Details surrounding the death of Airman 1st Class Sean S. Chase, an aircraft services technician assigned to the 730th Air Mobility Squadron, are under investigation, according to a Tuesday release from the 374th Airlift Wing.

“He was loved by those around him, and he loved those around him in return,” Lt. Col. Shawn Cox, 730 AMS commander, said in the release. “He will be remembered for the light that he brought to the world, his dedication to the mission, and the positive impact he had on his fellow service members.”

Chase, 22, hailed from Raceland, Louisiana, per the release, and was assigned to the western Tokyo base in 2022.

“It is in difficult moments like these when we come together as Team Yokota to uplift and support each other,” Col. Richard McElhaney, 374th Airlift Wing and Yokota Air Base commander, said in the release.

“Support agencies and wingmen across the base stand ready to help those impacted, you are not alone,” McElhaney added.

The 374th Airlift Wing did not immediately return a request for comment.

Following an asset transfer from Korea, maintainers at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, accepted and processed an A-10 Warthog. Soon, staff at the base recognized that they had an opportunity to link past and present.

So began the process of transforming the A-10 into a piece of visual history, tracing its lineage to the famous Flying Tigers squadron of World War II.

“If the original Flying Tigers hadn’t been successful, we wouldn’t be here today carrying that name and history,” Staff Sgt. Tucker Lee, 23d MXS noncommissioned officer in charge corrosion control, said in a release. “The shark teeth that people associate with the A-10 started back with the P-40s, and now they’ve become part of what makes the Warthog iconic. Keeping that heritage paint scheme and the nose art reminds us where we came from and pushes us to continue that legacy of success.”

Formed in 1941 by Capt. Claire L. Chennault, the American Volunteer Group, popularly known as the Flying Tigers, was composed of former U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps pilots hired as mercenaries by China to fight against the Japanese.

Though only in combat for less than seven months, the group became famous at the time for its ability to inflict outsize damage on Japan’s better-equipped and larger aircraft fleet, NPR reported.

The heritage paint job also serves as tribute to Brig. Gen. David “Tex” Hill, who served under Chennault.

“He flew P-40 Warhawks with the 2nd Pursuit Squadron as a flight leader. Tex was credited with 12 and a quarter aerial victory during his time with the American Volunteer Group,” said William Godwin, 23d Wing historian.

While the AVG disbanded on July 4, 1942, in its place came the 23rd Fighter Group under the 14th Air Force — which Hill promptly joined, and shortly thereafter commanded.

The 23rd Fighter Group became part of the 23rd Wing at Moody in 2006, but its WWII lineage continues to live on — this time with the A-10.

“From carefully matching historical details to working long hours as a team, maintainers ensured the aircraft would stand as a faithful tribute, reinforcing a shared connection between generations of Airmen, past and present,” the release states.

WWII-era camouflage sweeps across the Warthog’s shell, which is then offset by the distinctive shark’s mouth paint scheme and the unmistakable Flying Tiger emblem.

“We had to de-mask the plane and track down where every stencil belonged so we could repaint each one correctly. The masking process was different from what we usually do, so there was definitely a learning curve, but seeing it all come together made it worth it,” said Senior Airman Memphis Waller, 23rd MXS aircraft structural maintenance.

The project now complete, the A-10 remains fully mission-capable while also sporting its “new” paint job, carrying “forward a legacy that began with the Flying Tigers, proving that while technology evolves, the spirit of the mission endures,” the release concluded.

Prior immigration violations meant his mother’s case did not qualify for the immigration benefit he believed military service could provide.

He decided not to enlist.

Whether cases like Dela Torre’s are isolated — or occur often enough to influence military recruitment — is something the Pentagon does not publicly track.

Military Times asked the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness whether the department documents immigration-related concerns during the recruitment process. The department did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Immigrants and noncitizens have long served in the military, with Blue Star Families reporting one in 10 service members belongs to a recently immigrated family.

Recruiters, attorneys and military-family advocates say immigration questions continue to arise in conversations about military service, but recent searches revealed no publicly available DoD assessments addressing whether such concerns influence recruitment.

Speaking on background because they were not authorized to discuss recruiting conversations publicly, military talent acquisition specialists in Texas said they run into situations involving prospective recruits from immigrant families several times a week.

Those conversations often include questions about citizenship opportunities, undocumented relatives and whether military service can help family members navigate the immigration system.

Dela Torre said he met with a recruiter at one such Texas office while exploring military service. Immigration-related opportunities for family members, he said, were a primary reason for his interest.

The recruiter explained that military service could provide an expedited pathway to U.S. citizenship for eligible recruits and described military service as a faster route to naturalization than the standard process available to many lawful permanent residents.

The conversation reinforced Dela Torre’s initial belief that military service could help address immigration-related challenges his family was facing.

“Recruiters are pitching immigration benefits as an enlistment incentive,” Margaret Stock, an immigration attorney and Army Reserve officer who has worked extensively on military immigration issues, told Military Times.

Stock said she receives one or two inquiries nearly every day from prospective recruits, service members and military families seeking guidance on immigration matters connected to service.

One recent inquiry she received was from a young U.S. citizen who contacted Stock after being told military service could help his family obtain legal status.

After reviewing the family’s circumstances, Stock said she explained that military service would not resolve their particular immigration issues. The prospective recruit, much like Dela Torre, later told her he was no longer interested in joining.

“This is a very typical case,” Stock said.

Noncitizen service member issues affect a military population that includes tens of thousands of immigrants and recently immigrated families.

According to FWD.us estimates, there are roughly 45,000 immigrants currently serving in uniform and an estimated 5,000 noncitizens enlisting each year.

Military legal assistance offices have historically faced significant demand for immigration-related support, with recent immigration enforcement actions involving military spouses adding renewed urgency.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association’s Military Assistance Program was created to help service members and military families navigate such matters.

According to AILA, the program received more than 800 requests for pro bono immigration assistance in 2022 alone. The inquires provide one of the few publicly available indicators of military family requests for immigration assistance.

Recruiters, attorneys and military family advocates interviewed by Military Times have questioned whether immigration cases involving military households could influence how families view military service, family stability or long-term military careers.

For Dela Torre, the answers to some of those questions ultimately altered his decision to enlist.

Whether similar decisions are occurring elsewhere — and whether DoD has developed any way of tracking them — remains unclear.

Crandall, while recognized for his heroism, will be best remembered for the “warmth of his wit, the depth of his humility and the fierce loyalty he gave to the people and communities he loved,” according to a Congressional Medal of Honor Society release.

Born in February 1933, Olympia, Washington, the All-American athlete had dreams of being drafted by the New York Yankees and earned a scholarship to the University of Washington. That dream was deferred, however, when Crandall was drafted by the U.S. Army in 1953.

Crandall would subsequently receive the nation’s highest honor for valor during the Nov. 14, 1965, Battle of Ia Drang — the first major clash of the Vietnam War, made famous by the book We Were Soldiers Once … and Young: Ia Drang–The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam and the subsequent movie of the same name.

On that day, Crandall led 16 helicopters carrying soldiers into Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley, but as the fighting intensified, orders came down for follow-on aircraft to abort their mission, meaning all medevac assistance had been cut off to the men of the 1/7 Cav.

“The medevac pilots were all great pilots, but they weren’t allowed to land on a landing zone until it was ‘green’ for a period of five minutes,” meaning it wasn’t being relentlessly attacked, Crandall later recalled.

Crandall recognized that the men he had shuttled into Ia Drang were trapped, in desperate need of ammunition and, for some, medical evacuation.

Contacted on the radio by Col. Ramon Antonio “Tony” Nadal, Crandall recalled that Nadal was yelling, “I got to have — get my wounded out of here. I’ve got 12 guys that are — and they’re collected, and I have a hole where a helicopter can get in, but they won’t come.”

In response, Crandall refueled, kicked off his door gunner and weaponry to lighten his load.

“If you have infantry on the ground, you can’t shoot up their backside,” Crandall said, calling the M60 guns “worthless.”

Ignoring the heavy enemy fire, Crandall, alongside his friend Maj. Ed Freeman, voluntarily flew 22 missions into the valley to deliver ammunition and evacuate some 70 wounded soldiers.

