Defense One - Policy

Hegseth orders termination of DOD union contracts

Erich Wagner — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 11:32:20 -0400

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week instructed department leaders to terminate most of the department’s collective-bargaining agreements, more than a year after President Trump signed an executive order banning federal employee unions from many agencies on national-security grounds.

In an April 9 memo obtained by Government Executive, Hegseth gave his deputies 24 hours to take action to cancel most union contracts.

“I hereby direct the termination of all collective bargaining agreements to which the department is a party, not subject to a court order enjoining implementation to which the department is a party, not subject to a court order enjoining implementation of Executive Order 14251, ‘Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs,’ within 24 hours of the date of this memorandum, except as applied to the population covered by the [April 2025] secretary of defense certification . . . and the local employing offices of any agency police officers, security guards or firefighters, pursuant to EO 14251,” the secretary wrote last week. “This action is required to align agency operations with national security requirements as outlined in EO 14251.”

A year ago, Hegseth exempted bargaining units of Federal Wage System workers at four installations: the Letterkenny Munition Center in Pennsylvania, the Air Force Test Center in California, the Air Force Sustainment Center in Oklahoma, and the Fleet Readiness Center Southeast in Florida.

Spared from the new memo are the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and the Federal Education Association, which last fall secured preliminary injunctions blocking implementation of the executive order. The order cites a seldom-used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act as authority to strip two-thirds of the federal workforce of their collective-bargaining rights on national-security grounds,.

Not so for AFGE, the nation’s largest federal-employee union. In a statement Wednesday, National President Everett Kelley decried Hegseth’s decision as “cowardly.”

“For 50 years, these employees have exercised their union rights; under several administrations, during a global pandemic and throughout peacetime and wartime, including our most recent conflict with Iran,” he said. “To rip up the union contracts of civilian employees after touting a successful ceasefire in the Middle East is not only a slap in the face to the employees who supported those efforts, but again proves that this action has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with silencing workers’ voices.”

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Space Force’s 2040 vision: a larger force to contend with larger Chinese, Russian threats

Thomas Novelly — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:20:15 -0400

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The next 15 years will likely see potential adversaries crank up their space and counter-space capabilities, so the Space Force needs more people and money, the service’s chief said as he rolled out two long-awaited policy documents on Wednesday.

Together, “Objective Force 2040” and “Future Operating Environment 2040” offer “a conceptual view of a future where our space superiority efforts must contend with new technologies, new threats, new missions and new ways of war,” Gen. Chance Saltzman said during his keynote address to the Space Symposium conference here. “It will serve as a point of departure and a catalyst for the growth and change that the future of space war fighting will demand.”

Plans for the Objective Force document were announced in early 2025 and for the Operating Environment document in September; both were expected by year’s end. Saltzman said the delays were “my fault” and that he was particular about the wide-ranging ambitions and vision the documents painted for the service. Some of the findings have already privately been briefed to various government and military organizations.

The public release coincides with a record-breaking 2027 budget request for the service and recent calls to double the number of guardians over the next decade. The public rollout also marked one of Salzman’s last major appearances before his retirement later this year.

Threats through 2040

The operating-environment document identifies China, and to a lesser extent Russia, as the service’s main threats.

The service predicts China will develop the “means and desire to use integrated, AI-enabled space-ground operations on a global scale,” according to the document.

The service predicts China may make large investments in sophisticated intelligence systems, proliferated low-Earth-orbit constellations for communication, sophisticated counterspace weapons, maneuverable space assets, and human-machine teaming for future operations.

Russia will likely look to “asymmetric counterspace capabilities” rather than “pursue space power parity” with NATO and the United States by 2040, the document says.

Space Force planners predict Russia will aggressively pursue technologies to level the playing field, such as a nuclear anti-satellite weapon that they won’t be afraid to use.

“Russia has the lowest threshold for nuclear weapons use in the world, according to its public doctrine,” the document says. “Though the use of space-based nuclear weapons is not explicitly mentioned, there is increasing concern that Russia is developing a nuclear ASAT.”

By 2040, Space Force officials speculate, U.S. government and commercial entities will operate upwards of 30,000 satellites. There are about 12,000 operational U.S. satellites in orbit now, according to the American Enterprise Institute’s space data navigator tool.

The document estimates that China will have roughly 21,000 satellites by then, up from 1,602, by AEI’s count, while Russia will have about 1,500, up from 356.

The Space Force documents diverge somewhat from the new National Defense Strategy, including by stating that China and Russia are likely to be the main threats, and that U.S. allies and partners will be key to staving them off.

“Commitments among established allies and partners will endure. NATO, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (AUKUS), as well as the U.S.–Japan alliance and the U.S.–South Korea alliance, along with enduring U.S. partnerships, will remain the backbone of Western deterrence,” the document reads. “Adversarial alignment among Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea will continue informally, but without the creation of a formal ‘anti-U.S.’ bloc or new league of treaty based alliances.”

The operating-environment document also speculates that there will be “no major wars fundamentally altering the state system” such as a U.S.-China clash over Taiwan or a NATO-Russia escalation in Ukraine before 2040.

“Conflicts and crises may arise and intensify, but the existing major frontiers and the global balance of power will be preserved,” it says. “The world remains fraught with rivalry and limited conflict, but it avoids systemic breakdown or large-scale territorial revisionism.”

Saltzman told reporters the document was not intended to align with the National Defense Strategy, but prompt thought among the service about what it faces in the future.

“There is no intent to square this with a strategy, because it is not a strategy,” Saltzman said. “It is simply one vision, one conceptualization of what the future could be.”

Tomorrow’s force

To counter those threats, the Space Force hopes to expand and reorganize its number of guardians and missions.

“The Space Force will require significant additional manpower and specialized expertise to generate space control forces able to conduct sustained operations at a global scale,” the Operational Force document reads. “In practice, this will result in new deltas and squadrons as well as new types of Squadrons focused on targeting, command and control, and battle damage assessment.

The service also believes its orbital, electromagnetic and cyberspace warfare missions “will only become more vital,” the document reads, and would like to see them grow.

In addition to taking on additional mission sets, the service also expects that “existing units must realign to organize around platforms rather than around effects” as a way to provide more rapidly deployable and mobile forces.

While those ambitious plans will require more manpower and money, there are some mission areas that could see a decrease in some roles. Satellite control units, for example, could see a “net decrease in dedicated personnel” as it turns to more automated services to reduce crew responsibilities.

To meet the demand for a growing list of missions, the service points out it will likely need to rely on allies and artificial intelligence to meet those emerging threats.

“The Space Force of 2040 will be fundamentally different from the service of today,” the document reads. “It will center on proliferated, resilient architectures that integrate military, commercial, and allied capabilities into a hybrid warfighting system. It will operate at machine speed, leveraging artificial intelligence and autonomous systems while maintaining the primacy of human judgment for critical decisions.”

The Objective Force document will have classified and unclassified versions, and the service plans to publicize new changes and ideas as the service’s vision evolves from one administration to the next.

“To the maximum extent possible, the Space Force will publicly release an unclassified Objective Force every five years, providing a high-level summary of a much deeper body of conceptual and analytical work,” the document reads.

Saltzman’s swan song

Saltzman’s keynote address and roundtable with reporters on Wednesday marks one of his last major public engagements as the service’s top uniformed leader.

His tenure has been defined by a push for the service to embrace a warfighting mindset and to adopt new missions. It’s also grown from a budget of $26 billion to nearly $72 billion over the past three years and expanded to nearly 11,000 service members today.

The Space Force has also seen more public recognition for its role in joint operations.

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the Joint Chiefs chairman, and Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, have both highlighted the role that space and guardians played in Iran and Venezuela, describing the service’s space effects as critical first wave in operations which quickly established “space superiority.”

Saltzman was confirmed to the four-year chief of space operations position in the fall of 2022. On Wednesday, the general said he was retiring but declined to provide a date for when he’ll leave his role.

“I'm not sad,” Saltzman said. “This is so exciting…We're starting to marry up resourcing and processes and guardian talent; the joint force is recognizing how important this is. I think our messaging is getting through.”

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Army names its first tiltrotor aircraft: Cheyenne II

Meghann Myers — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 13:30:34 -0400

NASHVILLE—The Army is continuing to name its airframes after Indigenous tribes with its first tiltrotor aircraft. The MV-75 is officially the Cheyenne II, the service’s undersecretary announced Wednesday at the Army Aviation Warfighting Summit.

Members of the tribe have served in every U.S. armed service and during every major conflict, said Undersecretary Mike Obadal, a relationship that “evolved from warfare to mutual respect and finally into an unbroken legacy of patriotic service.”

“In the Army, system names carry both history and expectations,” Obadal said. “With the MV-75, we honor a legacy forged in conflict, proven in battle, originally known to the U.S. Army as some of the most formidable and disciplined adversaries on the battlefield.”

The II is a nod to the Army’s original Cheyenne, a Vietnam War-era attack helicopter program that was canceled before entering production in 1972.

The new Cheyenne has been more than a decade in the making, originally the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, part of the Army’s Future Vertical Lift program. The service’s then-chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, announced earlier this year that the latest prototypes, which have evolved from Bell-Textron’s V-280 Valor, will be fielded to units for testing by the end of the year.

