The Associated Press
The U.S. military plans to return to Chad within a month for talks about revising an agreement that allows it to keep troops based there, an American general said May 1. The U.S. said last month it was withdrawing most of its contingent of about 100 troops from Chad after the government questioned the legality of their operations there. This followed Niger’s decision to order all U.S. troops out of the country, dealing a blow to U.S. military operations in the Sahel, a vast region south of the Sahara desert where groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group operate.
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Bloomberg
The Lockheed Martin Corp.-Boeing Co. joint venture that competes with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to launch the U.S.’s most sensitive satellites needs to pick up its pace as the Air Force is trying to certify its newest rocket as mission-ready, according to the service’s top acquisition official.
The New York Times
The Biden administration on May 1 announced nearly 300 new sanctions on international suppliers of military equipment technology that the administration said have been helping Russia restock its arsenal as it carries out the war in Ukraine. The sanctions represent a broadening of U.S. efforts to disrupt Russia’s military industrial complex supply chain.
POLITICO
The U.S. military-built pier off the coast of Gaza will be up and running as early as this weekend barring weather delays, and aid is expected to begin flowing into the enclave soon afterward, according to a U.S. official and a European official.
Military.com
The Air Force has started to fly some of its CV-22 Ospreys again to assess the troubled aircraft's flight eligibility, a notable step as the service works to return the entire fleet to full operations after a deadly crash late last year. It is the last among the services to return its Ospreys to the air following the Nov. 29 crash off the coast of Japan that killed eight Airmen and triggered a military-wide grounding of the aircraft.
Defense One
The detonation of a Russian nuclear space weapon could render low-Earth orbit unusable for a year, according to a top Pentagon space official. “Several analysts do believe that detonation in space at the right magnitude in the right location could render low-Earth orbit, for example, unusable for some period of time,” John Plumb, assistant defense secretary for space policy, told a House hearing on May 1.
The War Zone
Footage has been published, apparently for the first time, showing a Chinese H-6 bomber dropping one of the shadowy ballistic missiles and has in the past been widely understood to be a ship-killing weapon designed for use as part of the country’s fast-evolving anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy. However, many questions remain about the role of the weapon and its capabilities.
Air Force Times
Jack Teixeira has already faced one trial in connection with America’s most sweeping national security leak in years. Now he may face two. The Air Force has charged Teixeira, an Airman 1st Class in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, with one count of disobeying a lawful order and two counts of obstructing justice under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a service spokesperson said May 1.
DefenseScoop
The Defense Information Systems Agency, charged with operating and maintaining the Department of Defense’s network, unveiled on May 1 its strategic plan that articulates the organization’s goals over the next five years.
SpaceNews
The National Reconnaissance Office is preparing to launch the first phase of its new imaging satellite constellation built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman. The agency is targeting a May 19 launch for the mission designated NROL-146 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., Troy Meink, the NRO’s principal deputy director, said May 1.
Breaking Defense
L3Harris is actively lobbying leaders in the Pentagon and Congress to create a definition of what “resilient communications” means, as the defense giant seeks to fend off a growing interest for commercial communications providers from the military.
Defense News
The Space Force’s top acquisition official wants authority to effectively blacklist underperforming defense contractors—an ability that now resides with the military official who leads the service’s purchasing field command. The fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act mandated the creation of a Contractor Responsibility Watch List designed to allow Space Systems Command to hold companies accountable for poor performance and cost overruns.
Breaking Defense
The Pentagon’s fiscal 2025 budget request essentially flatlines the Space Force’s coffers at just under $30 billion per year through the next five years—a number that does not support the service’s ambitions to fundamentally remake its current satellite networks to provide more advanced capabilities, according to two veteran space budget analysts.
One More Thing
We Are The Mighty
Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy got a shocking view of the future of warfare in 1944 when, as they were moving supplies from ships to the shore, a jet-powered, Nazi bomber ripped past at approximately 460 miles per hour.
