Just 18 months ago, White House and Pentagon officials debated whether Russia’s forces in Ukraine might collapse and be pushed out of the country entirely. Now, after months of slow Russian ground advances and technological leaps in countering American-provided arms, the Biden administration is increasingly concerned that President Vladimir V. Putin is gathering enough momentum to change the trajectory of the war, and perhaps reverse his once-bleak prospects.
For the past decade, “Stand Your Ground” laws have been invoked time and time again by gun owners who claim self-defense after carrying out shootings. Critics have denounced them as “shoot first” laws that have created a climate of vigilantism in which gun owners operate with impunity in killing largely Black people. The concept resurfaced again last week following the killing of Senior Airman Roger Fortson in Florida, but the dynamics were different.
While the Defense Department’s various V-22 fleets may all have returned to some form of service following a safety-related grounding, they will continue to operate under a “limited envelope” for the foreseeable future, top acquisition officials said. Nickolas Guertin, the Navy’s senior acquisition official, told Senate appropriators that his service has established a “crawl-walk-run” approach to slowly bring the V-22 fleet up to full speed, but did not give a timeline for when that might be.
The United States and Japan signed a cooperative agreement May 15 to co-develop a hypersonic missile defense capability designed to neutralize hypersonic threats in the glide phase of flight, according to May 15 statements from both the Missile Defense Agency and Japan’s Defense Ministry.
As the military services flirt with the idea of privatizing more barracks to deal with deteriorating living conditions, a key House panel wants the Pentagon to study the issue more in depth. In its draft National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, released this week, the House Armed Services Committee calls on the Pentagon to deliver a report to the committee by March 2025 that examines the “complexities” of contracting out barracks management to private companies.
U.S. Special Operations Command Africa’s largest annual exercise is underway, as Washington grapples with rising extremist violence in West Africa, tension with former counterterrorism partner Niger, and a growing Russian presence on the continent. Flintlock 24, which began May 13 and runs through May 24, features nearly 30 countries and approximately 1,300 personnel. For the second year in a row, Ghana and Ivory Coast are hosting.
France remains undecided about an offer from U.S. Space Command to take part in Operation Olympic Defender, the U.S.-led initiative to strengthen defense and deter hostility in space—but says that if it does join up, it will not be turning over operational control of its military space capabilities to its U.S. allies.
A new report by the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton identifies space domain awareness (SDA) as one of the top 10 impactful technologies for national security in the coming years. The report also cautions that the Pentagon’s growing focus on SDA may not translate to a boom for commercial startups in the sector.
Members of Congress are concerned that the Pentagon isn’t moving fast enough to scale artificial intelligence technologies to counter adversaries’ unmanned aerial systems, and lawmakers want senior officials to explain how they plan to address the problem.
The Air Force is in dire need of software experts, Andrew Hunter, the service’s top weapons buyer, told senators May 15. “While we still rely on industry to produce the vast majority of our software, we need enough government expertise to really be a good customer for that,” Hunter said during a Senate Appropriations Committee panel hearing.
Be sure to get a good bath the night before and wake up early to try on five outfits and reject them all because it’s Picture Day at the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, which means a new round of official portraits for military working dogs. Officials with the 380th wing at Al Dhafra Air Base, United Arab Emirates, released the official portraits of four of its military working dogs—Neptune, Zorro, Ttommaso, and Cory—along with a backstage video shoot with the dog’s handlers.