“While medical evacuation was not his mission,” reads his Medal of Honor citation, “he immediately sought volunteers and with complete disregard for his own personal safety, led the two aircraft to Landing Zone X-Ray. Despite the fact that the landing zone was still under relentless enemy fire, Major Crandall landed and proceeded to supervise the loading of seriously wounded soldiers aboard the aircraft.

“Major Crandall’s voluntary decision to land under the most extreme fire instilled in the other pilots the will and spirit to continue to land their own aircraft, and in the ground forces the realization that they would be resupplied and that friendly wounded would be promptly evacuated,” the citation continues. “This greatly enhanced morale and the will to fight at a critical time.”

Crandall would ultimately fly nearly 1,000 combat missions and was further commended for rescuing 12 wounded soldiers during a dense jungle operation in January 1966, according to the Department of Defense.

In 1968, four months into his second tour in Vietnam flying Huey gunships in support of the 1st Cavalry Division, Crandall’s helicopter crashed, breaking the pilot’s back among other severe injuries that left him hospitalized for five months.

The broken back didn’t deter Crandall for flying, but a subsequent stroke in the early 1970s ended his flying career. He retired from the Army in 1977.

Crandall, who initially received the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions at Ia Drang, was awarded the Medal of Honor on Feb. 26, 2007, by President George W. Bush.

With Crandall’s passing there are now only 63 living Medal of Honor recipients.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a 2-1 ruling said the 2025 policy was unlawfully motivated “by the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group.”

But the Pentagon has broad powers to set enlistment standards, the court said, and can continue to ban transgender people from newly entering the military pending the outcome of a lawsuit by transgender current and would-be service members.

“It appears to us to be a much greater hardship to end a military career than to delay the start of one,” wrote Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama.

Circuit Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, in a dissenting opinion said courts “have neither the expertise nor the authority to decide whether the military can exclude the plaintiffs from its ranks.”

Jennifer Levi of LGBTQ rights group GLAD Law, who represents the plaintiffs, applauded the decision.

“This decisive ruling confirms that the Trump Administration has no legitimate basis to discharge transgender service members who have met every demanding standard and proven, time and again, their fitness and dedication to serve,” Levi said in a statement.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ruling partially upholds a 2025 decision by a Washington, D.C.-based federal judge who had blocked the entire policy from being implemented pending further litigation. The judge said the policy amounted to sex discrimination and likely violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.

Trump in a January 2025 executive order said that adopting a transgender identity “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth implemented Trump’s order soon after, prompting legal challenges.

The ban on military service is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to eradicate the recognition and accommodation of transgender people throughout American life.

Federal agencies have dropped lawsuits filed on behalf of transgender workers, ended settlements that benefited transgender students and launched investigations into hospitals and doctors for providing gender-affirming treatment to minors.

The military has about 1.3 million active-duty personnel, according to Department of Defense data. While transgender rights advocates say there are as many as 15,000 transgender service members, officials say the number is in the low thousands.

The U.S. Supreme Court in May 2025 allowed the policy to be implemented, lifting a judge’s ruling in a separate case out of the state of Washington that had temporarily blocked the ban.

But the Supreme Court did not explain its reasoning and may have been ruling on a technicality rather than the merits of the case, Wilkins wrote for the D.C. Circuit on Monday.

In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote that U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, should “stop playing games with America’s Security.”

Trump added an ominous warning that if anything were to happen, the judge “will be responsible for the Death and Destruction caused to our Country.”

“He has already created enough problems by allowing ‘Top Secret’ information to be released and exposed based on a ridiculous lawsuit started by a highly litigious woman,” Trump noted.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit in December to block the $400 million project, arguing that it cannot proceed until it receives congressional authorization. Leon agreed at the end of March, but that decision was later paused by a federal appeals court, allowing work to resume in the interim pending further review.

The president invoked national security as a justification for forging ahead. His Sunday post featured two AI-generated renderings of military-style drones stationed on the rooftop and flanked by snipers.

“The DronePort at the White House Ballroom will be, perhaps, the most sophisticated anywhere in the World! It will safeguard our Nation’s Capital, Washington, D.C., long into the future,” Trump said. “With the advent of highly sophisticated, and powerful, modern day weaponry, we can no longer defend Washington, D.C., with rifles and pistols, alone.”

Trump hosted reporters for a tour of the site of the former East Wing in May, where he cast the development as both a ballroom and a fortress. Among the features he highlighted were a military hospital, missile-proof roofing and a “drone port” designed to accommodate an “unlimited number of drones.”

“This is all my money and donors’ money. This is tax free,” Trump asserted. “On top of the roof, we’re going to have the greatest drone empire that you’ve ever seen and it’s going to protect Washington.”

It remains unclear how or why drones would be deployed in this way. The specifics of security at the White House are not widely discussed but it has been reported that the building already has measures in place to combat potential drone attacks.

Security in general is a significant concern, however. Over the past month, there have been three separate incidents in which gunfire erupted in close proximity to the president.

On May 23, a gunman approached the White House while Trump was inside the residence, drew a firearm and discharged multiple rounds before being fatally shot by Secret Service agents. On May 4, a man was wounded during a firefight with Secret Service personnel near the Washington Monument. On April 25, an individual carrying a shotgun, handgun and knives attempted to breach a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner — an event attended by the president — before being swiftly apprehended by law enforcement and charged with attempting to assassinate the president.

The Justice Department is hoping the security imperatives will shape the trajectory of the legal dispute. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, in a court filing, insists it is “urgent” that the ballroom be completed.

“This second attack on the President this month underscores that critical need for top level, state of the art security at the White House, including the Ballroom,” Blanche wrote in May, acknowledging that it is being constructed to “ensure that that President can perform his constitutional duties in a safe and heavily secured facility.”

Following a training flight incident, the force halted operations for all aircraft to guarantee the safety of aircrews while the mishap was investigated by a Safety Investigation Board.

On May 12, a T-38 Talon II aircraft from Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi, crashed in a rural area of Lamar County, Alabama, causing the Air Force to pause operations for all T-38 Talon aircraft a week later on May 19.

The Air Force announced that the aircraft are still being inspected, but the service expects they will begin to return to flying status within the next few days, according to a Friday release, the day after the operational pause was lifted.

Engineering and maintenance teams have created the finalized inspection process needed to ensure a “safe and thorough return to flight,” per the announcement.

The pause is lifted for all affected units: Air Education and Training Command, Air Combat Command, Air Force Materiel Command and Air Force Global Strike Command.

“Affected major commands continue to actively mitigate impacts to operations, training and readiness,” the release states.

The aircrews affected by the pause used simulator training to relieve stress on operations, training and readiness. The announcement said that the units will continue to utilize simulator training to preserve proficiency and “currency requirements.”

The investigation into the incident is ongoing, and the cause is still unknown, an Air Education and Training Command spokesperson told Military Times on Monday.

“While we cannot discuss specific inspection procedures in order to protect the integrity of the investigation, the operational pause allowed time for continued investigation, engineering assessment and coordination with safety, maintenance and program office experts,” the spokesperson said.

The solicitation, issued in late May on behalf of Joint Special Operations Task Force-Somalia, or JSOTF-SOM, calls for three cultural and political advisors to communicate with the country’s government and tribes and also to provide translation.

“This effort will allow JSOTF-SOM to successfully conduct its mission with an understanding of local customs, history, cultural routines, tribal dynamics, local government, and the socio-cultural context in which operations are being planned and conducted,” the notices states.

The notice comes as U.S. Africa Command has seen a 75% force draw down over the past 10 years. When paired with other nations’ reductions, the cuts have created what Gen. Dagvin Anderson, the command’s head, described in testimony before Congress as, “an intelligence black hole.”

Anderson said the force cuts hindered intelligence gathering across the region, and he warned that terrorist groups like ISIS still wanted to strike the U.S.

President Donald Trump, in mid-May, said he ordered a strike that killed the second-highest-ranking ISIS member, Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, in Lake Chad Basin, an area that sits in the Sahel region in the upper half of the continent — far from Somalia, but rife with extremism.