Envisioned as an eventual replacement for the UH-60 Black Hawk, the Cheyenne is the Army’s first foray into tiltrotor aviation, decades after the Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy all integrated the V-22 Osprey into their aviation communities.

It “carries the lessons of the past and the present into the future,” Obadal said.

Bell-Textron and the Army are integrating some of the lessons learned at deadly cost from the Osprey, including a fixed engine rather than one that tilts with the rotors.

“Now that may seem like a minor difference, but when it comes to maintenance, reliability, cost, impact from vibration or utilization, we found that fixed engine is likely to result in less maintenance requirements, less complexity,” Col. Tyler Partridge, who commands the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade at Fort Campbelly, Ky., told Defense One in March.

The Army and Bell-Textron will officially unveil the aircraft Wednesday at the Army Aviation Warfighting Summit.

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HASC chair: Trillion-dollar defense budgets are the ‘new normal.’ Reconciliation is less certain.

Thomas Novelly — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 15:20:05 -0400

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—A $1 trillion baseline defense budget is the standard for future funding, but additional multi-billion spending measures to cushion 2027’s request are less certain, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee chairman said Sunday.

The $1.5 trillion defense budget request unveiled this month would mark the highest level of military funding in a single year since World War II, if passed. That figure includes $350 billion in reconciliation funding and $1.15 trillion from the annual discretionary defense bill. And the trillion-dollar baseline figure is here to stay, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said Sunday evening during a roundtable at the Space Symposium Conference here.

“We don’t cut the baseline budget in defense,” Rogers said, briefly noting a few past exceptions. “This is going to be the new normal.”

Last year’s defense budget relied heavily on reconciliation, a budgetary process in which a simple majority can quickly pass mandatory spending legislation. The proposed 2027 budget’s reconciliation funding would include some of the administration’s top space-related priorities, including an additional $17 billion for the Golden Dome missile defense project and $12 billion for the Space Force which, if passed, would bring the service’s budget to $71 billion, the largest boost in its history.

The administration is also reportedly seeking anywhere from $98 billion to more than $200 billion in supplemental funding for the ongoing war in Iran. Rogers sounded less certain about whether those measures would be included in the 2027 budget.

“We're going to try to do a reconciliation bill, there might be a supplemental, which would get us to the $1.5 [trillion] the president talked about,” he said. “But, even if you don't do those, that $1.15 trillion would be the new baseline.”

The White House has estimated that baseline defense spending will increase from $1.15 trillion to $1.36 trillion through 2036, with no projected reconciliation funding past fiscal year 2027, according to budget documents released earlier this month.

The Trump administration has argued defense-related reconciliation measures are necessary for “decoupling funding for Republican priorities from Democrat waste,” a White House budget fact sheet said.

Seamus Daniels, a Center for Strategic and International Studies fellow, wrote in an analysis on Friday that last year’s reconciliation led to Republican infighting and disagreements before it was passed. Reconciliation would most likely face similar arguments, he added.

“Such a partisan political approach to pursuing budgetary priorities presents significant challenges to actually securing the requested $1.5 trillion in resources for defense from Congress,” Daniels wrote. “Republicans would likely face similar dynamics and obstacles this year with only a slim majority in the House of Representatives.”

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., told Defense One on the sidelines of Space Symposium that no reconciliation bill exists yet. As the chairman of the Senate Appropriation's Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee, Moran said he prefers to see crucial spending, including reconciliation, to go through a standard appropriations process to get top priorities funded.

“That debate has not occurred. I mean, we don't have a reconciliation bill that is close to being put together,” Moran said. “I think it's better to bring us together and get this accomplished in a normal process. and bring the entire Congress into the process. I think it's better to bring us together and get this accomplished in a normal process and bring the entire Congress into the process.”

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DHS intelligence revamp would keep it answerable to nation's top spy

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0400

A White House plan to fold the Department of Homeland Security’s primary intelligence unit into DHS headquarters for the coming fiscal year would not affect its oversight by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, an administration official told Nextgov/FCW.

The new reporting structure, unveiled last week in the president’s FY27 budget request, would combine the Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the department’s Office of the Secretary and Executive Management, Management Directorate and Office of Situational Awareness into a single unit reporting to the DHS secretary.

But I&A would still be considered a member of the intelligence community, said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the changes.

“The planned, internal DHS structural changes noted in the president’s budget submission will not impact I&A’s membership in the [intelligence community] and will not impact ODNI’s oversight over I&A as a member of the IC,” the administration official said.

I&A’s status as an official U.S. intelligence component under the budget proposal has not been previously reported. ODNI, led by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, manages the nation’s 18 spy agencies.

The intent to keep I&A under ODNI management could be a reprieve for lawmakers and stakeholders concerned about future oversight of the office. The reorganization of the intelligence shop, which would require congressional approval in upcoming appropriations talks, would mark the most significant change to the office to date, following efforts made last year to sharply scale it back.

I&A was slated for major workforce reductions in President Donald Trump’s second term, as Nextgov/FCW first reported last July. Those plans, which would have only kept some 275 people working at the office, drew major pushback from law enforcement organizations and Jewish groups that long relied on the agency to disseminate timely intelligence about threats that concern state, local, tribal and territorial communities. One international organization privately warned Congress that the proposed cuts would create “dangerous intelligence gaps.”

The downsizing was put on hold just days later, but I&A reignited efforts soon after to more gradually shed its workforce. As of late last year, the office had around 500 full-time employees, a figure that preserved more staff than the initial plans to cap the workforce at 275, though that still halved the 1,000-person operation in place earlier last year. It’s possible that more people have since departed.

The office falls within the purview of the Senate and House Intelligence committees, but its status as a DHS component also subjects it to oversight from the Homeland Security panels in both chambers.

In November, Nextgov/FCW reported that the House Intelligence Committee privately weighed a measure in the annual intelligence community authorization bill to significantly curtail the size and scope of I&A. The provision would have barred the office from gathering and analyzing intelligence, effectively turning I&A into a clearinghouse for intelligence findings produced elsewhere and stripping it of standard spy agency collection authorities.

As part of its mission, I&A helps manage a series of fusion centers around the country that facilitate intelligence sharing between federal agencies and state and local law enforcement, raising questions about stakeholder engagement under the proposed restructuring.

I&A was born as part of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to coordinate intelligence on homeland threats and expand information sharing with state and local authorities. For years, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have sought to reform the unit amid concerns about domestic overreach and partisanship.

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Trump's Iran threats renew debate over war crimes, illegal orders

Jennifer Shutt, Stateline — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0400

President Donald Trump’s threats to destroy power plants and bridges in Iran before saying he was prepared for a “whole civilization” to die have renewed questions about what constitutes an illegal order and what, if any, repercussions officials could face for committing war crimes.

The issue originally surged to the forefront last year when the Trump administration repeatedly struck boats in the Caribbean officials alleged were carrying illegal drugs. Democratic lawmakers with backgrounds in the military and intelligence community then published a video reminding troops they “can” and “must refuse illegal orders.”

“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it’s a difficult time to be a public servant,” they said. “But whether you’re serving in the CIA, in the Army, or Navy, or the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.”

The issue of legal versus illegal military orders surfaced again this week when Trump escalated his threats against Iran, leading to bipartisan condemnation from members of Congress before he gave that country’s leaders two more weeks to negotiate.

But what exactly violates international law or rises to the level of a war crime is often murky, as is who would be willing to prosecute U.S. troops, according to experts interviewed by States Newsroom.

Rachel E. VanLandingham, professor of law at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and a former judge advocate in the U.S. Air Force, said that “at the end of the day, the law of war does allow for a great deal of violence and a great deal of civilian suffering.”

But several of the threats Trump has made, including to destroy power plants and bridges in Iran, would likely violate the law if the military were to carry them out, she said.

“Under no stretch of interpretation would that be lawful, right? Because that just fails to distinguish whatsoever the civilian objects versus lawful military objectives, even if we stretch the definition of what's a lawful military objective,” VanLandingham said.

The boat strikes in the Caribbean, including the decision to order a second strike on two survivors, could also have been illegal, she said.

VanLandingham doesn’t expect the Trump administration will hold anyone accountable for actions the military has already taken or may take. But she noted there is no statute of limitations on the charges that would likely apply under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for military members or the War Crimes Act for anyone not subject to the military justice system.

“The next administration could come in and investigate our service members for alleged war crimes. And they should, to demonstrate renewed fidelity to U.S. law, to the law of war,” she said.

Congress doesn’t have the authority to prosecute anyone for violating the law, but could hold oversight hearings with Defense Department officials, a scenario that would become more likely if one or both chambers return to Democratic control following the November midterm elections.

“They can have public, open hearings and drag in every single military member that was involved in the chain of command of orders for striking Iran, if they wanted to,” VanLandingham. “That's not a criminal prosecution, but it's transparency.”

Lawmakers could also provide more funding and require the Pentagon to reinstitute the Civilian Harm Mitigation Program, which she said “the Trump administration has gutted.”

Geneva Conventions

Leila Sadat, the James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law at WashU Law School in St. Louis, Missouri, said that in a situation where the president directs the military to violate the laws of war, it’s highly unlikely military commanders or the Department of Justice would then turn around and prosecute those actions.

Even if a prosecutor were to try, Trump would likely be insulated from any domestic prosecution for “official acts.” And as president he could issue preemptive pardons for any military members he believes could face future prosecution, either in the military or civilian justice system.

