The Biden administration is on heightened alert for foreign attempts to threaten or destabilize the United States during the presidential transition period, as officials seek to ensure that efforts to exploit a vulnerable interval—made more perilous by America’s hyperpolarized politics—are unable to succeed.
U.S. forces in the Middle East have killed 163 Islamic State group militants and captured another 33 in dozens of operations in Iraq and Syria since late August, U.S. Central Command said in a Nov. 4 statement.
The National Guard has hundreds of troops activated or on standby across the country to defend against cyber attacks and support operations during Nov. 5’s presidential election. About 125 Guardsmen are currently working on operations across 10 states. More states and Washington, D.C., have put units on stand-by and plan to activate them on Nov. 5 or later in the week, increasing the total number of Guardsmen to roughly 250 total, according to a defense official.
The Air Force plans to soon send its latest task force of strategic bombers to Europe to train with NATO allies. U.S. Air Forces Europe-Air Forces Africa said on Nov. 1 that the bomber task force deployment will begin “in the coming days,” and would last several weeks. But details about the deployment are scant.
Credentialed U.S. military and national security officials are experimenting and engaging in multiple classified environments with Defense Llama—a powerful new large language model that Scale AI configured and fine-tuned over the last year from Meta’s Llama 3 LLM—to adopt generative AI for their distinctive missions, like combat planning and intelligence operations.
Whether it’s perfecting supply chain logistics, sorting out the intricacies of a complex wargame, or planning key operational moves in a campaign, data holds the key to better decisions for the U.S. Air Force. Learn more about how industry and the military are better using data to improve outcomes.
Rocket Lab is aiming to chip away at SpaceX’s dominance in military space launch, confirming its bid to compete for Pentagon contracts with its new medium-lift rocket Neutron. ... The U.S. Space Force last week released a request for proposals from launch companies seeking to challenge SpaceX, United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin in the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 1 program.
The Labor government of Anthony Albanese cancelled Australia’s largest space program ever, almost 18 months after killing the main civil space program, drawing sharp criticism from analysts and industry experts. ... The government began the project in 2021 and eventually chose Lockheed Martin’s Australian arm to see it through, but the Department of Defense said in an announcement Nov. 5 that due to the “acceleration in space technologies and evolving threats in space, Defense has assessed that a single orbit GEO-based satellite communications system would not meet strategic priorities.”
Russian forces are launching about 10 times as many Shahed-136 drones against Ukraine as they did last fall, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram on Nov. 5.
Unmanned aerial vehicles from the United States and South Korea recently teamed up to improve their combat effectiveness via first-of-their-kind live-fire drills, according to the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul. The training took place Nov. 1, a day after North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile off its eastern coast, although the timing is unrelated, according to an email from 7th Air Force spokeswoman Master Sgt. Rachelle Coleman.
The end of the KC-46 program of record may slip to the end of 2031, two years later than the service’s previous expectation, as tanker deliveries have gone through fits and starts in recent years.
Beyond honoring former military members for their service, Veterans Day has become an all-out competition between businesses vying to give the deepest discounts and most generous freebies to those who wore the uniform.