Somalia is a hotspot for Islamic militant groups, including ISIS and al Shabab, an insurgent group related to al-Qaeda, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

Despite the reductions in the region, the U.S. has continued to pummel Somalia with airstrikes at a pace rivaling the year before. In 2025, the command carried out 124 strikes against the militant organizations, up from just 10 in 2024.

The new contractors would be located primarily in Mogadishu, the country’s capital, and must have a Top Secret clearance, according to the notice. They would also be required to travel to different locations inside Somalia, Djibouti and Kenya, and work in “austere locations,” sometimes at personal risk. The new role would begin in September.

SOCOM spokesman Navy Cmdr. Joe Vermette told Task & Purpose the MRGG-A will completely replace the MK17 SCAR. He added that SOCOM is “pursuing a rapid fielding method” to “multiple (Special Operational Force) components.”

Last August, SOCOM awarded the Iowa-based LMT Defense a 10-year contract to the tune of $92 million for the MRGG-A. At SOCOM’s request, the rifle features a swappable barrel, allowing operators to change between firing 7.62mm and 6.5mm Creedmoor cartridges.

“This thing isn’t just a gun, it’s a deployment package,” said Joe Hajny, an LMT Defense spokesman, about the multi-caliber chambering in an interview with Classic Firearms at this year’s Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show.

Hajny added that SOCOM prioritized “the quick barrel change.” He explained the logic is that when SOCOM operators are “out with the partner forces that don’t have access to 6.5, the field environment might switch, they could change the caliber if need be.”

With that, he said an operator can change the barrel in about a minute. As for the barrel itself, Hajny explained that it measures in at 14.5 inches, so the rifle feels more like an M4 carbine but operates like an M110 semi-automatic sniper rifle, which also uses the 7.62 cartridge.

The most notable change is SOCOM’s adoption of the 6.5mm Creedmoor.

SOCOM reportedly began testing the cartridge along with almost two dozen others in 2017 and found that it delivered the best overall performance at ranges 1,000 meters.

“(The MRGG-A) is a big one that I think is going to trickle down to more of your mainline units down the road,” Hajny said.

Other services have also been shifting away from legacy cartridges like 7.62 and 5.56. The Army, for example, has been transitioning to its Next Generation Squad Weapons chambered in 6.8x51mm.

In 2021, SOCOM hosted an assessment event with its partner Special Operations Forces Works, or SOFWERX, to identify small arms weapon systems capable of greater accuracy at ranges past 1,200 meters.

Along with the MRGG-A, SOCOM expressed interest in a new sniper rifle and lightweight machine gun. After years of testing, the organization contracted Geissele Automatics for the MRGG Sniper rifle in 6.5 and Sig Sauer for the LMG-Medium in .338 Norma Magnum.

In a recent interview with The War Zone, Lt. Col. Alan Wood, SOCOM’s program manager for lethality, explained that like the 6.5mm, the .338 is “more effective on target” at “greater ranges” and the system overall — the rifle and ammo — could weigh “hundreds of pounds” less than the heavy .50-caliber round. Yet, SOCOM has paused fielding on the LMG.

As for the MRGG-A, Wood said, “It’s just a phenomenal, accurate weapon system for our SOF operators. All the components are super excited about this one.”

U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Francis Donovan, the head of U.S. Southern Command, briefly discussed operational security matters with the Cuban delegation, which included Cuban Gen. Roberto Legra Sotolongo, first deputy minister of the chief of the General Staff, U.S. Southern Command said on X.

“Donovan also led a perimeter security assessment of the naval base and discussed force protection, safety of service members and their families, and operational readiness with base officials,” it said.

Donovan’s meeting in Cuba is the first in recent memory by a head of Southern Command and comes amid growing concerns in Cuba of a possible U.S. military attack on the Communist-run island.

Cuba’s armed forces said on Facebook that the meeting took place with mutual agreement and that both sides agreed to maintain communication.

“Both delegations evaluate positively the meeting where issues related to security around the dividing perimeter of the military enclave were addressed and agreed to maintain communication between both military commands,” the statement said.

The meeting follows a rare visit earlier in May by CIA ​Director ⁠John Ratcliffe to Havana.

President Donald Trump has often cited Cuba among the foreign policy goals of his second term and has hinted it will become his focus once the war with Iran is over.

U.S. ANTAGONIST

Cuba has been a U.S. antagonist for decades, since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

Trump is strongly supported by hardline Cuban Americans in Florida, who have pushed for U.S.-instigated regime change for decades, and his administration has been steadily ramping up pressure on the island.

On May 20, the U.S. formally charged former President Raul Castro with four counts of murder for the 1996 downing of civilian aircraft operated by Miami-based exiles.

The indictment was the latest example of the Trump administration’s efforts to assert U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere.

Washington’s more assertive role in Latin America was epitomized by an audacious raid by the U.S. military on Jan. 3 to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, and then fly him to New York to face drug trafficking charges.

Maduro, a socialist aligned with Havana, pleaded not guilty.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who is seen as a possible contender for the 2028 Republican nomination for president, has raised alarm in Havana by talking about the national security risk posed by what he calls a failed state just 90 miles (145 km) from Florida.

On May 5, Rubio and Donovan posed in front of a map of Cuba in a post on X by Donovan’s Southern Command. It said the talks focused on “U.S. efforts to counter threats that undermine security, stability and democracy in our hemisphere.”

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez has warned that any military action would lead to a “bloodbath” in which thousands of Cubans and Americans would die.

Trump has effectively imposed a fuel blockade on the island by threatening tariffs on countries supplying it with fuel, igniting seemingly endless power outages and delivering new blows to the island’s already ailing economy.

Experts say instability in Cuba threatens a migration crisis.

The Selective Retention Bonus list contains only 24 specialties eligible for reenlistment bonuses, compared to 89 in fiscal year 2025.

Last fiscal year, the career fields included were: maintenance, aircrew, cyber, medical and special operations specialty codes. There are only two maintenance fields for B-52 and B-1 aircraft and three medical specialties eligible for fiscal 2026.

“The Air Force assesses manning requirements annually, updating the SRB list to retain the critical talent needed for global missions,” an Air Force spokesperson told Military Times on Friday.

The Air Force spokesperson did not comment on the drop in career fields eligible from last fiscal year.

Airmen whose specialty codes are included are eligible to receive the bonus upon reenlisting and extending their service within the SRB specialty code.

The Air Force allotted for the addition of 4,300 airmen to the SRB program in fiscal 2026, according to budget documents — a decrease from 7,077 service members in fiscal 2025. The service estimates a small bump to 4,600 airmen for fiscal 2027.

SRB zones represent the amount of years of active military service, with Zone A being up to six years of service and Zone E being 18 to 20 years.

The fiscal 2026 list is available for Department of the Air Force personnel to view on myFSS. Currently, the list is not disclosed publicly, but an Air Force official did confirm it to Military Times as shown on Air & Space Forces Magazine where it was first reported.

The maximum reenlistment bonus is set to $180,000, with a career cap of $360,000, according to the magazine.

Roughly 78,000 civilian positions were eliminated in 2025 — about 10% of a workforce that originally exceeded 793,000. At the time, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth characterized the cuts as part of a broader effort to “streamline the Federal workforce and to make the Federal Government more efficient and responsive.”

“Effective immediately and for the duration of this freeze, no vacant civilian position may be filled, and no new civilian positions may be created, unless approved by me,” he wrote in a Feb. 28, 2025 memo.

The Friday report from the GAO — sometimes referred to as Congress’s watchdog — noted that under law, Hegseth “may not reduce the civilian workforce programmed full-time equivalent levels without conducting an appropriate analysis of the impacts.”

It concluded that the department did not have a plan in place to review the impact of the workforce reductions, with the report adding that “without assessing lessons learned, DoD may miss opportunities to better understand reduction impacts, inform strategic human capital management, and mitigate any challenges in future efforts.”

In a statement to Military Times, a Pentagon official said that the department “acknowledges GAO’s recommendations and are actively evaluating the findings.”

The new report amounts to the latest bump in a rocky relationship between the Trump administration and the GAO, however.

Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought said last September that the agency “shouldn’t exist,” telling a conservative conference it was a “quasi-legislative independent entity.” In March, Vought issued a memo to department and agency heads stating that the GAO’s views are “not binding,” while contending that excessive deference to them had “failed...to adequately protect American taxpayer dollars.”

But Sarah Kaczmarek, a spokesperson for the GAO, told Military Times that Congress has long-relied on the office “​for fact-based analysis of federal spending and compliance with the law.”

“For folks we’ve heard from, threats began a few weeks after the U.S. strikes against Iran began,” said Sarah Streyder, the wife of a Space Force guardian stationed overseas.

People have received threats through email, social media and text messages, and they appear to be coming from individuals connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Streyder said.

But in some cases, she said, members of the IRGC have showed up at hotels in a nearby Gulf country, inquiring about U.S. service members who are temporarily staying there.

“As a result, those service members have had to keep relocating to different hotels for safety,” she said.

The threats have included identifying details about the service members, spouses and children, such as their names, current temporary locations, current home addresses and current schools, said Streyder, who is also executive director of the Secure Families Initiative, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that seeks to mobilize those in the military community to be voters and advocates.

Neither U.S. Central Command nor the Department of Defense immediately responded to questions about these threats.

In April, U.S. Navy officials sent a Navy-wide notice providing detailed information to sailors about how to secure their electronic devices and personal information. The notice advised sailors to report suspicious messages to their unit’s agency’s information technology department.

Meanwhile, lawmakers have released information from CENTCOM that confirmed for the first time that hostile foreign adversaries are using commercial location data to target American troops in an active war zone.

CENTCOM confirmed that the command has received “multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater” for Operation Epic Fury, according to a May 28 announcement from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C.

CENTCOM provided the information in an April response to questions from Wyden.

“DOD officials have reportedly known about the threat that commercial data brokers pose to national security for at least a decade,” said Wyden and Harrigan, in a May 28 letter to Kirsten A. Davies, DOD’s chief information officer. The letter was signed by a bipartisan group of 12 other members of the Senate and House.

The lawmakers urged DOD to adopt safeguards, such as disabling smartphone advertising IDs and replacing web browsers that are designed to facilitate online tracking and data collection.

Lawmakers noted that earlier in May, CENTCOM gained the capability to disable location sharing on smartphones it manages. CENTCOM officials told senators in its response that the advertising ID is still not disabled on DOD-issued smartphones, but that DOD is testing a capability to do so.

Meanwhile, the threats that appear to be coming from IRGC are happening to families in at least three branches — the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy, Streyder said.

“Some of these threats seem based broadly on troops who are or have been stationed in theater,” she said, and some “seem hyper personal based on a troop’s suspected connection to specific operations.

“This certainly isn’t the first time U.S. service members and their families have received threats from foreign adversaries,” she continued. “And certainly, military families are reminded often about the importance of helping maintain [personal security] and [operations security] in order to minimize risks both to operations and to personnel.

“That said — it’s not a common occurrence for many of us — and many facing it right now are facing it for the first time. It’s scary and it’s silencing.”

Individuals who discussed the threats with Streyder declined to speak to Military Times, citing safety reasons and concerns about retaliation.

The fear that these threats instill in the families receiving them “has a huge impact on how openly families feel like they can share what’s going on in their lives,” Streyder said.

“We want our fellow Americans to understand the breadth and depth of risks military families face as part of their commitment to service. These are the costs we incur any time our country goes to war.”

The $4.16 billion agreement is meant to boost the delivery timeline of a “space-based sensing layer” as part of the Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator, or SB-AMTI, project, according to a Friday Space Systems Command release.

“By focusing these capabilities to the space domain, we are providing the Joint Force with sustained battlespace awareness of contested airspace,” Col. Ryan Frazier, acting Space Force portfolio acquisition executive for Space Based Sensing & Targeting, said in the release.

By 2028, the award is projected to field a constellation of satellites to assist the Joint Force in eliminating operational blind spots.

The release states that traditional military airborne platforms to trace moving targets are confronting challenges as adversaries develop anti-access/area-denial systems, or A2/AD, propelling the need for more resilient tracking structures. The Space Force anticipates operating second- and third-generation SB-AMTI systems by 2035.

The SB-AMTI program represents a “deeper collaboration” within the government space industrial base as it utilizes space-based sensors, secure and quick communication connections and ground processing, the announcement reads.

“We will not leverage any one single provider; instead, we are partnering with a highly diversified pool of traditional and non-traditional vendors, each bringing various capabilities to support the SB-AMTI architecture, ensuring the Joint Force has access to a strong, competitive industrial base well into the future,” Frazier said.

The Portfolio Acquisition Executive for SBST granted the Other Transaction Authority agreement by using a hybrid acquisition model to combine the OTA with an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity acquisition approach, the release says.

SpaceX is not the only company in the SB-AMTI vendor pool. Others selected were announced by Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink in April 2026 during the Space Symposium, but their identities and pricing were withheld for national security reasons.

The release says that this agreement established “initial SB-AMTI capability,” but the Space Force expects to issue numerous awards in the next year to expand their diverse vendor pool.

Within the Department of the Air Force fiscal year 2027 budget request of $338.8 billion, the Space Force seeks $7.06 billion in funding for the SB-AMTI program to expand its high-band radar system’s coverage regionally, and potentially globally, for detecting and tracking airborne threats, according to budget documents.

The unprecedented June 14 bout on the South Lawn of the White House will feature an octagonal cage, a towering patriotic arch that looms well above the presidential residence, a performance by the United States Marine Band and seating for more than 4,000 spectators. Weigh-ins are scheduled to take place at the Lincoln Memorial.

Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, told Military Times on Friday that the endeavor “will be one of the greatest and most historic sports events in history, and President Trump hosting it at the White House is a testament to his vision to celebrate America’s monumental 250th anniversary.”

American Justin Gaethje and Spanish-Georgian champion Ilia Topuria are slated to headline the card in a lightweight title fight, while Brazil’s Alex Pereira and France’s Ciryl Gane will square off for the heavyweight crown.

Roughly 1,200 tickets are reserved for active members of the military, according to Dana White, the CEO of the UFC.

The remainder will be distributed among celebrities and a roster of invitees selected by the Trump administration, UFC leadership and TKO Group Holdings.

An additional 85,000 people, who must provide identification and pre-register, will be able to watch for free on screens installed at the Ellipse, a public park just south of the White House.

White, who says he has sworn off politics since endorsing Trump in 2024, insists the occasion is rooted in patriotism, not partisanship. He added that the UFC will lose approximately $30 million hosting the event.

“I love this country like anybody on the left loves this country. I love this country like anybody on the right loves this country,” he said in an interview with TIME Magazine. “This is basically me spending a ­sh-t­load of money to celebrate the 250th birthday of America, with America and the rest of the world.”

In addition to the full card of mixed-martial arts, Trump has a slew of commemorations lined up to mark the semiquincentennial year of the Declaration of Independence, including a “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall and a “Freedom 250” Grand Prix through Washington, D.C.

At the academy’s Thursday graduation ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Vance urged cadets to dictate their own decisions and not “submit” to AI as the technology continues to change warfare.

“As AI transforms the battlefield in some ways positively, in some ways not, I ask that you be jealous and selfish about your role as the decision maker in warfare,” Vance said in a commencement address.

“You are the masters of warfare. And both your minds, but also your hearts, are the opposite of artificial,” Vance continued.

Vance discussed the recent commencement addresses given by corporate leaders around the country that have gone viral online after graduates have booed them once they spoke about the benefits of AI, calling Americans’ worries over the technology’s impact on the labor market, resources and social effects understandable.

The vice president also referenced the recently released Pope Leo XIV’s Encyclical Letter that explains how society must “disarm” AI, saying it needs to be prevented from “dominating humanity.”

Vance said he endorsed the sentiment that human beings can not outsource the “most important moral decisions to digital technology.” He said that what makes American warfighters unique is how the country wages war “justly,” saying that it is the service members who guarantee lethality coexists with heart and conscience in war.

“If the warfare of the future is to live up to the moral values of our ancestors, decisions over life and death must be made by humans and not machines,” Vance said in the address.