Trump has a history of absolving military members accused of violating military law, including in 2019, when he pardoned two officers in the Army for actions in Afghanistan and restored the rank of a Navy Seal who had been demoted for his conduct in Iraq. Trump later pardoned four contractors for killing more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in 2007.

But those protections only apply within the United States.

The Geneva Conventions’ provision on universal jurisdiction would apply internationally and any country could choose to prosecute.

“Now you still have to catch them, you have to get the evidence, but every state in the world is a party to the Geneva Conventions,” Sadat said. “So committing violations of the Geneva Conventions by attacking civilian objects, by attacking marketplaces, or hospitals, or schools, or electrical infrastructure, those kind of crimes can be prosecuted by every country in the world. So people should think about it before they do it.”

France, Germany, and Sweden have all used the principle of universal jurisdiction to prosecute Syrians for crimes they committed during the war in their home country, she said.

“The one debate is, do you have to have the person on your territory before you can go forward? Or can you do an investigation even if the person is not on your territory?” Sadat said. “And many have argued that you can do the investigation even if the individual is not on your territory. Different countries have different rules on whether they accept trials in absentia.”

Sadat said that gets a bit more complicated when the Status of Forces Agreements that give the U.S. jurisdiction over alleged wrongdoing by U.S. troops in dozens of countries come into play.

Sadat, who was a special adviser on Crimes Against Humanity to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor from 2012 through 2021, said if the U.S. military were to carry out some or all of the threats Trump posted to social media, that could have led countries to reconsider those agreements.

"It could create a huge security problem for the United States eventually. And that's why I hope calmer heads are prevailing. Saying, 'You know, there's an entire complex web of treaties and agreements,'" she said.

Trump would also likely pressure countries not to try U.S. military members for violating international law, but he may not always be successful, she said.

"Eventually there's going to be a country in which that's not going to work,” Sadat said. “And so that's why you really do have to think of this a little bit differently, because there are external forces and external actors that could decide we're going to enforce the law, even if the United States is not going to enforce the law.”

Investigating US forces

Susana Sacouto, director of the War Crimes Research Office at American University’s Washington College of Law, said the Geneva Conventions require the U.S. to “investigate and … deal with alleged violations of the law of war by its own forces.”

How well that works in practice has “varied over time,” she said.

"The problem is, we have an architecture, but those cases, particularly the criminal cases, are really exceptional, and they're really exceptional, especially regarding senior officials," Sacouto said. "So there's been a lot of criticism about whether that architecture that exists is actually functioning to routinely investigate our own military actions for potential war crimes or (international humanitarian law) violations."

There is the possibility a future presidential administration may have defense officials or the Department of Justice look into allegations that emerge during the Trump administration. But Sacouto said, “past history with respect to accountability for U.S. officials, especially senior officials, is not very encouraging.”

Congressional investigations into the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is one example Sacouto pointed to of a long-term investigation that did not lead to any high-level prosecutions.

“Even then, no senior officials were really ultimately held accountable for their role in that program,” she said. “There were lower-level Abu Ghraib prosecutions, but no senior-level folks were found accountable.”

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Homeland Security intel office restructuring would keep oversight under ODNI

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:34:00 -0400

A White House plan to fold the Department of Homeland Security’s primary intelligence unit into DHS headquarters for the coming fiscal year would not affect its oversight under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, an administration official told Nextgov/FCW.

The new reporting structure, unveiled in the president’s FY27 budget request, would combine the Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the department’s Office of the Secretary and Executive Management, Management Directorate and Office of Situational Awareness into a single unit reporting to the DHS secretary.

But the intelligence and analysis office would still be considered a member of the intelligence community, said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the changes.

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Spy agencies eye new Anthropic AI model that spots cyber flaws

Patrick Tucker, Alexandra Kelley, and David DiMolfetta — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 18:00:00 -0400

Anthropic’s decision to keep close hold on a powerful frontier AI model, paired with a new initiative to study its effects on global networks, is prompting intelligence-community discussions about the ways such tools might help friendly and adversary forces alike.

On Tuesday, Anthropic unveiled Project Glasswing, a bid to raise AI-powered defenses before AI-enabled attackers can overwhelm critical software.

“The fallout — for economies, public safety, and national security — could be severe. Project Glasswing is an urgent attempt to put these capabilities to work for defensive purposes,” the AI company said in a blog post.

Program partners—among them, Amazon Web Services, Apple, Cisco, Google, Microsoft—get access to Claude Mythos Preview, an unreleased model that, officials wrote, “has already found thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities, including some in every major operating system and web browser.”

The intelligence community is reacting to the news, according to a person familiar with the thinking of multiple IC agencies.

“They want secure code and to use AI to find network vulnerabilities as well,” said the person, who, like some others in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal deliberations.

Anthropic has briefed senior officials across the U.S. government, including at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and NIST’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation, on Mythos Preview’s offensive and defensive cyber applications, a company official said.

“Bringing government into the loop early — on what the model can do, where the risks are, and how we’re managing them — was a priority from the start,” the company official said.

Analysts at the National Security Agency have also been casually chatting about the release of the Mythos model, another person familiar with the matter told Nextgov/FCW.

Multiple intelligence agencies and Defense Department components play roles in offensive cyber operations and defending U.S. networks. Because offensive missions often depend on understanding a target’s defenses, tools like the Mythos model in the wrong hands could help adversaries identify and exploit weaknesses in critical systems. Agencies are already known to stockpile hacking exploits for future use.

The development is also drawing major attention and concern, in some cases, from cyber-focused firms that engage with the intelligence community.

“How is anyone supposed to defend against all of this at once?” said one executive at a cyber investment firm, alarmed by the scale at which the Anthropic model was able to identify vulnerabilities.

The Glasswing news is “scary and ominous” because it isn’t clear how Mythos Preview could be used offensively, especially if it falls into the hands of a foreign adversary, said Hayden Smith, a co-founder at Hunted Labs, a company focused on software supply chain risks.

It’s very possible the model could land in the possession of governments considered hostile to the U.S., he said, explaining that “even with deep vetting, the odds of Mythos flowing into the wrong hands is barely a hypothetical given the landscape of current attacks on the open source ecosystem and software supply chain.”

Because much of the internet runs on widely used open-source software maintained by developers around the world, tools like Mythos could uncover weaknesses in code that underpin large parts of the digital ecosystem.

That dynamic has come into sharper focus following recent software supply chain incidents that had widespread repercussions — including a compromise of the Axios JavaScript library disclosed last week — and amid concerns that some developers behind critical open-source projects are affiliated with companies the U.S. government considers tied to foreign adversaries.

Capitol Hill is also paying attention to the Anthropic development.

“We are already seeing cyber threat actors using AI tools to improve their capabilities, putting government, businesses and consumers’ security and personal information at risk,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “As AI dramatically accelerates the discovery of new vulnerabilities, I hope industry will correspondingly accelerate and reprioritize patching.”

Observers have been awaiting the release of a model like Mythos Preview that could identify and exploit cyber vulnerabilities at scale for some time, said Morgan Adamski, the former executive director at U.S. Cyber Command and lead for PwC’s Cyber, Data & Technology Risk services.

“For those in the offensive cyber community, for the U.S. government, there’s obviously a huge potential there from an adversarial perspective,” she said in an interview.

But offense and defense are, in many ways, one and the same. If cyberintelligence analysts find a novel vulnerability in an enemy computer network, it’s possible a U.S. system might have the same vulnerability, too.

“There’s going to be a real equity conversation that occurs,” Adamski said. “If we exploit something in an adversarial network, we’re going to have to be able to defend against it in our own critical infrastructure.”

She also said to expect more of these innovations in the AI space, as “typically, when these types of models come out, other models aren’t far behind.”

In an interview, Gary DePreta, the senior vice president of Cisco’s U.S. Public Sector Organization, told Nextgov/FCW that the company’s participation in Project Glasswing is part of its larger aim to address cybersecurity threats while bringing the benefits of AI to its customer base.

“We’re going from an age of detect-and-respond — and as we automate with AI — to predict-and-prevent threats,” DePreta said on Wednesday. “We keep saying this phrase at Cisco: ‘there is a paradox of progress as it relates to AI and the enterprise.’ And what it simply means is the capabilities of AI are far exceeding the enterprise’s ability to implement it in a safe and secure way.”

Anthropic has become a major voice in the line AI companies are willing to draw in ethical uses of their technology, though that stance has drawn friction with the U.S. military. Earlier this year, the company declined to ease restrictions against its tools being used for domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons for Pentagon use, triggering a “supply chain risk” designation from the Defense Department and a White House order that all federal agencies phase out their uses of Anthropic tools. The company has legally challenged the move.

It’s possible that the Mythos announcement may reshape how the Defense Department interacts with the company.

The government “needs to make amends with Anthropic and help them and Glasswing members maintain the American lead on AI by preventing Chinese model theft,” said Leah Siskind, an AI research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.

“Anthropic is making the responsible call — but adversaries won’t,” she said. “China is already exploiting U.S. AI models to accelerate its own capabilities, and when they reach Mythos-level performance, they will weaponize it.”

