The U.S. announced a $400 million military aid package for Ukraine on May 10, the third slated for the embattled country after the passage last month of a national security supplemental that included $61 billion for Kyiv. The new package includes Patriot air defense munitions and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, which have been crucial to defending Ukraine’s skies and keeping its cities safe.
Russian forces continued their advance across northeastern Ukraine on May 12, seizing a number of small settlements along the border and forcing Ukrainian troops to retreat from some positions, according to the Russian and Ukrainian militaries, as well as aid workers.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered to Congress on May 10 a highly anticipated report on the Israeli military’s operations in Gaza that accused Israeli forces of potentially violating international humanitarian law but did not formally find they had already done so, according to the document’s key findings.
The Pentagon this week formally ordered all 1,000 U.S. combat troops to withdraw from Niger, a blow to the Biden administration’s effort to counterterrorism and Russian influence in West Africa. The U.S. announced in April that it would begin discussing plans for “an orderly and responsible withdrawal” after Niger’s military junta declared it would revoke its military cooperation deal with Washington. But U.S. officials have continued to negotiate with the junta over the terms of the withdrawal and whether there was any possibility some American troops could stay.
Silicon Valley’s surge in funding for U.S. defense and swing to patriotic ideals threatens a previous fixation for many of those investors: China. “Patriotic capital” can be found around the San Francisco Bay. The investment firms that helped launch Facebook, Google, and Airbnb are backing startups building battlefield software, military drones and autonomous submarines. Venture capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz has labeled it “American Dynamism” investing.
Two Air Force fighter jets recently squared off in a dogfight in California. One was flown by a pilot. The other wasn’t. That second jet was piloted by artificial intelligence, with the Air Force’s highest-ranking civilian riding along in the front seat. It was the ultimate display of how far the Air Force has come in developing a technology with its roots in the 1950s. But it’s only a hint of the technology yet to come.
Experiments with ever-larger drone swarms are revealing a need for new concepts of operations and new ways of training human operators, the Air Force Special Operations Forces Command says. In the next few months, AFSOC will expand upon a groundbreaking December experiment that saw a single drone crew guide not one but three MQ-9 Reapers and even to air-launch a smaller Group 2 drone as part of the command’s Adaptive Airborne Enterprise effort.
This week, US Army Europe and Africa Commander Gen. Darryl Williams kicked off the annual Fires Symposium in Lawton, Okla. with, appropriately, a bit of a bombshell. “Traditional cannon-based mass fires,” he told the audience, “are still the best solution in an EW environment.” Williams, a veteran field artillery officer, has had a front row seat for nearly two years assessing some of those challenges and seeing how U.S. provided weapons are working on the Ukrainian battlefield against an adversary with electronic warfare (EW) capabilities.
Aurora Flight Sciences will continue designing an experimental heavy cargo seaplane for the U.S. military, which has now officially dropped General Atomics’ pitch for the Liberty Lifter aircraft program. The Pentagon announced May 9 that Aurora, a subsidiary of Boeing based in Manassas, Va., has received an $8.3 million contract modification to keep working on its mobility seaplane design.
John Plumb, the outgoing assistant secretary of defense for space policy, said the Pentagon views Russia’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon for use in space as a deeply troubling threat, one that stands apart from other feared “counterspace” weapons being developed by Moscow, Beijing and others.
The Defense Information Systems Agency is conducting a number of pilots to provide commercial cloud capabilities to warfighters outside of the continental United States. But a lack of available funding has slowed the expansion of those services to more locations and users, an agency official said.
An internal political debate has stalled Israel’s purchases of Lockheed Martin F-35As and Boeing F-15EXs, prompting the country’s defense minister reportedly to warn May 10 that missing a U.S. deadline later this month could increase the cost significantly and delay deliveries by several years.
Gen. Eric M. Smith stepped out on a warm, late-afternoon run last fall, pounding the pavement of Southeast Washington on a routine three-mile loop. As the top U.S. Marine, he had spent the morning cheering on participants in the annual Marine Corps Marathon, and wanted to squeeze in his own workout before taking his wife out to dinner.
The Utah Test and Training Range, located about 100 miles west of Hill Air Force Base, is known for its many secretive, highly classified activities. So, when the 2nd Audiovisual Squadron at Hill was tapped to run the Air Force’s first-ever high-definition live broadcast out in the West Desert, they knew it would be a big deal. It ended up reaching 50 million people and won a 2024 Webby People's Voice Award for events and live streams. The team will be celebrated in an award show on May 13.