Pentagon policy isn’t keeping pace with autonomous weapons, senators argue

Recently, the Air Force has made strides to recruit and train AI professionals, aligned with the Defense Department’s grander strategy to advance the nation’s AI capabilities. The Pentagon has pushed AI platforms across the military in an effort to become an “AI-first” force.

The reliance on AI has cast doubt about the reliability of the systems, especially after roughly 168 people were killed in a strike on an elementary school by a Tomahawk cruise missile on Feb. 28, the first day of the Iran war. U.S. officials have not yet acknowledged full responsibility for the strike but have said that the incident is under investigation.

The Trump administration has sought an executive order requiring AI models to receive government oversight and review, but President Donald Trump postponed signing the order, citing his concern to reporters last week with the U.S. falling behind competitors, such as China, in the AI race.

An agreement would represent a big step toward ending a war that has pushed the world toward an energy crisis, though the underlying dispute over Iran’s nuclear program would only be thrashed out in talks over subsequent weeks.

Where are the discussions now?

Following a ceasefire in early April, the two sides have remained at odds on issues including Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Israel’s war in Lebanon with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia, and Tehran’s demands for the lifting of sanctions and the release of frozen assets.

After weeks of mainly indirect talks, four sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday that the U.S. and Iran had agreed a memorandum of understanding that would halt the war and give negotiators 60 days to reach a final deal.

However, both sides have said several times before that they believed an agreement was close but without ever concluding an agreement. The position of Israel, which launched the air war on Iran on February 28 alongside the United States, is central to any deal but its role in the agreement is unclear.

President Donald Trump has not yet approved the deal, according to the sources. Vice President JD Vance said on Thursday: “We’re not there, but we’re very close and we’re going to keep working on it”.

Iran has not yet formally commented, but the semi-official Tasnim news agency cited a source close to the negotiating team as saying the text of the agreement had not yet been finalised or confirmed.

Iranian sources have previously said a framework deal is only about ending the war on all fronts, establishing a 30-day framework for international and Iranian movement through the Strait of Hormuz and possibly providing some financial relief.

There would then be negotiations on the more difficult issues, such as the status of Iran’s highly enriched uranium and details concerning the strait, and the sequencing of the many points in the preliminary deal such as sanctions relief and security.

The last deal over the nuclear program — struck in 2015 and torn up by Trump in 2018 — took years of negotiations between large teams of technical experts.

Hormuz and the gulf blockade

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for a fifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas, has pushed up oil prices. Reopening the strait is the U.S. priority and Iran’s main point of leverage, but it could take time.

Many vessels are stuck in the Gulf and Iran says it has laid some sea mines that could be difficult to locate.

US munitions depleted by Iran war will take years to restore, analysis finds

The U.S. blockade on Iranian ports is hitting Iran’s own exports and state revenue. Lifting this is one of Tehran’s main goals. A sensitive issue could be how far U.S. forces withdraw.

Nuclear

The U.S. says it believes Iran wants to build a nuclear bomb. Iran has always denied this, saying its atomic program is for peaceful purposes only. The focus is on its enrichment of uranium, which generates fuel for nuclear power but can also make material for a warhead.

The nuclear question is extremely complicated. Iran might eventually agree to dilute part of its highly enriched uranium in a friendly country into uranium enriched to 5% purity and then have it returned, Iranian sources said.

But many other issues would still need to be addressed: How long the nuclear program would be halted, whether nuclear sites would be dismantled, what happens to stockpiles of uranium enriched to 20% and 5%, the future of Iran’s advanced centrifuges and research and development programs and the rules governing an inspections regime, among others.

Ballistic missiles

A prominent U.S. demand before the war was that Iran limit the range of its ballistic missiles so that they could not reach Israel. Iran has always said its right to conventional weapons is non-negotiable and that it still has a large arsenal.

Sanctions and frozen assets

Iran’s economy has been hurt by sanctions for years, contributing to the nationwide unrest in January. Tehran badly needs them to be lifted and tens of billions of dollars of Iranian oil revenues frozen in foreign banks to be released. It also wants reparations for war damage.

The U.S. has resisted this, with Trump having lambasted former president Barack Obama for having returned some frozen assets to Iran under the 2015 nuclear deal. Some media have reported that the latest draft agreement would include an investment program for Iran.

Lebanon

Iran has repeatedly said that Israel’s war against its main ally Hezbollah in Lebanon must be included in any deal. Israel and Lebanon agreed a ceasefire last month but both Israel and Hezbollah accuse each other of repeated violations and Israel’s military is ramping up its campaign in southern Lebanon. Israel would oppose any U.S.-Iran agreement that limits its ability to act in Lebanon.

I grew up in the house my great-grandparents built, a home where four generations shared laughter, loss, and celebrations. These same walls that once harbored the joy of my grandfather’s courtship were the ones that eventually held the pain of the day my grandmother learned he had been killed in action during World War II.

While growing up in this same house, I always knew of a box of letters my grandfather, Otis Bryant, had written from the war, most of them addressed to his wife and some to his mother. I read one or two during childhood, but in my mid-20s, I felt compelled to read them all in chronological order.

He was my grandpa, and I loved him, but I never met him. Still, I wanted to know him because losing him left a large gap in our family: my grandmother became a widow in her early 20s, and my mother was left fatherless. I witnessed my mother’s enduring grief of never knowing him.

I relished every sentence of his letters. I would lay them out and invite my mother to read them as well, but she would just walk by and say that it was too hard.

I read them with deep curiosity, always imagining what he looked like and where he was in the battlefields of Europe. Through his letters, I found he was a very caring, thoughtful, and religious person.

“Pray for this war to end very soon,” he wrote in one letter. “If you do any more praying than I do, you are doing plenty. I have almost worn out one prayer book.”

He also had a romantic side and showed his true love for my grandmother.

“I wish to tell you that I love you with all my heart and that there will never be anyone [to] make me feel different.”He included a flattened flower in the letter around their wedding anniversary and said he was thinking about their wedding day four years ago and that he imagined all the hugging and kissing when he got home.

I smiled when I read, “You can look in a mirror and kiss yourself and that will be for me.”

He talked about being homesick and how he missed his son, 3-year-old Tommy.

“I hope Tommy [doesn’t] forget what I look like before I get home. Talk about me a lot to him, I bet he wonders where I am. I can hear him say, ‘Where’s Daddy?’ ”

The letters made me feel close to him. He seemed lonely when he wrote them, thinking longingly of his babies and wife back home while he was in unspeakable environments and, on some days, had seen battle.

He wrote as if everything was OK and he wasn’t in the middle of a war in a strange land. I tried to weave those two concepts in my imagination, but it was almost impossible.

As I read his letters throughout the years, my deep connection to him grew. I always wanted to visit him at his burial place in the Lorraine American Cemetery in France. I consider burial sites sacred since they are the final, tangible resting place of our physical selves.

Grandpa never got to physically come home, so I wanted to go to him. That trip came in 2025.

The year prior, I immersed myself in researching the 80th Division and the 317th Infantry unit, where he was assigned. I used the 80th Division Veterans Association website to review unit histories, oral histories, and morning and after-action reports to trace his last days and weeks and possibly even the location where he was killed. It was a profound journey of discovery.

I also found the Thanks GIs Association, which organized a two-day pilgrimage to the actual villages where my grandfather last fought. While walking on those village streets, I held against my chest a book based on a diary of a soldier who fought in my grandpa’s infantry. It held details of the fighting and what had happened in those villages. I envisioned it everywhere I looked.

I was also honored to meet two village mayors. The gratitude from them and every French person I met was palpable, even 81 years after my grandfather’s service.

I was simply blown away by the gravity of their emotion, of their thankfulness to me. I felt as if I was accepting thanks for my grandpa. And I was.

I also felt like an imposter because I certainly didn’t do anything. He was the one who fought, suffered shrapnel wounds, and ultimately died for their freedom and the betterment of the world.

It was surreal, almost spiritual, to receive that thanks on his behalf. As I stood before these people, a beautiful sense of synchronicity occurred because I was reciprocating gratitude back to them for remembering him.

I did not expect to feel so indebted to them. My loved one was taken so their lives and culture could continue.

