Israel and Hamas on Feb. 23 accused each other of violating the already fragile Gaza cease-fire deal after Israel delayed the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners who were supposed to be exchanged for hostages.
A contentious Trump administration proposal to give the U.S. $500 billion worth of profits from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as compensation for its wartime assistance to Kyiv has been taken off the table, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Feb. 23, indicating a more equitable deal is in the works.
In this episode of the Aerospace Advantage, Heather “Lucky” Penney discusses why the Air Force has a chronic pilot shortfall and solutions to solve it with retired Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella and retired Lt. Gen. Marc Sasseville. Bottom line: the Air Force’s pilot corps is now too small to sustain a healthy combat force that can prevail in a peer conflict and meet the nation’s other national security requirements. Air Force leaders recognize the shortfall and have worked hard to address it, but underlying and external factors persist.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insists President Donald Trump’s abrupt firing of the nation’s senior military officer amid a wave of dismissals at the Pentagon wasn’t unusual, brushing aside outcry that the new administration is openly seeking to inject politics into the military. He also suggested more firings could come.
As officials and experts are calling for more integration of irregular warfare capabilities to defeat adversaries, a new modern “triad” concept for the U.S. military is being touted as a jumping-off point for deterrence. The so-called cyber-special operations forces-space triad or “irregular triad,” is a partnership between the three disciplines to deliver capabilities and outcomes greater than the sum of its parts, leveraging the unique access and authorities of each contributor.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered the Pentagon to take a look at its fiscal 2026 budget plans and find 8 percent savings which can be realigned away from legacy efforts and towards new priorities. And that opens up two key questions: Can the services use an old playbook to pull an end around and save their programs, or will the Trump team be able to really break the mold? And with certain areas known to be protected, what pots of money might be on the cutting room floor?
KBR secured a $176 million contract to maintain and modernize the Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site, a high-altitude facility that serves as a key node in the U.S. military’s space surveillance network.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered the Pentagon to take a look at its fiscal 2026 budget plans and find 8 percent savings which can be realigned away from legacy efforts and towards new priorities. And that opens up two key questions: Can the services use an old playbook to pull an end around and save their programs, or will the Trump team be able to really break the mold? And with certain areas known to be protected, what pots of money might be on the cutting room floor?
The Space Force has canceled its contract with one of the four companies developing designs for its Resilient GPS program following an initial design review, Defense News has learned. Last September, the service’s acquisition arm, Space Systems Command, awarded L3Harris, Sierra Space, Astranis, and Axient—which has since been acquired by Astrion—each $10 million contracts to draft early concepts for a constellation of small, low-cost, resilient GPS satellites.
“The announcement that the administration is “requesting nominations for the Judge Advocates General for the Army, Navy, and Air Force” is unprecedented in my memory and is, frankly, very disturbing as it implies the existing senior military lawyers are about to be fired, en masse,” writes retired Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr., the former deputy judge advocate general of the United States Air Force.
Millions of federal employees are heading into their workweek caught between differing factions of the Trump administration, with Elon Musk giving them a Feb. 24 deadline to explain their productivity or risk losing their jobs while some senior officials told workers to ignore the directive.
A shooting early Feb. 22 near an Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M., left one Airman dead and another wounded, authorities said. It happened around 2 a.m. near an entrance to Kirtland Air Force Base. In a news release, the Air Force said an incident at the base's Truman Gate “led to an off-base pursuit that resulted in an Airman being injured and another killed.”
The U.S. military’s northernmost outpost is seeing brighter days. Literally. The Space Force Guardians at Pituffik Space Base are seeing sunlight for the first time in three months.
