The Ukrainian armed forces are “the strongest, most powerful armed forces in all of Europe,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week, citing a five-to-one Russian-to-Ukrainian casualty rate and four years of battlefield adaptation.

The necessity of fighting the war, Rubio said, has pushed Ukrainians to develop “new tactics, new techniques, new equipment, new technology that is creating a sort of hybrid asymmetrical warfare.”

U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told the Senate Armed Services Committee the same week that Ukraine has fused drones, sensors and weapons into a single command network running across the front, while U.S. Army systems remain “compartmentalized, isolated and ineffective against modern threats.”

“Ukraine’s Delta common operating system, their modular open system architecture command and control system, is absolutely incredible,” Driscoll testified.

“It fully integrates every single drone, every sensor and every shooting platform into just one single network. Ours does not.”

The shift in tone comes as allied partners press Kyiv for help countering Iranian drones, and as several countries, including the U.S., are seeking to finalize new weapons deals to route Ukrainian drone technology into joint ventures across the West.

It is a sharp turnaround from a second Trump administration that came in saying Kyiv had no cards to play.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has spent the months since Trump assumed office telling European allies the continent’s defense is their problem, not Washington’s, and Trump has continued to frame NATO as a debtor to the U.S. rather than a partner.

In March, Trump continued to downplay Ukrainian dominance in the drone and counter-drone industry.

“We don’t need their help in drone defense,” he told Fox News at the time. “We know more about drones than anybody. We have the best drones in the world, actually.”

The remark came as the Pentagon was quietly moving in the opposite direction: U.S. forces deployed a Ukrainian counter-drone system to intercept Iranian Shahed attacks over an American installation in Saudi Arabia weeks later, and Ukrainian military officials flew in to train American warfighters on the tech.

The same pattern is showing up on the war front.

Ukraine’s offensive operations exceed Russia’s “for the first time,” Commander-in-Chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi said last week, with Russian casualties running 3.5 times higher than Ukrainian losses along the line.

Much of Ukraine’s recent operational edge runs through a single piece of software: the Defense Ministry’s Delta system, the platform Driscoll told senators the U.S. Army cannot match.

Delta is the backbone of Ukraine’s digital kill chain. Developed by the Ministry of Defense, it fuses drone, sensor, radar and communications feeds onto a single digital map shared by verified frontline users.

In 2024, it became the first Ukrainian combat system to pass an information-security audit to NATO standards.

Kyiv has since folded a Mission Control module into the ecosystem that logs every drone sortie — type, launch point, route, mission and outcome — and pushes commander dashboards from battalion to leadership in minutes, logging and analyzing all the information along the way.

Yurii Myronenko, the Defense Ministry’s inspector general and the official who oversaw Delta’s expansion before moving into the audit role in March, said the system was built for the war it is now fighting.

“Delta is one of the best systems because, from the beginning, it was made for this drone war — integrated with EW systems, detectors, artillery, everything,” Myronenko told Military Times.

“And then we have all the data that we are learning from. It’s become a data war.”

The platform now has 270,000 registered users, he said — up from a reported 200,000 in December — and is being refined for ease of use and tighter integration with frontline tools every day.

Pressed on why the Army is only embracing Ukrainian-style integration in the fifth year of the war, Driscoll told the committee the delay is on him.

“Chairman, I would look at myself and only myself that we haven’t moved faster on it,” he said.

Driscoll pointed to a six-week sprint underway at Fort Carson, called Operation Jailbreak, as the answer: rewiring legacy systems to share data, then layering in generative AI for decision-making, something Driscoll said the Ukrainians have been doing “for the entire war.”

Earlier this month, the Army and a coalition of American defense companies, including Anduril, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Perennial Autonomy and RTX, announced a hackathon sprint called “Right to Integrate,” built around the same modular open-systems architecture that lets Delta absorb new tools as Ukrainian engineers build them.

Several of those companies have already tested their systems on the Ukrainian front, where the war has become the most consequential live proving ground for Western drone and counter-drone tech.

“The war in Ukraine showed the world that speed matters and an open architecture construct is highly effective in high-intensity warfare,” Driscoll said in the Army release.

Rewriting the Army’s command-and-control architecture while the U.S. fights through limited weapons supplies and competing wars is no simple feat. But the alternative, Driscoll said, is worse.

“The biggest risk is not going fast enough,” he told the committee.

The NATO and European Union member state also suspended train traffic around the capital Vilnius, while schools and kindergartens were told to take children to shelters.

“Immediately take shelter in a safe place, take care of your close ones, await new recommendations,” Lithuania’s army said in an alert sent to people in the capital Vilnius.

An alert was also issued in the Vilnius parliament building, where parliamentarians and ministers were in attendance.

Speaking to Reuters at an underground shelter, Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas said military aircraft were seeking to neutralize the threat.

“The NATO Air Policing Mission is activated and targeting a drone detected in Lithuanian airspace,” Kaunas said.

Lithuania’s alert came a day after a NATO fighter jet shot down a suspected Ukrainian drone over Estonia.

BALTIC STATES BLAME RUSSIA

The Baltic states, all strong backers of Ukraine, have blamed the drone incidents on Moscow, saying it redirects Ukrainian drones from their intended targets in Russia, but without providing evidence for the claims.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday it was monitoring the situation. It has previously accused the Baltic states of letting Ukraine launch drones from their territory, which they strongly deny.

Kaunas said Wednesday’s drone had come from Latvia. It was not known whether it had crashed or had left Lithuania, authorities said. NATO fighter jets were unable to locate it.