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Pentagon investigators blocked from using 'War Department' in official documents

Meghann Myers — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 14:58:10 -0400

Ever since President Donald Trump signed an executive order in September authorizing the Defense Department to go by the “secondary title” of War Department, the Pentagon has been working to change its signage, signature blocks, and as many instances of "Defense" as possible. But that stops with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service and its official filings, because “War Department” still isn’t a legal name.

Though DoD personnel and defense contractors have been compelled to use “War Department,” only Congress has the authority to officially change the department’s name. Lawmakers have made no moves to do so; most recently, they passed up the opportunity in the latest defense authorization bill. So where legal proceedings are concerned, DoD remains DoD, according to a memo for the department’s inspector general office signed April 1 by the assistant inspector general for legislative and communications.

The IG’s main concern appears to be that using the unofficial name in legal documents could undermine a criminal case.

“While the ‘Department of War’ label may serve a rhetorical or symbolic purpose, its introduction into official contexts has generated internal confusion and compelled legal safeguards,” a DoD contractor, who asked not to be identified to prevent retaliation from his employer, told Defense One.

While the memo clears the IG to rebrand itself as the "Department of War Office of the Inspector General," the use of that nickname will be limited.

“For DCIS in particular, the stakes are high: even minor deviations from statutory identity in criminal proceedings could undermine the integrity of cases aimed at holding individuals accountable for fraud, waste, and abuse within the government,” the contractor said.

The memo also states that the DoD Hotline, the anonymous tip line for fraud, waste and abuse allegations, will keep its name. Nor will DoW be used in any memoranda of understanding or agreement with outside organizations, to prevent misunderstandings.

“The rebranding effort introduces unnecessary friction into interagency coordination, congressional oversight, and international engagements, all of which rely on the legally established identity of the Department of Defense,” the contractor said. “The internal guidance’s repeated emphasis on disclaimers, footnotes, and restricted usage underscores the extent to which legal and policy officials are attempting to contain that risk.”

And though Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth personally replaced the bronze Department of Defense sign at the Pentagon’s river entrance in November, the memo explicitly says that no existing OIG office signage should be removed and budgeted funds can’t be used to buy DoW signs.

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment about legally safeguarding investigations, or whether there is a push to convince lawmakers to make the War Department legal.

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Budget would cut Pentagon research by one-third. Can industry compensate?

Patrick Tucker — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 22:54:13 -0400

Pentagon R&D spending would drop by about one-third under the White House’s 2027 defense-spending proposal—but the impact of that $4.5 billion reduction might be cushioned by the tech industry’s willingness to fund its own research.

The proposed drop, which echoes a similar cut in the first Trump administration’s 2020 proposal, was outlined in Friday’s record-breaking $1.5 trillion defense-spending request.

Basic research spending would fall $3.7 billion from this year’s appropriated amount. Most of that—$2.6 billion—would be borne by the Space Force, but reductions would also hit the Army ($173 million), Navy ($529 million), Air Force ($150 million), and the Defense Department-wide account ($202 million).

Applied research funding would drop by about $1.3 billion. The Army’s pool would drop by $1.312 billion while the Navy and Air Force would each lose $150 million. But the DOD-wide account would gain nearly $600 million and Space Force would edge up $56 million, both buoyed by Golden Dome missile-defense work.

The documents released on Friday don’t provide any real explanation for decreasing research spending, although one alludes cryptically to “unnecessary spending and excessive bureaucracy” and “woke frivolities.”The new proposal comes as the White House has already worked to reduce non-defense spending on science and technology research —for example, by 22 percent in the fiscal year 2026 budget.

“While the United States is dismantling the very foundations that have sustained our STEM and innovation leadership for generations, Beijing has announced its plans to continue accelerating its investments in science, technology, and innovation,” says a Nov. 5 letter from Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., ranking member of the House Select Committee on the CCP.

China is increasing its spending on basic and applied research in a wide number of areas in what could be called dual-use technology. Its government says it allocated $569 billion for research and engineering last year. The number is in line with a broader trend of year-over-year increases that have boosted government-funded science spending to 23 times its 2000 level.

Decreases in U.S. government funding for military research and development don’t necessarily mean less basic and applied research funding overall—not when you factor in private-sector spending. Venture capital funding for new defense startups–which largely goes to R&D–is steadily rising.

New and established technology companies that specialize in dual-use products spend more of their own money on R&D than do traditional defense contractors, KPMG reported in January.

Ukraine provides an excellent example of what a newly re-wired industrial base can look like. By some estimates, the country boasts more than a thousand defense startups that are finding customers across continents—and all with very limited government help. The Ukrainian government has allocated about $20 billion for military R&D this year. Ukrainian companies have leaned into information technology, rapid innovation, and continuous experimentation to produce new weapons on short timelines.

Kurt Freshley, a former Marine who leads growth for technology company Valinor, says his company is “encouraged by signals that the Department wants to open the industrial base to new entrants.”

But Freshley said a larger topline for DOD doesn’t necessarily mean more money for new competitors.

“The rewiring question will be answered not by the overall number, but by whether new entrants can compete and deliver,” he said. “If the procurement architecture actually creates room for new companies to compete, if this budget delivers on that, it's genuinely significant.”

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Navy shipbuilding request rises nearly 50% in 2027 proposal

Lauren C. Williams — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 22:41:28 -0400

The White House wants nearly $65.8 billion for naval shipbuilding in fiscal 2027, up from about $45.1 billion it requested for the current fiscal year.

If approved by Congress, the sum would pay for 18 warships and 16 “non-battle force ships,” according to documents released by the Office of Management and Budget on Friday. About $5.6 billion would come from a proposed reconciliation bill, the second in as many years, according to Pentagon documents released Friday.

“The 2027 Budget will establish President Trump’s Golden Fleet, including initial funding for the Trump-class battleship and next generation frigates, as well as increasing the capacity of public shipyards and improving overall ship production,” according to a White House fact sheet.

The shipbuilding request is part of a White House proposal to spend $1.5 trillion on defense in 2027, half again as much as this year’s record-breaking amount. The plan requests $1.15 trillion in regular appropriations plus the balance in a reconciliation bill.

Funding for Columbia-class submarines—the missile boats that will replace the Ohios—would rise to $15.2 billion from the $9.3 billion appropriated in 2026. The sum would include $14.9 billion from the Defense Department’s budget and $205.7 million from the proposed reconciliation bill. The White House budget said $250 million would come from the National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund, created in 2014 to boost submarine construction with funds from outside the traditional shipbuilding budget.

The Pentagon documents also include $28.4 billion for “other warships,” such as Virginia-class submarines, aircraft carriers, destroyers, and $1.4 billion for the first next-generation frigate. About $1.9 billion would come from reconciliation.

The battleship would get $1 billion in advanced procurement funding for 2027. Other funding includes $13.9 billion for “auxiliaries, craft, and prior-year program costs,” and $8.3 billion for amphibious ships.

The proposed funding would also “maintain or increase” procurement of existing platforms from submarines to amphibious ships, according to White House budget summary.

The documents released on Friday do not list the types and quantities of the 18 battle force ships.

Landing Ship Mediums—of which six were listed in the Pentagon documents—were likely counted toward the warship total, said Mark Cancian, a budget expert and senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Having several “other battle force ships in a single year is a good program, though they need to build more to reach the 350 battle force ships that the Navy has aimed for,” Cancian said.

The 16 non-battle force ships include “strategic sealift vessels, hospital vessels, Consolidated Cargo Replenishment at Sea tankers, a special mission ship, submarine tenders and other vessels vital for logistics,” according to a White House budget summary document.

The White House summary said some of the requested 2027 funds would be used to increase the repair capacity of the nation’s four public shipyards.

The summary also highlights funding to design and develop the proposed battleship and new frigate.

“Those will involve a lot of development and won't be actually constructed for several years,” Cancian said. “What the Navy can do in the near term is build a lot of auxiliaries where the U.S. shipbuilding defense industry has some capacity.”

Brent Sadler, a senior fellow and naval expert with the Heritage Foundation, said the $65.8 billion shipbuilding topline should be carried into future years to increase production.

"This is actually the closest to what is needed and it needs to be sustained for several budgets,” Sadler said, proposing legislation that includes a block order for warships the Navy plans to buy in the next five years, boosts worker salaries and provides a mechanism to place underperforming shipyards in a conservatorship.

But even with more funding, the challenge still lies in translating orders into production capacity in the foreseeable future.

That “requires a strategic industrial planning effort, beyond the Navy, to achieve and which the Department of the Navy still not fully organized to achieve nor is the interagency,” Sadler said. “New shipyards need to be funded with orders of new builds with longer delivery times as the goal is, firstly, to grow capacity,” which also means stockpiling key components to shrink supply delays.

Lawmakers’ reaction to the proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget largely split along party lines.

Republican leaders of the congressional defense committee praised the proposal.

“These funds will drive the U.S. toward a defense budget of 5 percent of GDP–-a benchmark we have long supported as necessary to maintain our national defense. President Trump is also sending a clear signal for our allies and partners to build on recent progress and meet this benchmark alongside us,” Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., who chair the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, respectively, said in a statement.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., SASC’s ranking member, called the budget request “bloated” and “undisciplined.”

