China’s ambitions to surpass the United States as the world’s space superpower have been known for decades and highlighted by the Pentagon in annual reports mandated by Congress. Alarm bells are ringing louder in the Pentagon’s latest report released Nov. 29, which more explicitly warns that China’s advances in civil and military space are rapidly transitioning into warfighting systems capable of competing with those of the United States.
The pilot who ejected from an F-35B Lightning II on the runway during a botched landing in Texas last week has been released from the hospital and suffered only minor injuries, according to the military. Matthew Montgomery, a spokesman for the Defense Contract Management Agency, told Military.com that the pilot, who is an Airman, was “performing quality checks” on behalf of DCMA when the accident occurred.
Drones, space-based surveillance capabilities, and munitions could get increased attention from Sweden as the Nordic nation attempts to boost spending for modernization in the coming years, according to its new defense minister. Since coming into power this fall, Sweden’s new government has laid out three defense priorities. The first is joining NATO, and the second is increasing military support for Ukraine “including the transfer of more advanced military weapons systems,” Pål Jonson, who became Sweden’s top defense official in October, told Breaking Defense.
“The U.S. Senate voted 83-11 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2023 after the U.S. House of Representatives advanced the same legislation in a resounding 350-80 vote. The annual defense bill, which now heads to President Joe Biden for his signature, includes landmark legislation related to Taiwan that can begin to close the gap between words and actions in Washington and play a decisive role in deterring Chinese aggression and avoiding great power war,” writes retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at FDD.
The Pentagon lacks the information it needs to track whether poor privatized housing conditions affect the health of troops and military families, despite evidence that some have gotten sick as a result of the living conditions, according to a department inspector general investigation. The inspector general was unable to draw a link between housing conditions and any reported illnesses, because the Army and Air Force haven't put data on many of their homes into the Pentagon's housing records system, which also has no mechanism to track environmental health in the housing.
The Department of Defense is expanding the scope of its “UAP” investigations to encompass undersea objects and those that transition between mediums. When Pentagon officials use the acronym “UAP,” they now mean “unidentified anomalous phenomena”—or military-reported, unexplainable sightings. “You may have caught that I just said ‘unidentified anomalous phenomena’—whereas in the past the department has used the term ‘unidentified aerial phenomena,’” undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security Ronald Moultrie said during a briefing with reporters.
Turkish drone manufacturer Baykar Tech on Dec. 14 conducted the first flight test of its next-generation unmanned fighter jet, known as the Bayraktar Kizilelma. The drone is expected to be the air force backbone of the Turkish Navy’s future flagship, LHD Anadolu.
The prospect of growing military threats from both China and Russia is driving bipartisan support for a surge in Pentagon spending, setting up another potential boom for weapons makers that is likely to extend beyond the war in Ukraine. Congress is on track in the coming week to give final approval to a national military budget for the current fiscal year that is expected to reach approximately $858 billion—or $45 billion above what President Biden had requested.
Christopher Nolan is not in possession of a nuclear bomb. However, the filmmaker caught peoples’ attention this past week when he revealed that his upcoming film Oppenheimer, a biopic of the man known as “the father of the atomic bomb,” features a recreation of the U.S. Army’s Trinity test at Los Alamos, N.M., on July 16, 1945—a recreation that doesn’t use CGI.