Ukraine said Aug. 12 it was holding 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of Russian territory, a week after the surprise cross-border assault that left the Kremlin scrambling and saw Kyiv seize back the initiative in the war.
The U.S. on Aug. 12 said Iran and its proxies might attack Israel this week as fears grow that a large assault is imminent. White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the attack “could be this week,” agreeing with reports that Israel expects an attack within days.
A number of U.S. service members suffered minor injuries from a one-way drone attack in Syria on Aug. 9, and a few have been transported for further evaluation, the Pentagon said Aug. 12. “Several U.S. and coalition personnel were treated for minor injuries, including smoke inhalation. Others are being examined for traumatic brain injuries out of an abundance of caution,” Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters.
Military families now have access to a searchable database of tenant feedback, including complaints, about privatized military housing to aid their research before moving to a new duty station. Defense officials announced the launch of the long-awaited DOD Housing Feedback System on Aug. 12.
Last summer when the Pentagon released its plan to fix its sprawling foreign military sales system, it also issued a warning. Sasha Baker, then a top policy official and one of the co-chairs of the “tiger team” leading the effort, mentioned, pointedly, that they had tried this before. The U.S., she said, has tinkered with its foreign military system “roughly every 18 months for the last 20 years,” like a car in and out of the shop.
Presidential election interference, a once-in-a-generation pandemic, the SolarWinds Orion hack, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are just a small sampling of what Gen. Paul Nakasone witnessed during his time leading the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command.
A Defense Science Board task force is recommending the Pentagon try to leverage commercial markets to rapidly scale and lower the cost of position, navigation, and timing systems for military use, according to an executive summary of the advisory panel’s latest report.
As the Department of Defense is working to connect all the disparate data sets and sensors from each service, standardization will be a critical component to realizing the vision in the future. The effort is associated with Combined Joint-All Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), which envisions how systems across the entire battlespace from all the services and key international partners could be more effectively and holistically networked to provide the right data to commanders, faster.
Chinese drone maker Tengden says it has flown a new uncrewed cargo aircraft with a stated payload capacity of around 4,410 pounds (2,000 kilograms) for the first time. The company is primarily pitching the unnamed twin-engine turboprop design, said to be the largest cargo-carrying drone built in the country to date, to commercial operators. However, it has clear potential military applications, especially for helping get supplies to People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces in remote locations like its island outposts in the South China Sea.
A Space Force Guardian set to be the first member of the service to launch into space this month may be left in limbo after a NASA and SpaceX mission has been significantly delayed by issues that have stranded two astronauts on the International Space Station.