“We must wisely invest in technology and efficiency. We must learn the right lessons from Ukraine and Iran. The military has to adapt to changing threats and invest in smart, cost-effective, advanced technologies that strengthen our defensive capabilities and contribute to America’s economic and technological edge. We must also continue investing in our people and build up our defense manufacturing base to meet America’s needs now and in the future,” Reed said in a statement.

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Budget seeks billions for Air Force's F-47 fighter jet, just millions for Navy’s F/A-XX

Thomas Novelly — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 21:58:31 -0400

The Trump administration is, once again, going all in on the development of the Air Force’s sixth-generation fighter while seeking only a fraction of its funding for the Navy’s future combat jet.

The record-breaking $1.5 trillion 2027 defense spending request, released Friday, includes around $5 billion to develop the F-47, all from baseline discretionary funding. Just $140 million—$72 million of which is from a proposed reconciliation bill—is requested for the Navy’s own next-generation fighter, dubbed F/A-XX.

“The Administration is sending a clear message to the nation’s adversaries by aggressively moving forward with the F-47 sixth-generation fighter: that the U.S. military will secure command of the skies, deter aggression, and project power anywhere on the globe,” the budget documents read. “The 2027 request continues to prioritize the rapid development and production of the F-47, and would achieve a first flight in 2028.”

Last year, Congress initially committed only a fraction of the funding that would be needed to substantially advance the development of the F/A-XX. The service reportedly came close to choosing Boeing or Northrop Grumman to make the future aircraft, but no announcement was made.

But lawmakers’ support for the program soared in January, when House and Senate appropriators boosted F/A-XX funding more than tenfold, from $74 million to $897 million. Along with $750 million from the reconciliation bill, the Navy’s fighter saw nearly $1.7 billion in total enacted funding, according to the documents.

As part of the restored funding for F/A-XX, lawmakers wanted the details of the service’s acquisition strategy, spending plan, and timeline for awarding the manufacturing and development contract, fielding the aircraft, and reaching initial operating capacity. They also want an explanation of what prevented the Navy from spending F/A-XX funds allocated in previous years.

By comparison, the F-47 received $2.5 billion in the 2026 budget request and $900 million in reconciliation funding. In total, the Boeing-built fighter netted $3.5 billion last year, the documents said.

The budget request will also spend more on F-35s for the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy. In total, the White House is asking for 85 of the fifth-generation jets, with 32 funded by the discretionary budget and 53 by the proposed reconciliation bill, an Office of Management and Budget spokesperson confirmed to Defense One. Of the total, 38 would go to the Air Force, 37 to the Navy, and 10 to the Marine Corps.

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Trump's $18B Golden Dome request bets almost entirely on reconciliation

Thomas Novelly — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:10:12 -0400

Almost none of the $17.5 billion the White House is seeking in fiscal 2027 for the Golden Dome missile-defense project would come from the Defense Department budget, an Office of Management and Budget spokesperson confirmed to Defense One.

Less than $400 million would come from DOD's budget, with the rest from a proposed reconciliation bill, the second in as many years. Congress uses reconciliation, a special budgetary process that requires a simple majority to pass, to quickly enact mandatory spending legislation.

“The budget supports development of game-changing space-based missile defense sensors and interceptors, kinetic and non-kinetic missile defeat and defense capabilities and enabling technologies for a layered, next-generation homeland missile defense system,” the White House said in budget documents on Friday, adding that the administration is continuing “innovative program management and acquisition approaches to prudently employ taxpayer dollars.”

But defense experts said Golden Dome’s continued reliance on reconciliation legislation is a bad sign. Last year's One Big Beautiful Bill put $23 billion towards the administration’s signature defense project, but that's no guarantee of future funding, said Todd Harrison, an American Enterprise Institute senior fellow and defense budget expert.

“The whole program is on unstable footing,” Harrison said. “If they have not been able to move the main funding lines into the base budget, because reconciliation is highly unlikely to continue beyond FY27, then where does all the Golden Dome funding go in FY28?”

Overall, $350 billion of the $1.5-trillion 2027 defense-spending request would come from reconciliation funds, according to the White House’s budget documents. The administration's budget projections from 2028 through 2036 don’t showcase any additional mandatory funding, which would reduce the total defense spending.

Harrison said he was not surprised the Golden Dome-related reconciliation funds decreased from last year’s $23 billion to a little more than $17 billion in the proposed budget request.

“Golden Dome still has plenty of money sitting around waiting to be used,” he said. “So it's not too surprising that they're requesting a lesser amount.”

In January, lawmakers criticized the Defense Department for failing to provide budgetary details and justifications for the $23 billion in Golden Dome-related reconciliation funds. A Pentagon planning document obtained by Defense One last month showed that numerous Golden Dome-related funds had yet to be allocated.

But Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, Trump’s Golden Dome czar, has said that reconciliation funds are flowing.

“I have personally briefed all six committees numerous times on everything that we're doing on Golden Dome, to include the detailed costs of what Golden Dome is going to cost,” Guetlein told attendees at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference last month. “All of the funding for Golden Dome under reconciliation has flowed, and we've got a very close partnership with OMB and [the National Security Council] on execution of those funds.”

Gutelin also announced then that the program’s projected price tag had jumped $10 billion to $185 billion. Defense experts believe those costs will continue to rise—if not skyrocket.

The budget documents released Friday also acknowledge that Trump’s Golden Dome can't shoot down everything, a reality that physicists have asserted.

"The initiative's scope is to develop and mature a versatile, multi-layered defense system. The goal is to not create a 'perfect' defense, but to provide an increasingly effective shield that enhances the U.S. capability to deter attacks, disincentivize arms racing, and negotiate from a position of strength,” the budget document says. “For Fiscal Year 2027, the program will balance investments in next-generation technologies with the strengthening of existing foundational capabilities to improve near-term readiness and build for the future."

While Trump has not explicitly claimed the system would be flawless, he has described it in near-absolute terms. Last May, he said it would be able to intercept "very close to 100 percent" of missiles fired from anywhere in the world.

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White House aims to fold DHS' main intel arm into secretary's office

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:00:00 -0400

One year after proposing deep cuts to the Office of Intelligence and Analysis of the Department of Homeland Security, the Trump administration is trying to merge the unit into the office of the DHS secretary.

The administration's 2027 budget proposal outlines a plan to combine I&A with DHS' Management Directorate, Office of Situational Awareness, and Office of the Executive Secretary—essentially, folding the department’s intelligence arm into a consolidated headquarters office alongside management and executive functions.

Administration documents released on Friday said the plan would save $53 million and “would yield efficiencies and would enable better communication throughout the department and with external partners.” The plan requires approval from Congress.

Last year, the Trump administration proposed to slash the office from about 1,000 workers to 275, Nextgov/FCW first reported last July. That proposal drew pushback from law-enforcement organizations and Jewish groups that long relied on the agency to disseminate timely intelligence about threats to state, local, tribal and territorial communities. One international organization privately warned Congress that the proposed cuts would create “dangerous intelligence gaps.”

The downsizing was put on hold just days later, but DHS soon began a more gradual effort to shrink the office. By late last year, the office was down to about 500 employees. It’s possible that more people have since departed.

In November, the House Intelligence Committee considered adding a provision to the annual intelligence community authorization bill to curtail the size and scope of I&A. The provision would have barred the office from gathering and analyzing intelligence, effectively turning I&A into a clearinghouse for intelligence findings produced elsewhere and stripping it of standard spy-agency collection authorities.

I&A also helps manage a series of fusion centers around the country that help share intelligence among federal agencies and state and local law enforcement.

The move proposed in the FY27 budget would likely draw questions from lawmakers about the independence of DHS’s primary intelligence arm, how threat information is shared with state and local partners, and concerns about proper oversight of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol.

For years, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have argued that I&A needs reform.

Democrats have faulted the office for overstepping its domestic surveillance authorities and for failing to protect civil liberties, especially during the 2020 racial justice protests. Republicans, meanwhile, have accused it of drifting into partisanship and falling short in providing timely intelligence to state and local partners, particularly on border threats.

A 2022 DHS oversight report assessed that I&A had detected online threats ahead of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot but failed to share that information in time to be useful.

The Intelligence and Analysis unit holds a unique place in the federal oversight landscape. As one of 18 intelligence agencies managed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, it falls within the purview of the Senate and House Intelligence committees. But its status as a DHS component also subjects it to oversight from the Homeland Security panels in both chambers.

It’s not clear whether the proposed consolidation would formally reduce the number of U.S. intelligence agencies statutorily managed under ODNI. Nextgov/FCW has asked ODNI and DHS spokespeople for comment.

Its placement in DHS has put it at the center of recurring jurisdictional tensions with the FBI, which drives much of the nation’s domestic intelligence, counterterrorism and counterintelligence work under the Justice Department. Researchers have long argued the division of labor creates a fragmented architecture that splits operational responsibilities across agencies whose missions too often overlap.

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Hegseth forces out Army’s top general in ‘widely anticipated’ move

Meghann Myers — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 18:29:15 -0400

Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, is stepping down early from his position at the request of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CBS News first reported Thursday.

While spokespeople for the service and George did not immediately return requests for comment, a Defense official confirmed to Defense One that the service had been waiting for the other shoe to drop since the Army’s vice chief of staff was pushed out late last year.

“This shift was widely anticipated the moment Gen. [Jim] Mingus was let go,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record about the matter.

