Satellite communications provider Viasat has secured its first task order worth $3.5 million under a new U.S. Space Force contract vehicle designed to leverage commercial space internet services, the company announced Feb. 3.
A dire shortage of infantry troops and supply routes coming under Russian drone attacks are conspiring against Ukrainian forces in Pokrovsk, where decisive battles in the nearly three-year war are playing out—and time is running short.
Pete Hegseth’s motorcade stirred a cloud of dust around dozens of troops and border agents waiting in the desert to greet the new defense secretary. It was his first visit to the U.S-Mexico border and the 30-foot steel border fence loomed tall behind him as he shook hands. The symbolic moment was a show of force by the new Trump administration and a made-for-media opportunity to show Active-Duty troops and Border Patrol agents working together.
Service members arrived over the weekend at Guantanamo Bay, where they’ll work to prepare the Navy base in southeast Cuba for an influx of deported migrants. Marines with the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2d Marine Division boarded a KC-130J at Cherry Point Air Station in North Carolina on Sunday and departed for Naval Station Guantanamo Bay. There, they joined personnel from U.S. Southern Command and U.S. Army South, bringing the total number of service members deployed to the base for the migrant holding operation to 150.
Pentagon leadership revoked the department- and military-wide social media suspension that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s team temporarily instituted to “reorient” all public-facing communications to reflect the new administration’s vision and objectives, according to an internal government email obtained by DefenseScoop on Feb. 3.
A basic rule for uniform that all service members learn early in their military careers is how to keep their gig line straight, meaning that their trouser fly, belt buckle and shirt buttons on their uniform all form a straight line. But if a rule—even one as well known as the “gig line”—isn’t written down, is it even a rule. That was the issue facing the Air Force, whose uniform regulations stopped spelling out for airmen exactly what the gig line was nearly 14 years ago.
“As we begin the 119th Congress and a new presidential administration, a narrow window of opportunity exists to accelerate Department of Defense technology development and deliver a decisive advantage to the United States as it confronts mounting security challenges in the twenty-first century,” writes Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a retired Air Force brigadier general.
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has issued a call for industry ideas on how it can implement President Donald Trump’s Jan. 27 “Iron Dome for America” Executive Order—a surprisingly fast turnaround on a Pentagon program. The Request for Information (RFI) comes just four days after Trump’s order mandated Pentagon development of a comprehensive “shield” to repel any aerial attack on the US homeland. The RFI asks interested vendors to show and tell relevant capabilities by Feb. 28.
Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II, better known simply as APKWS, is slated to be demonstrated with a passive infrared seeker. The news came in the 2025 Marine Aviation Plan, which states that “Additional demonstrations are also in [the] work[s] with the Army and Air Force to determine [the] feasibility of adding additional guidance methods to the APKWS family, including passive infrared seekers.”
One of the few remaining Tuskegee Airmen was 100 years old when he died peacefully at his home Feb. 2 in Michigan. Retired Lt. Col. Harry Stewart, Jr., was one of the legendary flying corps’ most decorated pilot during World War II, and was on a four-man team that won the first-ever ‘Top Gun’ contest in the years after.