I certainly wish he had come home, raised his two kids, and, 30 years down the road, watched his grandchildren play. I wish he lived a happy, long life with his wife. But sometimes soldiers must fight to the death for freedom.

As I traveled through those French villages, I better understood that thousands had to leave this earth in order to take down evil, and in those thankful eyes, I saw the results of the fight for their freedom. This bond that I felt between our two worlds was an unexpected gift.

My family’s world — forever changed by the ultimate sacrifice and loss of our loved one — and their world, also shaped by our sacrifice and the sacrifice of thousands, came together in a soul-stirring way that I will forever hold dear.

Now, exactly 14 years to the day, the former paratrooper will step out of a WWII-era C-47 and jump into the same drop zone where paratroopers of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment and the 82nd Airborne fought on D‑Day.

“The fates always have an odd sense of irony in my life,” Harmon said in a press release. “Jumping on my 14th alive day, into the drop zone my 508 guys jumped, it’s surreal.”

“Eight months ago, if someone said that was possible, I would’ve laughed them out of the building,” Harmon continued. “But once it became a possibility, it was mission mode. How do we do this? What prosthetics? What padding? And then it was off to the races.”

For Harmon, the road — or sky — back to static-line parachuting has been a long time coming.

Enlisting in the Army just a couple months out of high school, the teen was soon patrolling in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, as a machine-gun ammo bearer with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, as part of Task Force Fury.

According to Harmon, the day began “as a routine patrol and key leader engagement with village elders about a mile and a half from their strongpoint.”

Around mid-afternoon, as the maneuver element began moving into the village, Harmon and his gunner set up the support‑by‑fire position, according to the release.

As Harmon was checking his angles, he moved alongside a low wall and berm, where his machine gun was positioned.

“And that’s when I stepped on it,” says Harmon. “It was a total brownout. I kept trying to stand up. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t until I looked down and saw my [tibia and fibula] sticking out.”

A cloud of dust and debris enveloped the seriously wounded paratrooper. To his horror, just mere seconds later, fellow soldier Pfc. Brandon Goodine stepped on a second device close to Harmon.

As medics worked to save both soldiers, they triggered a third IED.

“They carried him right over me,” Harmon said. “And then the stretcher team stepped on another plate. It was … it was bad. It killed Brandon instantly.”

His unit suffered 10 to 12 casualties that day, with Harmon, despite his grievous wounds and severe blood loss, conscious throughout the whole evacuation.

“It was like something out of Apocalypse Now. Just a pile of guys in the Black Hawk,” he recalled.

“The last thing I remember was the American flag on the ceiling as they pushed me into the surgical unit,” he said in the release.

After undergoing an emergency surgery in Afghanistan and then Germany, Harmon was eventually flown to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where doctors amputated his left leg above the knee. His right leg, according to the release, was already gone.

From that day in June, Harmon was thrust into a new mission.

While recovering at Walter Reed, another double below‑knee amputee came round to his bedside.

“He lifted his pant leg and said, ‘It doesn’t end here.’ From that moment on, I wanted to be like him,” said Harmon.

Returning to active duty through the Army’s Continuation on Active-Duty program, Harmon — who became the first double above‑knee amputee to return to active orders in the 82nd Airborne Division — served as the XVIII Airborne Corps liaison to help wounded soldiers and their families navigate similar situations as his.

Harmon served as a liaison until 2020, after which he left the Army to pursue higher education.

His Army career was seemingly finished — that is, until Dominic Mancuso, a fellow combat infantryman, came calling.

“Would you want to jump into Normandy?” he asked.

In 2025, Ramon Alvarez, an active duty first sergeant stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, had begun actively recruiting veteran paratroopers to take part in the ceremonies surrounding the 82nd anniversary of the Normandy invasion.

Alvarez, who had previously served with Mancuso in Afghanistan, is the co-founder of the WBS Charity Foundation, “a 501C3 nonprofit organization that channels collective generosity toward small, community-based nonprofits serving veterans,” according to the release.

From there, Harmon connected with the Liberty Jump Team, a commemorative parachute organization that “preserves airborne history by performing WWII‑style static‑line jumps at historic sites and memorial events,” per the release.

Nearly 14 years after jump school, Harmon began relearning the mechanics of parachuting — this time on specialized short prosthetic legs.

During his first jump this past March, something akin to catharsis occurred.

“I grabbed the door and thought, ‘This is so cool.’” he said in the release. “When I landed and stood up, I just broke down crying. I couldn’t believe I walked away unscathed.”

According to the release, Harmon is believed to be the first double above‑knee amputee to complete a static‑line parachute jump. He has already completed three jumps with his prosthetics, bringing his total to 10.

Harmon’s wife, an active-duty soldier herself, is encouraging him to keep going.

“As soon as my wife saw how insanely happy it made me, she said, ‘Yeah, you need to do this.’ And after I came back from BAR [basic airborne refresher], she told me, ‘You need to keep doing this. I haven’t seen you this happy in years.’”

On June 7, Harmon will jump into La Fière at Sainte‑Mère‑Église carrying Goodine’s necklace — lent to him by the soldier’s daughter — as well as some of his grandfather’s ashes and his original Army ID card. His grandfather, a Korean‑era infantryman, died recently, according to the release.

“I’ll be jumping with all my guys,” Harmon said. “Every paratrooper who came before me.”

For the former paratrooper, the jump into Normandy is more than sacred history, however.

“If I can use what I’m doing to help my guys so they’re not hurting themselves, I’ll do that for the rest of my life,” he said. “I want young paratroopers to know you can go into battle, get hurt, and life is not over. You can keep doing incredible things.”

“Stay airborne,” Harmon concluded. “It’s the greatest place on Earth.”

In a letter shared with Reuters by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, U.S. Central Command said it had “received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater.”

The message, sent on April 14, offered no further specifics, but CENTCOM’s area of responsibility includes the Gulf, where U.S. forces are facing off against the Iranian military over the Strait of Hormuz.

The disclosure was the first official confirmation that U.S. forces had been targeted in an active war zone, Wyden and a bipartisan group of legislators said in a letter sent on Thursday to the Pentagon.

“Commercial location data can be used to identify where U.S. troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs, as well as for counterintelligence purposes,” the letter warned.

Wyden said in a statement that it was time to “start treating the adtech industry as a national security threat.”

The Pentagon did not return messages seeking comment. The lawmakers said in their letter that their efforts to obtain more information from military officials about the reported targeting had been unsuccessful.

LOCATION DATA TRADE FUELS PRIVACY CONCERNS

Location data is widely used in digital advertising, which is a key source of revenue for many tech companies. Such data is typically collected from smartphones or other devices by apps or service providers before being sold to data brokers who collate and resell the data, sometimes via complex networks of intermediaries.

Although the threat to privacy inherent in selling the details of people’s day-to-day movements on the open market has long been a matter of public discussion, its potential as a national security risk has recently drawn concern as well.

As far back as 2016, one U.S. defense contractor was able to leverage commercially available location data to track special operations forces from their bases in the United States to a sensitive staging post in Syria, according to an account first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal.

More recently, journalists at Wired and two German news outlets drew on billions of coordinates collected by a data broker to expose the granular comings and goings of people stationed at or around 11 U.S. military and intelligence sites in Germany.

Two groups that represent digital advertisers, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Association of National Advertisers, did not return emails seeking comment.

The letter from U.S. lawmakers to the Pentagon said that, given what military officials know about the trade in location data, they should have acted faster to protect their personnel, for example by disabling the unique advertising ID attached to military-issued devices, automatically turning off location sharing on smartphones in the field and steering staff away from Google’s Chrome web browser toward more privacy-focused alternatives.

One of the letter’s cosigners was U.S. Representative Pat Harrigan, a North Carolina Republican who was formerly a U.S. Army Special Forces officer.

Harrigan said that browsers like Chrome “are built from the ground up to collect and share user data” and that every day they remain on government-issued devices “is another day we are handing our adversaries a weapon against our own troops.”

In a statement, Alphabet’s Google said that Chrome had “industry leading security.” The company added that it had “long advocated for stronger rules and safeguards against data brokers.”