Mingus spent fewer than two years in the vice position, which is traditionally a four-year job. In his place, President Donald Trump nominated then-Army Lt. Gen. Christopher LaNeve, Hegseth’s senior military aide, who was confirmed by the Senate in January.

When George became chief of staff in fall 2023, he was expected to retire in October 2027. But the moves have set up a scenario where he could be forced out and Hegseth could quickly replace him with an ally.

“General Randy A. George will be retiring from his position as the 41st Chief of Staff of the Army effective immediately. The Department of War is grateful for General George’s decades of service to our nation. We wish him well in his retirement,” Pentagon spokesman Seth Parnell said Thursday on social media.

George is the latest senior military official fired by Hegseth with little explanation, a string that began with the removal of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of naval operations, and the vice chief of staff of the Air Force in February 2025.

Though the Army was spared at the time, the Mingus and George firings have raised questions about whether Hegseth has his eye on the Army’s civilian leadership as well.

“Secretary Hegseth is obviously aiming to overhaul the Army's command structure,” the official said. “Since only President Trump holds the actual authority to remove Secretary [Dan] Driscoll, Hegseth worked around that restriction by clearing out the personnel in Driscoll's immediate orbit instead.”

George had spearheaded an overhaul of the way the Army modernizes, notching big wins like getting the service’s next main battle tank into soldiers’ hands five years ahead of schedule. He was also a main player in the Army Transformation Initiative, a long list of reforms the Army had been asking for that Hegseth signed off on last April.

“The tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut by the scythe,” the official said.

A spokesman for Driscoll did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Last 24 hours saw ‘lowest number’ of Iranian missile and drone attacks, Hegseth says

Meghann Myers — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:57:45 -0400

Iran launched fewer missiles and drones in the past day than in any previous 24-hour period since the U. S. and Israel started their war,Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday during a press briefing at the Pentagon. But the secretary declined to quantify progress toward the administration’s objectives or answer whether thousands of soldiers and Marine positioned in the Middle East are a precursor to a ground invasion.

Hegseth fell back on a common refrain of his public remarks since the U.S. began striking targets in Iran a month ago: that he isn’t willing to share how far the U.S. is willing to go to press Iran into a peace deal.

“We have our own goals and guidance, and…military objectives that we're moving toward, and things that we look at,” the secretary said. “And as [the president has] articulated, you know, he said, four to six weeks, six to eight weeks, three—it could be any any particular number, but we would never reveal precisely what it is, because our goal is to finish those objectives, and we're well on our way.”

Asked what other purpose there could be for staging 82nd Airborne Division soldiers and an amphibious ready group with embarked Marines in the Middle East other than a ground incursion, Hegseth refused to answer.

“Military 101: don't tell your enemy what you're willing to do or not do, and don't tell your enemy when you're willing to stop, especially an enemy that likes to hide in bunkers and try to hoard their missiles and…wait you out,” he said. “So that's not a question I'm going to answer.”

He gave a similar answer when asked what his message is to Trump supporters who are concerned about a ground operation.

“I don't understand why the base…wouldn't have faith in his ability to execute on this. Look at his track record of pursuing ‘peace through strength, America First outcomes’,” Hegseth said. “What he's simply saying, and it's exactly true—and I've said from this podium, too—we're not going to foreclose any option. You can't fight and win a war if you tell your adversary what you are willing to do or what you are not willing to do, to include boots on the ground.”

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hinted that their presence could be a form of intimidation.

“Iran should note that they’re out there and they are a pressure point,” Caine said.

In Hegseth’s opening remarks, he recounted a brief trip to the U.S. Central Command area of operations over the weekend, where he met with troops supporting Operation Epic Fury. He contended that the troops wanted to continue the war.

He said none of them asked for better equipment, better living conditions or to go home, but for “even more bombs, bigger bombs, more targets,” he said.

“These troops, they want to finish this fight for their kids and their grandkids,” he said. “This is about history. This is about legacy.”

The Trump administration’s most pressing goal has been reopening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic, with the president posting on social media in recent days that he would order strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island power plants if they didn’t stop shooting at ships.

“But if Iran is wise, they will cut a deal,” Hegseth said. “President Trump doesn't bluff and he does not back down”—a notion belied by his record.

Though Trump said March 11 that there was “practically nothing left” to target in Iran, Caine said in his operational update that the U.S. had begun its first overland B-52 bombing strikes, while continuing to strike Iran’s defense industrial base.

“This includes factories, warehouses, nuclear weapons research and development labs, and the associated infrastructure required for Iran to reconstitute its combat capability,” he said.

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Space Command wants to move nearly 200 people to new Alabama HQ this year

Lauren C. Williams — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 20:51:01 -0400

Space Command aims to move about 200 people from Colorado to its new headquarters in Alabama by year's end.

“I'm happy at the progress that we're making, and that progress will continue over the next couple of years as we work to get a significant portion of our staff there, even while the permanent headquarters is being built,” Gen. Stephen Whiting, who leads U.S. Space Command, told senators during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday.

The command’s move has been a matter of hot political debate. In his first term President Donald Trump pushed to move the command to a 60-acre site in Huntsville, Alabama. The Biden administration in 2023 reversed the original decision to move the headquarters to Alabama, but Trump reversed it again in 2025.

Right now, Space Command has a small, 20-person office in Redstone Arsenal, with plans to increase that number tenfold by year's end.

“By the end of this year, we are targeting that number to be closer to 200 people that will be working from Redstone, from our headquarters, of course. That will be paced with the delivery of interim facilities that are appropriate to the security classification level we need, and that we have all of the appropriate IT networks,” Whiting testified.

The command is updating existing facilities, with plans to open a top-secret facility that can accommodate up to 80 people in April, Whiting said. Then the plan is to start moving people who work at that classification level.

To hit that 200-person target, the command is offering workers incentives.

“We are offering relocation incentives for our workforce in Colorado to consider moving to Alabama,” Whiting said. “We also are offering retention incentives, because I need my workforce to stay with me in Colorado until their function is ready to move.”

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Judge blocks Pentagon's Anthropic ban, calling it illegal retaliation

Nick Wakeman — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 14:04:35 -0400

A federal judge has issued a temporary injunction barring the federal government from enforcing its declaration that Anthropic is a supply-chain security risk.

Judge Rita Lin in the U.S. District Court of Northern California is also blocking the government's enforcement of a presidential directive that all government agencies stop using the company’s artificial intelligence products.

Lin cited several grounds in her Thursday ruling, which says the Defense Department’s declaration was retaliation for Anthropic exercising its First Amendment rights.

DOD also violated Anthropic’s due-process rights by not giving the company advance notice or an opportunity to respond before the ban went into effect. The Pentagon also did not follow the procedures laid out in the federal law they cited to ban the company from federal work, Lin said.

The judge also called DOD’s action “arbitrary and capricious” and contrary to the law.

Anthropic has been working with the Defense Department since late 2024 through a partnership with Palantir Technologies. Since March 2025, Anthropic has also gone to market with a standalone product Claude Gov.

The dispute emerged in the fall of 2025 when DOD pushed for unrestricted access to Claude for “all lawful uses.” Anthropic refused to remove two long standing restrictions – no mass surveillance of U.S. citizens and no lethal autonomous warfare.

DOD wanted those restrictions lifted, but Anthropic refused. Negotiations were cordial and Anthropic offered to help DOD transition to another vendor, according to the judge’s ruling.

But things went south in January, when Anthropic and DOD went public with the dispute. CEO Dario Amodei posted an essay that month talking about AI safety, and the company issued a statement on Feb. 26 on its position about how DOD should use AI.

Within 24 hours, President Trump issued his government-wide ban on Truth Social and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic a supply chain risk.

“Neither the President nor Secretary Hegseth cited any statutory authority for the Directives,” Lin wrote in her ruling.

Anthropic worked for DOD for years and had gone through a lengthy national-security vetting process. The company received nothing but praise, the judge wrote.

"The day after the designation was finalized—and before it was communicated to Anthropic—Under Secretary (Emil) Michael and Amodei cordially exchanged drafts of Anthropic's usage terms, with Under Secretary Michael writing to Amodei: 'After reviewing with our attorneys and seeing your last draft (thanks for being fast), I think we are very close here,'" the judge wrote.

On the First Amendment question, Lin found that Anthropic's public statements about AI safety — including Amodei's essay and the company's public statement on its dispute with DOD — were protected speech on matters of public concern.

Courts have long held that matters of public concern are at the core of First Amendment protections.

The judge said the government's own words undermined its national-security argument. Trump called Anthropic a "radical left, woke company" and Hegseth attacked its "sanctimonious rhetoric" and "Silicon Valley ideology."

Most tellingly, an internal DOD memo stated that Anthropic's risk level escalated because it was engaging in an "increasingly hostile manner through the press."

"Punishing Anthropic for bringing public scrutiny to the government's contracting position is classic illegal First Amendment retaliation," Lin wrote.

The injunction takes effect in seven days. That timeline gives the government until around April 2 to seek an emergency stay from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which it has indicated it will do.

Meanwhile, a separate but related case challenging the supply chain designation under a different federal statute is already pending in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. That means the legal battle over Anthropic's status as a government contractor is likely to play out on multiple fronts simultaneously.

Anthropic’s battle with DOD and the Trump administration has drawn a variety of supporters, who have filed amicus briefs with the court.

