staging — or hiding — equipment or personnel requires a vastly different strategy than even 10 years ago. How does something as simple as saying, “How do we hide this helo?” impact your conversations with industry?It’s not something that we’ve had to truly consider as an Army for 40 or 50 years because we were guaranteed air superiority. We don’t have air superiority at this point because of long-range fires and precision targeting from space. So, you go back to dispersion, displacement of assets and disaggregation of large headquarters. As you remember from recent decades, a division headquarters would be a massive entity with satellite dishes and other assets in the open. Those days are gone. We now have to consider how we bring in technology from the companies to allow us to displace 10-foot satellite dishes and 20 miles of wire, and actually have small-scale edge compute and transport systems that can disaggregate everyone. That’s incredibly important. Certainly, camouflage comes into play. Other classified capabilities come into play as well, and that’s all just the visible element. Then you get into electronic warfare and the ability to monitor. So, how do you disaggregate some of that? Those are all things that we are actively moving — and coming back to — in a more modern stance.

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