Just like old times.
Sec. Hegseth said that the blockade that started April 13 is growing and would continue for "as long as it takes, whatever President Trump decides," during a briefing to press Friday. Iran has made lifting the blockade a condition of resuming talks to end the war.
Dig Deeper
The rate of expenditure of existing weapons stockpiles has only increased since the conflict in Iran began. Now, the Pentagon's Munitions Acceleration Council is focusing on 14 legacy and "emerging" munitions as part of its ambitious plan to ramp up production, according to fiscal 2027 budget documents. Read more from Breaking Defense.
Top Headlines
The Pentagon abruptly announced the decision to remove the secretary of the Navy Wednesday and did not provide a publicly stated reason. Phelan is the first service head to depart under President Trump's second term, though he is the latest in a recent spate of firings for senior defense officials.
Defense supply chains are having a moment as industry and government aim to improve and speed up U.S. capabilities in rapidly emerging new technologies, defense leaders said at a roundtable this week.
The Pentagon announced Tuesday that the U.S. military will no longer require all American troops to get an annual flu vaccine, citing "medical autonomy" and religious freedom.
Senate Republicans who are scrambling to end the two-month shutdown of DHS fear that Democrats will trigger an even bigger government shutdown in October and are working out strategies to avert that politically disastrous scenario.
Following the reauthorization of the program, the Pentagon has established the Accelerated Research for Transition program to facilitate the transition of high-performing Phase II SBIR/STTR efforts into scalable Phase III outcomes with increased speed, accountability and alignment to operational demand signals.
Congress passed FASA three decades ago and past administrations have always emphasized and encouraged the buying of commercial products and services, but few held agencies accountable. That seems to be changing according to a new OMB memo.
A former speechwriter for the Secretary of the Navy has some hard truths for businesses selling to the Pentagon: Learn to speak the language of ROI or miss out. As the department moves faster toward acquisition reforms, framing offerings in terms of impact will matter most.
At senior leadership's urging, personnel have used a version of Google Gemini's Agent Designer tool on GenAI.mil to create their own AI agents to handle data and automate online tasks. These actions are currently limited to IL5 and cover tasks like responding to emails and generating reports.
If confirmed by lawmakers, Maj. Gen. Christopher Niemi would serve in a dual-hatted position as both the Air Force's deputy chief of staff for strategy, design and requirements and the service's official chief modernization officer
"During the first term, I came to believe that we had a demand signal problem," the OMB director said during a speech at the Navy League's Sea-Air-Space conference Wednesday. "I no longer believe that, because if you look back over the last administration, Congress provided sustained resources for shipbuilding but productivity went down, not up."
Dig Deeper
Shipbuilding appears to be at least partially at the root of former Navy Secretary Phelan's sudden ouster, according to The Guardian. Earlier this week, he told a media roundtable at Sea-Air-Space that the Navy is looking at the possibility of utilizing foreign partners to build ships, according to reporting from Defense News. In other news from the conference, the Office of Naval Research is asking industry to take on efforts it otherwise wouldn't related to AI. Read more from Defense One.
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Feature Opinions
If the Pentagon wants more resilient supply chains, it must stop buying proprietary products and start building programs around multi-sourced and competitive projects, says Jerry McGinn, director of the Center for the Industrial Base at CSIS and former senior defense acquisition official.
What happens when a country develops a cyber strategy that depends on the capabilities it is actively cutting? Air Force officers Jesse Humpal and Emily Valentine, and Brookings Institute fellow Alexander Noyes explore by taking a look at the White House's new cyber strategy.
Federal contractors have less than six months to get their cybersecurity houses in order — or risk losing access to government work, writes immixGroup's Amanda Mull. Take a closer look at the two upcoming deadlines, and what you need to do to meet these important requirements.
Worth a WATCH
Kenneth J. Braithwaite, 77th secretary of the Navy and former ambassador to Norway, and Admiral James Foggo, Dean of the Center for Maritime Strategy discuss leadership, strategy, and the future of U.S. maritime power with reflections on national security decision-making and the challenges facing the Navy and broader maritime enterprise at Sea-Air-Space 2026.