Among them are employees of its competitors Google and OpenAI. Microsoft also filed a brief as did several industry associations.

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ODNI is building a framework to boost spy agencies’ AI adoption

David DiMolfetta — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:33:00 -0400

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is developing a policy framework and accompanying standards to speed AI adoption for cybersecurity and other tech tools across the intelligence community, as part of a broad cybersecurity and IT modernization effort launched under the Trump administration last year.

ODNI has also sought to tighten the intelligence community’s cyber posture, including through modernizing networks, standing up a shared authorization repository, pushing a zero-trust model and expanding threat hunting, according to an ODNI official who requested anonymity under ground rules accompanying a news release on the modernization efforts.

The office, which oversees America’s spy agencies and programs, is also working to align systems and policies across agencies and with the Defense Department, including joint use of classified commercial cloud infrastructure, the official added.

The update helps highlight a broader push to streamline cybersecurity operations across the nation’s spy agencies. It also shows how AI is becoming a core part of how intelligence offices detect and respond to cyber threats.

“Protecting our nation’s most sensitive information from those who seek to exploit it, while making sure our intelligence professionals have the tools and access they need to do their jobs, is not optional,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a prepared statement. “It is essential to our national security.”

Intelligence agencies are a prime target for foreign adversaries and criminal hackers seeking to steal sensitive data, map operations and exploit vulnerabilities in some of the government’s most critical and classified systems. The intelligence community’s tech modernization push has spanned multiple administrations, accelerating over the past decade with the shift to cloud computing and evolving into a broader effort to break down data silos and speed up how intelligence is shared and analyzed.

This week, Politico reported that Gabbard is seeking to bring In-Q-Tel, the CIA-backed venture firm, under management of ODNI, a move that has sparked pushback from the CIA and others who warn it could disrupt the firm’s independence. The move could also give ODNI more visibility into and coordination over how emerging technologies are developed and deployed across the intelligence enterprise.

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New NSA director urges more intelligence sharing with allies

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 23:00:00 -0400

The new director of Cyber Command and the National Security Agency used his first all-hands meeting to urge his workforces to share more intelligence with U.S. allies and partners, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Gen. Josh Rudd told his personnel to work with other allied countries “until it hurts,” one of the people said.

Rudd also said that while the Trump administration has emphasized southern-border security, the NSA still should keep a watchful eye on foreign adversaries such as Russia and China, the second person said.

Both people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the internal meeting. Rudd was confirmed to lead both organizations earlier this month.

Nextgov/FCW has asked NSA and Cyber Command for comment.

The mission priorities described by Rudd might reassure allies and partners that routinely exchange electronic intelligence with the United States, after months of unease over how White House policies have reshaped intelligence-sharing relationships.

Rudd used the term “YESFORN” — a play on the “NOFORN” classification — to emphasize expanded intelligence sharing with allies, one of the people said.

Both people also said Rudd wants to emphasize a culture of speed, integration and innovation, signaling a push for near real-time signal collection and analysis, tighter informating-sharing across organizations and faster adoption of emerging technologies to track threats.

Rudd comes from a less traditional background than past military leaders who have helmed the two organizations. Up until his confirmation earlier this month, Rudd served as the number two at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and he has spent his career largely in special operations and joint command roles. But some former officials and China analysts view Rudd’s Indo-Pacific background as relevant to U.S. cyber operations involving Beijing.

In his nomination hearings, Rudd told senators that his experience consuming and acting on cyber intelligence qualifies him to serve in the position.

In the new role, he will have to contend with declining morale inside NSA, as well as significant workforce cuts that were influenced by Trump 2.0 efforts to shed government bloat and spending waste.

Until Rudd’s confirmation, NSA and Cyber Command have been without a permanent leader since far-right activist Laura Loomer pushed for the firing of the post’s previous occupant, Gen. Timothy Haugh, last April.

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Trump claims ‘good and productive’ talks with Iran, which denies negotiating

Ashley Murray — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:34:05 -0400

President Donald Trump on Monday said his administration is in talks with Iran about resolving the war, a claim that tamped down oil prices and spurred market increases in Europe and the United States — though Iran denied any progress in negotiations.

Writing on his social media platform, Truth Social, the president said the United States and Iran “HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST.”

Trump’s 109-word, all-caps post brought the cost of Brent crude oil briefly below $100 a barrel, after his threat Saturday to bomb Iran’s major energy infrastructure spiked prices.

The historic shock to the global energy market has caused gasoline prices to soar across the U.S. to an average of $3.95 per gallon on Monday, up from $2.93 a month ago, according to AAA.

Trump said he had called off his 48-hour ultimatum for Iran, set to expire Monday evening, to conduct negotiations over “a five-day period,” he told reporters.

“We'll see how that goes, and if it goes well, we're going to end up with settling this, otherwise we just keep bombing our little hearts out,” he said during roughly 20 minutes of comments to the press at the steps of Air Force One prior to boarding a flight to Memphis, Tennessee, for an appearance.

Fourth week of hostilities

Trump claimed Iranian negotiators have agreed on a 15-point plan, as the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran enters its fourth week.

“Well, they're not going to have a nuclear weapon. That's number one. That's number one, two and three, they will never have a nuclear weapon. They’ve agreed to that,” he said.

Trump also said the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipping passage that Iran has effectively closed to ships flagged under Western and Persian Gulf nations, “will be opened very soon if this works.”

He suggested “maybe me and the ayatollah, whoever the ayatollah is” will share joint control of the strait, which handles a fifth of the world’s petroleum products.

As for Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, Trump said capturing and removing it will be “very easy.”

“If we have a deal with them, we're going down, and we'll take it ourselves,” he said.

Iran denial

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has denied such talks were underway, according to a statement cited in media reports.

The speaker of Iran’s parliament Mohammed-Bagher Ghalibaf also denied any negotiations in a post on X just before noon Eastern, saying, “Our people demand the complete and humiliating punishment of the aggressors.”

“All officials stand firmly behind their Leader and people until this goal is achieved. No negotiations with America have taken place. Fake news is intended to manipulate financial and oil markets and to escape the quagmire in which America and Israel are trapped,” Ghalibaf wrote.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video statement Monday afternoon, Eastern time, confirming that he spoke with Trump, who he said “believes there is an opportunity to leverage the tremendous achievements we have reached alongside the U.S. military to realize the goals of the war through an agreement, an agreement that will safeguard our vital interests.”

“At the same time, we are continuing to strike in both Iran and Lebanon. We are smashing the missile program and the nuclear program, and we continue to deal severe blows to Hezbollah.…We will safeguard our vital interests under all circumstances,” Netanyahu said, according to his office’s English translation.

Trump’s schedule Monday included the trip to Memphis to participate in a roundtable regarding public safety.

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Mullin takes DHS helm as 100,000 employees remain unpaid

Eric Katz — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:45:14 -0400

The Homeland Security Department will have a new secretary after the Senate confirmed Markwayne Mullin in a 54-45 vote to the role Monday evening, paving the way for a new chapter in the tumultuous period for the agency that has spearheaded President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Mullin, who will soon resign his seat as a Republican senator from Oklahoma, will replace Kristi Noem at DHS, who drew bipartisan condemnation for her handling of Trump’s mass deportation effort and appeared to lose the president’s trust when she recently told Congress he was aware of a controversial ad campaign touting the department’s efforts. Mullin will inherit a department that is currently shut down after its funding lapsed last month, though more than 90% of its employees are still working. More than 100,000 of those are doing so without immediate pay.

Mullin said during his confirmation hearing he would seek to rebuild staffing areas that previously implemented cuts, though he lamented that the shutdown is exacerbating staffing losses. The new secretary, who began serving in the House in 2013 and in the Senate in 2023, highlighted to lawmakers during his confirmation hearing last week several additional areas in which he would differentiate himself from his predecessor.

He said the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be restructured but not eliminated, as Noem called for last year. He also vowed to end the controversial policy Noem instituted that required secretarial approval for any spending of more than $100,000. Detractors of the policy noted it bogged down critical funding efforts, including during disaster response.

“I'm not a micro manager,” Mullin said. “We put people in, we empower them to make decisions.”

Noem has faced criticism for allegedly interfering with ongoing investigations by the DHS inspector general. Mullin vowed not to stand in the way of the IG’s work and said he would not seek retribution against employees who have publicly criticized the department. He also apologized for calling Alex Pretti a “deranged individual” after DHS personnel fatally shot him in January.

Mullin won approval along largely partisan lines, though Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voted against his former colleague while Sens. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., voted for him.

While Mullin has vowed to institute some changes at DHS, he did not make any promises to alleviate Democrats' concerns regarding the practices of its law enforcement personnel.

Congressional Democrats are holding out on funding DHS until the White House agrees to reforms at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. They have repeatedly sought to fund the Transportation Security Administration and other non-immigration components of DHS—including on Saturday in a rare weekend session—but Republicans have blocked all of those efforts.

Trump has since deployed ICE personnel into airports to help reduce the long lines that have resulted from TSA employees calling out during the shutdown, though their impact is expected to be minimal.

Lawmakers have met with Tom Homan, the White House border czar, in recent days in hopes of reaching an agreement on reforms that Democrats would accept in exchange for funding all of DHS, but they have yet to strike such a deal.