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. military has also intercepted and shot down multiple Iranian drones that posed a similar threat.

The U.S. military strikes, which have not been previously reported, came during negotiations to end a three-month-old war that has killed thousands and sent global energy prices sharply higher since it began on February 28 with U.S. and Israeli attacks.

U.S. President Donald Trump earlier on Wednesday dismissed a Iranian state media report that Iran and Oman would jointly manage shipping through the Strait of Hormuz as part of a peace deal. Trump said the waterway would remain open.

The U.S. last carried out what it called defensive strikes against Iran on Monday, in what Iran called a violation of the countries’ fragile ceasefire. The U.S. targets included boats attempting to lay mines and missile launch sites that the U.S. military’s Central Command said posed a threat to U.S. forces.

The new analysis, released on Wednesday, warned that depleted inventories have “created a window of vulnerability for a potential Western Pacific conflict. The time needed to rebuild those inventories has thus become a major concern.”

However, the authors acknowledged that the U.S. “has enough munitions for any plausible scenario in the Iran war.”

U.S. Central Command said more than 12,000 targets were hit during Operation Epic Fury, which CSIS found significantly drew down America’s stockpiles of Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAM), as well as two vital interceptors: the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and the Patriot.

The think tank, a bipartisan policy research organization, estimates that more than 1,000 Tomahawk missiles were launched, far exceeding the average annual procurement of 86 over the past decade – and that replenishment could take until 2030 or 2031. It also determined that up to 290 THAAD interceptors were used, with those reserves returning to prior levels only by mid-to-late 2029.

The Pentagon has not publicly disclosed the scale of munitions expended before a ceasefire between Washington and Tehran took effect April 7, citing operational security. But Jules Hurst III, the Defense Department’s acting comptroller, told lawmakers earlier this month that the conflict had cost roughly $29 billion, with additional expenditures still expected.

The authors of the report argue that today’s challenge “isn’t money; it’s time.”

“It takes time to expand production capacity and to build these complex systems. Thus, there will be a window of vulnerability for several years until inventories return to their previous levels and another several years before they get to the levels that war planners desire,” they wrote.

“China is deeply aware that it has no recent combat experience and that it performed poorly in its last war—against Vietnam in 1979," the analysis continued. “That difference in experience may preserve deterrence until munitions inventories are restored.”

In a statement to Military Times, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly asserted that the U.S. military “has more than enough munitions, ammo, and stockpiles to serve all of President Trump’s strategic goals and beyond.”

“Even still, the president has urged our defense contractors to constantly produce more made-in-America weapons, which are the best in the world. Democrats destroyed our military, but President Trump rebuilt it. Think tank armchair quarterbacks are not read into sensitive information and have no idea what they’re talking about,” she added.

Trump recently held a meeting with executives from major defense contractors — including BAE Systems, Boeing, Honeywell Aerospace, L3Harris Missile Solutions, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon — to discuss expanding production capacity. The president subsequently announced that the CEOs “agreed to quadruple Production of the ‘Exquisite Class’ Weaponry in that we want to reach, as rapidly as possible, the highest levels of quantity.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has conceded that replenishing the Pentagon’s arsenal will take “months and years,” depending on the system in question, emphasized on Wednesday that the process is already underway.

“Defense manufacturers are investing in new plants, and new manufacturing, new production lines, so that we’re getting weapons faster than ever,” Hegseth said during a cabinet meeting at the White House.

The Trump administration said in 2025 that “military service alone doesn’t exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws,” and a string of military spouses have been detained in immigration crackdowns.

Deisy Rivera Ortega was detained and placed in ICE custody, according to the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS. Army Sgt. 1st Class Jose Serrano had served in the Army for more than 27 years, including deployments to Afghanistan. In April, his wife

Though her attorney has challenged the legality of her detention in federal court, Serrano said the detention destabilized his mental health and ability to function.

“I can’t sleep even with the medication,” he said.

Ortega was later released after a U.S. senator personally contacted DHS on her behalf.

Military family advocates, immigration attorneys and lawmakers say the issue highlights a gap in how the armed forces measure family-related readiness stressors, which also include housing instability, childcare access, spouse employment and mental health. According to the National Military Family Association, “supporting the well-being of military families is essential to ensuring the readiness of military personnel.”

The 2021 Military Family Lifestyle Survey by Blue Star Families found that one in 10 service members belong to families that have recently immigrated into the country, and advocacy groups and military researchers estimate roughly 45,000 immigrants currently serve in the armed forces, with about 5,000 noncitizens enlisting each year. More than 760,000 noncitizens have earned U.S. citizenship through military service over the past century.

DHS and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, already maintain programs designed to reduce immigration-related instability for military families, including Deferred Action protections and expedited immigration processing.

Another program, Military Parole in Place, can allow some undocumented spouses and relatives of service members to remain in the United States, obtain work authorization and pursue legal residency without leaving the country and triggering lengthy reentry bans. USCIS says the protections recognize “the important sacrifices made by U.S. service members, veterans, enlistees, and their families.”

Military legal assistance offices on many installations provide immigration-related guidance to service members and spouses, though military attorneys generally can’t represent families in immigration court proceedings.

But while DHS and USCIS have maintained military-family immigration protections for years, the Pentagon hasn’t publicly indicated if it is formally studying whether immigration-related stress affects force readiness.

No public Pentagon or DHS database tracks how many active duty troops have noncitizen relatives without legal status, how many military families are involved in deportation proceedings, or whether immigration stress affects readiness. The Pentagon also has no public readiness assessment that includes immigration-related family instability among tracked force stressors.

One recent case involved Annie Ramos, a 22-year-old Army spouse who was detained by immigration authorities after accompanying her husband, Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank, to Fort Polk in order to obtain a military dependent identification card shortly after the couple married. Blank said the couple had already begun pursuing legal residency options before the arrest. “We were doing everything the right way,” he told The New York Times.

Military family organizations and lawmakers say such cases reflect broader operational concerns inside military households. The National Military Family Association warned in a 2026 statement that immigration enforcement actions involving military families affect both readiness and recruiting: “How can [a service member] focus on deployment when his wife is threatened with deportation?”

Lawmakers have pressed both DHS and the Pentagon about whether immigration enforcement involving military families creates adverse consequences. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran, described forced family separation as harmful to “military morale and mission readiness,” and introduced the PROTECT Military Families Act earlier this year to curb unnecessary separations.

In letter sent to the departments of homeland security and defense, over 60 lawmakers wrote that “family well-being directly impacts Service members’ performance during deployment” and asked whether either department had studied the readiness implications of deportations involving military households.

Military Times reached out to the Pentagon, asking if the Defense Department tracks immigration-related family stress as part of readiness assessments, but didn’t receive a response before publication.

A portion of the U.S. Air Force’s budget is set aside for the purchase of aviation fuel based on a predicted fuel price and an increase in flying hours for fiscal 2027, but that cost was estimated and submitted in their budget request before the war began, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said on Thursday at a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing.

“My understanding is the president’s budget submitted to us did not include any costs that were costs related to the Iran war because it had largely been prepared and submitted through this budgetary chain of command before the Iran war started,” Kaine, a committee member, said in the hearing.

At the hearing on the department’s posture related to fiscal 2027’s defense authorization request, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said that the service did account for the increased cost of flying hours in the request and estimated that cost before the market determined the true cost.

“Some years it’s more, some years it’s less. So we will adjust our dollars if we end up having to pay more per dollar for a gallon of fuel if it ends up being more than we assessed,” Wilsbach said.

Aviation fuel costs are not an issue unique to the Air Force even though it is the largest consumer across the federal government. All branches of the U.S. military utilize aviation fuel to manage and operate their own drones, helicopters and aircraft fleets.

Kaine said that aviation fuel costs have increased roughly 50% since the war started on Feb. 28 and that while writing fiscal 2027’s NDAA, the committee needs to deal with the new reality of costs on the commercial side, given its effects on the American people.

At the pump, gas prices have surged around $1.50, making the national average about $4.50 since the war commenced. Commercially, U.S. airlines fuel cost increased by 56.4%, or $3.23 billion, since February, according to the Bureau of Transportation.