Editor's Notes
There is always a flurry of news around the services' major conferences, and this week was no exception for the Navy, which held its annual Sea-Air-Space exposition in National Harbor. The expo cultivated with a speech from OMB director Russell Vought taking industry to task for challenges related to shipbuilding, and then as if to punctuate the point, the administration fired the Navy secretary ostensibly for the same reason. While the simmering tensions among senior leadership were no secret, the timing was peculiar — both relative to the conference and (more seriously) the ongoing naval blockade happening in the Strait of Hormuz. Because these conferences produce such a raw volume of news, the interesting stories tend to get subsumed by bigger news. So I want to make sure to highlight Defense One's article, "Navy scientists seek tech breakthroughs in areas that companies ignore," in which the Office of Naval Research gave a peek at one of the problem sets the organization is trying to push industry to take on for applied research: explainable AI, or in lay terms, AI that can show its homework to lessen hallucinations. A quote from the article stood out to me: "How do we invest in encouraging people — don't just train this thing and say, 'It's a great idea.' Let's actually be able to give the operator confidence." Offices like ONR or DARPA have this funny way of cutting through the BS and getting to what matters. They move fast, they deal in seeming impossibilities, and they don't have time for anything that doesn't move the mission forward. As the department more broadly tries to move faster, the ability to capture impact to mission is going to become the coin of the realm, to use an overwrought militaryism. That's not me saying it. Check out this week's TMCP original article, "The Pentagon's ROI era is (finally) here," from former speechwriter to the secretary of the Navy Neal Urwitz. He points out that industry, who as you might have noticed reading these notes so far seems to be a bit on blast with the administration, needs to kick their messaging into high gear to meet the moment. ROI from the military's perspective is not always about dollars saved, though Lord knows they could use some more of that. It's about lethality increased, sorties launched, lives recovered. Framing outcomes in language that inherently speaks to the mission is how the government will expect to receive information. If you've build a pretty dashboard that doesn't explain value in terms of the mission, you should probably be uncomfortable right now. As a comms professional, my free advice is this: 1) Read Neal's article, and 2) Go back through your marketing collaterals and pretend you're the customer to see if you can actually find value to your mission represented in your offering. If not, you have a head start to get going …. but not much!
The views represented in this commentary are my own and do not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
In the Weeds
The Department of the Air Force released updated data and AI strategies Monday. Air Force Secretary Meink said the department is focused on becoming an "AI-first force." Meanwhile, the data strategy is addresses the perennial problem of siloed data, which the document says has "hindered operational agility."
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According to reports following the rescue of a downed pilot in Iran, Ghost Murmur is a tool capable of detecting the electromagnetic signature of a human heartbeat at long range. The claim, if accurate, would represent a major leap in sensing technology — one the confounds even physicists.
The Pentagon is aiming to increase funding more than a hundredfold for an autonomous drone warfare program, according to budget documents released this week, signaling a major pivot towards AI-powered war. An overview of the budget describes this money as going towards "autonomous and remotely operated systems across air, land, and above and below the sea," including the "Drone Dominance" program.
Dig Deeper
This week, The Department of the Air Force released updated data and AI strategies. Air Force Secretary Meink said the department is focused on becoming an "AI-first force." Meanwhile, the data strategy is addresses the perennial problem of siloed data, which the document says has "hindered operational agility." Also this week, the Pentagon's Drone Dominance Program announced a major milestone when Army infantry drone operators successfully tested a new "bunker-busting" warhead designed for delivery by an unmanned aerial system. And SOUTHCOM established an "Autonomous Warfare Command."
The Pentagon's proposed $1.5 trillion budget includes funding to buy weapons, conduct research and develop new capabilities, and even enhance base facilities and barracks for junior troops. It also calls for plans to increase its total force.
Roger Mason has been nominated as the next director of the National Reconnaissance Office and would succeed Christopher Scolese as head of the nation's spy satellite agency.
The Small Business Administration wants to put a bigger focus on contracting with veteran-owned firms and efforts to root out fraud. In a document sent to agencies in March, SBA detailed new factors it will consider as it grades agency efforts to contract with small businesses.
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