Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two accomplices in the attack are expected to enter the pleas at the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as soon as next week. The U.S. agreement with the men to enter into a plea agreement comes more than 16 years after their prosecution began for al-Qaeda’s attack, and more than 20 years after militants flew commandeered commercial airliners into buildings, killing nearly 3,000 people.
Officials with the United States Air Force Academy say Lt. Gen. Tony D. Bauernfeind will take command of the academy in a ceremony scheduled on Aug. 2, 2024.
As vice president, Kamala Harris stood on a Philippine ship in the South China Sea and denounced Beijing’s attempts to assert control there as “unlawful and irresponsible.” From Japan, she reaffirmed American support for Taiwan’s self-defense, angering Chinese officials. But in her single, brief meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Harris delivered a friendlier message, urging open communication between the two rivals. Over almost eight years as a senator and vice president, Harris has offered only fleeting glimpses of how she would put her mark on America’s tense relationship with China as president.
A new type of Russian drone is being used in combat in Ukraine, reportedly a multirole long-range type that can undertake attack as well as surveillance missions. Known as the Gerbera, the drone, assumed to be of Russian production, is being seen as a complement to the widely used Iranian-designed Shahed/Geran long-range one-way attack drone.
Tucked away in their version of the fiscal 2025 Pentagon policy bill, the Senate Armed Services Committee has signaled renewed interest in the years-long battle between the Defense Department and mobile communications provider Ligado over access to L-band spectrum.
The head of U.S. Cyber Command revealed recently that the command’s brand new artificial intelligence task force is at work within the “elite” Cyber National Mission Force. Gen. Timothy Haugh said the CNMF’s chief, Maj. Gen. Lorna Mahlock, “has that team of expertise as a tool that when she’s got a hard problem, she can use that task force as one of the solutions.”
The new Joint Program Office in support of the Guam Defense System is hamstrung by a lack of funding, relying on a "coalition of the willing" and eight staff members to execute one of the U.S. military's most pressing engineering and software challenges while waiting for lawmakers to approve funding to hire staff and tackle the project in earnest.
The Marine Corps for the first time has deployed a state-of-the-art radar system during training this week on Yonaguni, an island 67 miles east of Taiwan, as part of the Resolute Dragon exercise, according to a spokesman for the III Marine Expeditionary Force.
Members of the military's combat specialties experienced higher suicide rates than other troops—and the broader American public—in the waning years of the War on Terror, according to numbers delivered by the Pentagon to Congress this month. The worst-hit jobs included career fields with high operational tempo and occupational exposure to explosions.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has issued an order for Iran to strike Israel directly, in retaliation for the killing in Tehran of Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, according to three Iranian officials briefed on the order. Khamenei gave the order at an emergency meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council on July 31, shortly after Iran announced that Haniyeh had been killed.
Following the minting of new authorities, U.S. Cyber Command says it is making progress on improving the readiness of the cyber forces that the military services provide to it. Each service provides a cyber mission force to CYBERCOM, but those branches have their own unique service cultures and ways of organizing, which leads to readiness issues.
Working together, the 459th Airlift Squadron and the 374th Medical Group used a UH-1 Iroquois, or Huey, to fly a critically ill patient from Yokota to Yokosuka Naval Base for emergency care, according to Lt. Col. Samuel Shamburg, the airlifters’ deputy commander.
The Ohio class nuclear-powered guided missile submarine (SSGN) USS Florida returned to its homeport of Kings Bay, Georgia July 31 after 727 days deployed traversing more than 60,000 miles “undetected” around the globe. The War Zone had the unique opportunity to interview the commanders of the Florida to get an inside look at the 41-year-old but still highly-prized and very secretive submarine’s long patrol.
The service is now seeking to embrace Hollywood as an ally—as other branches have done to great effect in movies such as "Top Gun" and "Black Hawk Down"—and use that relationship to showcase its mission to the public on its own terms. The effort is being spearheaded by Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John F. Bentivegna, the service's top enlisted leader.