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Defense workers' morale has plunged under Trump, survey finds

Meghann Myers — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 17:05:24 -0400

The Defense Department’s civilian workforce is reporting a precipitous drop in job satisfaction, according to a survey released Thursday, following a year of cuts and a hiring freeze that has left many offices understaffed and employees in fear of further reductions in force.

Conducted by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, the survey shows that civilian workers with the Navy and Marine Corps have seen the biggest plunge in satisfaction, from a score of 68.1 out of 100 in 2024 to 36.4 in 2025. The scores for Air Force workers dropped from 67 to 38.5; Army, from 70.3 to 48.1; and the defense secretary’s office, the Joint Staff and other fourth-estate organizations, from 63.6 to 40.6.

Just 9.1 percent of Army employees agreed that “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s political leadership team generates high levels of motivation in the workforce,” the survey report said, and they were the most satisfied of any of the large agencies surveyed.

The military departments did not respond to a request for comment from Defense One on Friday.

Asked whether representatives were aware of the survey results and had any initiatives underway to address low morale, Pentagon spokeswoman Kingsley Wilson accused Defense One of “cherry-picking” parts of the survey and accused the Partnership for Public Service of being anti-Trump.

Wilson did not respond to a follow-up request to describe which parts of the survey would give a more fulsome understanding of the results.

The Partnership for Public Service conducted the survey on its own for the first time this year. Historically, they have based their “Best Places to Work in Federal Government” report on data from the annual Federal Employees Viewpoint Survey, which the Office of Personnel Management is legally required to conduct.

But last year, OPM leaders announced that they wouldn’t conduct the survey because they needed to change the questions to comply with the Trump administration’s new anti-diversity policies.

“This workforce has been fundamentally traumatized in the way that this leadership team said that they intended to do at the outset,” Max Stier, Partnership for Public Service’s CEO, told Government Executive. “That’s not good for anyone. It’s bad for the workforce, it’s fundamentally bad for the American people, and it will lead to us to be less safe, healthy and prosperous as a society. The things that we want and need from government are not what we’ll get.”

The survey of some 11,000 federal workers produced results in line with personal stories from Defense civilians about low morale, drops in productivity and fear of involuntary cuts that have hung over the civilian workforce for the past year.

Some 14 percent of DOD’s formerly 795,000-strong civilian workforce left in 2025, either by voluntary or involuntary means, although about 30,000 people have since been hired to fill jobs exempt from the ongoing hiring freeze.

Stier stressed that the survey data comes from those who remained after the bulk of the cuts took place during the 2025 fiscal year, not from potentially disgruntled employees who left voluntarily or were fired for dubious performance issues.

“The truth of the matter is that we know from focus groups and other things we’ve done that this is consistent with all of the anecdotal information we have gotten,” he said. “We have talked to thousands of employees through various programming, and the message consistently has been that they are fearful, that they are being mistreated, and all of the facts on the ground suggest that they have been traumatized.”

Erich Wagner contributed to this report.

Correction: An earlier version of this report misidentified the Pentagon spokesperson who provided a statement.

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DNI's threat assessment omits foreign election interference

David DiMolfetta — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:52:00 -0400

For the first time in nearly a decade, foreign threats to U.S. elections are omitted from the intelligence community's annual threat assessment, suggesting that the Trump administration is shifting focus away from a risk long treated as central to national security.

The assessment was delivered on the heels of a major global threats hearing in the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, where Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe testified about the ongoing Iran war and other top-of-mind matters.

The hearing highlighted growing tensions between intelligence assessments and the administration’s framing of the conflict with Tehran. It also came a day after the high-profile departure of Gabbard aide and National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, who said he could not agree with the Trump administration’s premise for the Iran war that began Feb. 28.

Gabbard drew ire from committee Democrats over election threats.

“Are you saying there is no foreign threat to our ⁠elections in the midterms this year?” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the panel’s top Democrat, asked Gabbard.

"The intelligence community has been and continues to remain focused on any collection and intelligence that show a potential foreign threat,” she said.

Gabbard has drawn scrutiny over her involvement in an FBI raid of an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, that was at the center of President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020. Gabbard’s agency, in part, is charged with countering foreign election interference, and doesn’t have conventional authority to manage domestic election affairs.

Asked about this, she said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has “purview and overview” over the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, both of which “have purview over election-security responsibilities to ensure the integrity of our elections.”

Gabbard said she only observed the raid and that she “did not participate in a law-enforcement activity, nor would I, because that does not exist within my authorities.”

Gabbard’s election-integrity efforts have involved multiple agencies and senior officials, including meetings this year with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to discuss election security and restoring public trust, a U.S. official previously told Nextgov/FCW. The discussions have also included outside figures like Kurt Olsen and Cleta Mitchell, both of whom have promoted debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Warner also criticized intelligence agencies for not responding to committee requests for briefings regarding foreign election-interference efforts.

Ire over Iran war

Gabbard said in her opening remarks on the Iran war that Tehran could face mounting pressure as its economy weakens, but warned that the country and its proxies “continue to attack U.S. and allied interests in the Middle East” despite setbacks before and after the conflict began.

But she notably deviated from her prepared remarks to the Senate panel by saying that Iran was “trying to recover from the severe damage to its nuclear infrastructure sustained during the 12-Day War” last summer, which culminated with the Operation Midnight Hammer bombing of three key Iranian nuclear enrichment sites.

In her written remarks, she said that Iran had made “no efforts” since the U.S. bombing of their nuclear facilities “to try to rebuild their enrichment capability.”

That contradicts what President Trump and other administration officials have recently said about Tehran's nuclear program in efforts to justify their war on Iran.

Warner asked Gabbard why her testimony diverged from her prepared remarks. She said she skipped some portions because “time was running long” during her opening statement, prompting Warner to accuse her of omitting “the parts that contradict the president.”

The state of Iran’s nuclear capabilities have been a flashpoint since the Midnight Hammer bombing last summer. A preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency assessment appeared to undercut Trump’s claims that Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated” in those attacks, though the CIA soon after said it had evidence proving the program was severely damaged.

Ratcliffe told senators Wednesday that Midnight Hammer was successful and has slowed Iran’s nuclear enrichment efforts.

“We sit here today with Iran having exactly the same amount of enriched uranium to 60 percent, meaning they have been unwilling and uncapable, or incapable, of enriching uranium to 60 percent” as a result of the operation, he told Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota.

Questions were also raised about other foreign adversaries sharing intelligence with Iran to target U.S. forces in the Middle East. Iran is “requesting intelligence assistance from Russia, from China, and from other adversaries of the United States,” Ratcliffe told Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., declining to say in public session whether they actually are providing it. He said he knew the answer and would explain in a classified session.

Ratcliffe told Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, that he disagreed with Joe Kent’s claims about Iran, saying “intelligence reflects the contrary” about the Iranian regime.

Sen. John Ossoff, D-Ga., asked Gabbard if there was an “imminent nuclear threat” posed by Iran, referring to statements from the White House that Tehran’s nuclear capabilities had been “obliterated.”

In a calibrated answer, she said it’s “not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat” and that the president has authority to make such conclusions.

The Constitution gives Congress — not the president — the authority to declare war, while the president, as commander in chief, directs military operations. But intelligence community analysts and officers frequently compile assessments from a range of sources and methods to inform policymakers, the president and others about the severity of threats.

“You’re evading a question because to provide a candid response to the committee would contradict a statement from the White House,” Ossoff said.

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Record-smashing $1.5-trillion spending proposal will fund only the ‘most essential things’: comptroller

Lauren C. Williams — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 18:12:44 -0400

Virtually all of the giant reconciliation fund has been doled out, the Pentagon’s acting chief financial officer said Tuesday.

“Everything except for $1.3 billion in the $153 billion that's been given to the Department of Defense by the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act has been apportioned and [has] been released to the services and program managers. And so that money is all starting to flow,” Jules Hurst, who is performing the duties of Pentagon comptroller and chief financial officer, said at the McAleese annual defense programs conference in Arlington, Va.

As Hurst spoke, lawmakers are mulling a $50 billion supplemental to pay for U.S. strikes on Iran and Trump-administration officials were finishing its 2027 budget proposal.

Asked about reports that some offices hadn’t received reconciliation funds yet, he said, “It's all been released to the services of the program offices. Sometimes it takes time for money to trickle down.”

Hurst declined to preview any details on the upcoming White House budget request, which will reportedly ask for $1.5 trillion in defense spending—half again as much as the current year’s record budget.

But he did say the entity known as DOGE, was still “alive and well” in the Pentagon.

“They've been a great partner for comptroller, in particular, as we just try to figure out where we have fat,” Hurst said. “We have robust [operations and maintenance] accounts in the FY27 budget, but they're focused on readiness. And so wherever we could, we looked through accounts and services inside the department and we tried to get rid of things that are no longer really necessary…and DOGE is very helpful for that.”

When asked if the Pentagon could feasibly spend $1.5 trillion in one year, Hurst said yes and that a lot of things were left out to keep the number down.

“We had to cut down significantly to get to [$1.5 trillion]. We had more ideas and more concepts on how to spend the money, and then we had to deal with. And so we took a long time to trim that down to the most essential things,” he said.

Hurst declined to provide specifics on how the budget would be broken down but said the proportions would mimic the Reagan administration, including “a massive investment in procurement and research development.”

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