Wilsbach said the force assumed a 10% increase in flying hours costs from last year in this upcoming fiscal year budget.

The force’s budget requests funding for 1.1 million flying hours, which is considered the “maximum executable level for the total force,” and allots $9.9 billion for the flying hour program, which includes aviation fuel among other maintenance and operation items.

Wilsbach did not indicate what is the assumed cost per gallon of PB, which is a Propane-Butane liquid gas blend commonly used by the Air Force for field operations.

He said that the Air Force department had long-term contracts for fuel purchases and now has storage built up, so the specifics can’t be known until that storage runs dry. Kaine pressed on whether that 10% increase is deemed sufficient considering the rise in costs.

“It’s hard to say at this point, but what I’ll tell you is this is routine for us,” Wilsbach said.

“Every year, the cost of flying hours changes from the time we budget for it to the time we execute it, and we work it out with moving money around in various accounts to cover down on the cost,” he continued.

When posed by Kaine on if the potential cost is being considered in preparation of a possible supplemental bill, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink said that it depends on how long these costs stay high to determine their corresponding impact.

Meink said that in a previous hearing, Jay Hurst, who is performing the duties of Pentagon comptroller, mentioned the country is facing about a $29 billion impact, which includes some operation and maintenance fuel cost.

By the end of 2026, it is estimated that the American public will have paid over $193 billion in excess fuel costs because of the Iran war. As of today, American consumers have already paid $40 billion more for fuel.

Kaine highlighted these estimates, saying that it demonstrates the challenge families are facing now.

“I suspect as we’re looking at the military budget, we’re going to see a similar need to adjust it pretty dramatically because of fuel costs,” Kaine concluded.

Within weeks of the United States launching its bombing campaign, SpaceX executives met Pentagon officials and argued the military had been paying about $5,000 for connection per terminal while effectively using a higher tier of service worth closer to $25,000, according to two sources familiar with the matter and Pentagon documents reviewed by Reuters.

The disagreement over Starlink’s use on LUCAS suicide drones — a cheap U.S. model comparable to Iran’s Shahed that can circle over a target area before diving to detonate on impact — is part of increasing tensions between SpaceX and the Pentagon over Starlink pricing in recent months, according to interviews with five people familiar with the matter and the documents.

The Pentagon, which is seeking to help Iranian citizens bypass government-imposed communications blackouts, has also been at odds with SpaceX over pricing for a plan to provide the populace direct-to-cell connections with Starlink akin to 5G service, two of the sources said.

The ongoing disputes, which have not previously been reported, underscore how the Pentagon’s growing reliance on SpaceX is handing Musk greater leverage over a critical layer of U.S. national security – at a time when SpaceX is seeking to boost revenue ahead of an IPO next month that could be among the biggest in history.

Unlike consumer Starlink terminals available at stores including Walmart, SpaceX sells a military-specific version called Starshield to the Pentagon under a 2023 agreement. Starshield terminals can connect to both commercial Starlink satellites and a separate, more secure constellation, also called Starshield, according to a person familiar with the matter.

SpaceX argued the LUCAS drones were operating under conditions that aligned more closely with its aviation tier subscription rather than a lower priced land or mobility service. Pentagon officials argued that the $25,000 price tag — a monthly fee — was designed for aircraft, not kamikaze drones that used Starlink connection for a matter of minutes or hours, according to one of the sources.

The Pentagon, which was ramping up strikes on Iran, ultimately agreed to pay SpaceX’s proposed price increase, almost doubling the cost of each LUCAS drone. The Pentagon was initially paying about $30,000 per unit.

SpaceX didn’t respond to a comment request.

The Pentagon declined to comment on Reuters reporting that SpaceX increased its pricing, its decision to pay, or the plan to provide Iranian citizens with Starlink cell service. In a statement, a Pentagon official said the office responsible for acquiring the terminals, the Commercial Satellite Communications Office, is working to find other competitors.

“The Department of War is committed to fostering a competitive environment for commercial satellite communications,” an official said.

After the Reuters story was published, Elon Musk called it “false” without elaborating in a post on X. He added that the civilian Starlink system had been improperly used “for military purposes.” In a separate post, he said “the company” was at fault, not the Pentagon.

A spokesperson for Spektreworks, which makes the LUCAS drone, directed all questions to the Pentagon.

In a post on X, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Reuters reporting was “wrong” without providing further information. SpaceX “remains a strong and valued partner to the Department of War,” he wrote.

But no other company provides a comparable alternative to Starlink, which has become an increasingly critical tool in modern warfare since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The satellite network provides global coverage, enabling battlefield communications and precision targeting even in remote areas. SpaceX’s constellation of roughly 10,000 satellites accounts for more than 60% of those in orbit — dwarfing the constellations being built by other companies, including OneWeb and Amazon Leo.

The risks of reliance on Starlink were first thrown into sharp focus during the Ukraine war, when Musk ordered Starlink service switched off in parts of the country in 2022 as Ukrainian forces advanced on Russian positions, disrupting a key counteroffensive, Reuters previously reported. More recently, U.S. Navy tests were disrupted last summer when a global Starlink outage cut off connection to unmanned military boats, leaving them bobbing in the ocean.

SPACEX HAS U.S. GOVERNMENT ‘OVER A BARREL’

Unlike traditional defense contractors, SpaceX holds greater leverage over the Pentagon because it also has a large commercial market for Starlink, alongside its rocket launch and artificial intelligence businesses, said Clayton Swope, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a national security-focused think tank. SpaceX generates about 20% of its total revenue from the U.S. government, according to an SEC filing.

SpaceX “certainly has the U.S. government over the barrel,” Swope said.

At the outset of the Iran war, Starlink was already a core part of U.S. military operations. In testing and early deployments, it supported a range of systems, from aerial attack drones such as the LUCAS to unmanned surface vessels used for maritime surveillance and strike missions. When the U.S. launched its bombing campaign, Starshield terminals were being used across more than a dozen drone systems, according to a source familiar with the matter.

But tensions between the Pentagon and SpaceX emerged quickly after the U.S. launched its February 28 assault on Iran. On March 1, SpaceX chief Elon Musk responded on X to a user’s post featuring an image of the LUCAS drone that said it “appears to have an integrated Starlink” terminal.

“It is a violation of commercial Starlink terms of service to use the terminal for weapon systems. This applies to all users and is shut down when discovered,” Musk posted. “There is a separate network called Starshield, which is operated by the US government.”

The Pentagon official, in a statement to Reuters, denied any violation of its agreement with SpaceX.

In the days that followed, SpaceX executives met Pentagon officials and argued the military was underpaying for the service, two sources familiar with the matter said.

Although the Pentagon initially agreed to the higher fee for satellite Wi-Fi connections used by attack drones, senior officials including Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg remained uneasy about the arrangement, one of the sources said. Pentagon officials, during an April ceasefire, met to revisit the pricing with Terrence O’Shaughnessy, a retired four-star Air Force general who now leads SpaceX’s defense business.

Still, the Pentagon is currently considering an additional purchase of more than 3,500 Starshield terminal subscriptions, including 100 with the higher-priced aviation tier, according to Pentagon documents reviewed by Reuters. The deal could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue for SpaceX, though Reuters could not determine whether an agreement has been finalized, or what price is being discussed.

SPACEX PRICES IRK PENTAGON

Starlink has also proved crucial to other operations. After Iran cracked down on protests in January, killing thousands of people, the Trump administration smuggled in more than 6,000 Starlink terminals to provide internet access to citizens, the Wall Street Journal previously reported.

As the war intensified, however, Iranian authorities confiscated the terminals and deployed jamming devices across major cities to disrupt connections, according to a source familiar with the matter. Within a week of the conflict beginning, Pentagon officials began discussions with SpaceX about deploying direct-to-cell service that could bypass those disruptions, two people familiar with the matter said. The capability, similar to a 5G connection, would allow users to connect without terminals on the ground.

SpaceX, which generated $11.4 billion in revenue from Starlink in 2025, proposed charging as much as $500 million to launch the capability, along with a $100 million monthly fee to operate it, according to one of the people and Pentagon documents - prompting alarm from defense officials over the price.

Reuters could not determine whether an agreement has been reached.