The incident lasted about an hour and the air warning was then lifted. Air and train traffic also resumed.

Ukraine has stepped up long-range drone attacks on Russia, including around the Baltic Sea. Since March, several Ukrainian military drones have strayed into the airspace of NATO members Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which all border Russia.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Wednesday the alliance’s response to the Estonia incident had been “calm, decisive and proportionate.”

“If drones come from Ukraine, they are not there because Ukraine wanted to send a drone to Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia. They are there because of the reckless, illegal full-scale attack of Russia,” Rutte told reporters in Brussels.

The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said in a post on X that Russian threats to the Baltic countries were “unacceptable” and would be seen as threats to the whole European Union.

The Latvian government resigned last week over its handling of the incursions.

Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal on Wednesday told parliament he was seeking broader powers to deal with threats from military drones, aiming to close gaps in detection, response and protection of critical sites.

WERE THE DRONES REDIRECTED?

Lithuanian Foreign Affairs Minister Kestutis Budrys said on X that the incidents were “a transparent act of desperation (by Russia) - an attempt to sow chaos and distract from a simple reality: Ukraine is hitting Russia’s military machine hard.”

“My message to the Kremlin: nice try. Failed again.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia’s military was closely monitoring the situation regarding drones flying through the Baltic states’ airspace, and was formulating an appropriate response, Russian state news agency TASS reported on Wednesday.

Drone expert Hans Liwang, from the Swedish Defence University, said it was technically possible to manipulate and, to some extent, steer Ukrainian drones, if they were guided by satellite-based communications systems such as GPS or GNSS.

“But it’s probably reasonable that these navigate by a lot of other means, for example that they have a camera that simply recognizes objects, such as roads, to guide them,” he said.

Liwang said the Ukrainian drones were similar to Iranian and Russian Shahed drones and could also navigate by tracking local cell phone signals, adding that the relatively small number of stray drones indicated that Russia had limited capacity to manipulate them.

“If it had been the case that the Russians could successfully steer drones over the Baltics, then we would probably have seen more than we have seen so far,” he said.

Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defense minister, announced at a press conference in Berlin that Germany is developing a European Space Component Command alongside a Weltraumakademie − a multilateral space training academy − and insisted that partner nations will be “embedded in the design phase” rather than presented with finished structures.

The meeting, billed as the first “DACH+L” format, expanding the traditional German-Austrian-Swiss defense dialogue to include Luxembourg, served as a platform for Pistorius to demonstrate traction on Germany’s €35 billion ($40.7 billion) military space investment pledged last fall. That program spans encrypted low-earth-orbit satellite constellations, military-grade launch capacity, and an expanded Space Command within the Bundeswehr.

Austria’s Defense Minister Claudia Tanner reaffirmed that Austria plans to put three operationally designated military satellites plus a test object into orbit next year, developed partly with Austrian startups. The program centers on two projects: LEO2VLEO, a joint initiative with the Netherlands covering imaging and navigation in very low Earth orbit, and BEACONSAT, an Austrian navigation satellite built for under €1 million ($1.16 million). Tanner said the satellites would be made available to partners and framed the push as essential for communications independence in a crisis.

Austria is neutral by constitution, though some have questioned how its deepening defense ties with European neighbors can be squared with this tradition and legal requirement.

Luxembourg’s Defense Minister Yuriko Backes, attending a DACH meeting for the first time, pointed to her country’s niche: established SATcom and Earth observation expertise that Luxembourg is “very willing to make available to allies and partners.” She and Tanner both referenced a forthcoming cooperation deal between the two countries on satellite use in July, without elaborating.

Swiss Federal Councilor Martin Pfister noted that there is no domain where Europe faces a greater dependency on non-European technology providers than in the space domain. “It is not possible for one country to solve this alone,” he said, though he called out Swiss state-owned company Beyond Gravity as a potential industrial contributor to a European solution.

Switzerland, too, has bent the limits of its longstanding neutrality to deepen its integration into European defense projects since the war in Ukraine. The joint accession of both Austria and Switzerland to the German-led European Sky Shield Initiative in 2023 was a prime example of this new thinking.

The latest moves signal a further deepening of these Central European defense ties. The conference alone was a remarkable signal, expanding the more established German-Austrian-Swsiss DACH format to Luxembourg as a fourth member.

What Monday’s meeting produced in concrete terms was modest: a reaffirmation of existing cooperation threads, a cyber exercise result − Luxembourg, together with the three other German-speaking countries, placed second at NATO’s Locked Shields event under German leadership in April − and political momentum behind space initiatives that remain largely conceptual. But the message was still clear: German-speaking Europe is serious about wanting to become a player in space, and the push for independence from the U.S. has gained additional momentum.

Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni has told EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen that Italy may pass on the offer of €14.9 billion in cheap, so-called SAFE loans from Brussels which could prove essential to pushing Italian defense spending towards NATO’s five percent of GDP target.

Italy’s defense minister Guido Crosetto said the final decision to use or not use SAFE loan needed to be taken by the end of May, and the last word needed to come from Italy’s finance ministry.

He said he had written twice to finance minister Giancarlo Giorgetti asking what Giorgetti planned to do, but had yet to receive a response.

The suggestion by Meloni is the second time in two months she has publicly mulled passing on an EU-driven way to push up spending.

In April she suggested Italy will not take advantage of an EU scheme allowing Rome to exempt a quantity of defense spending from calculations of annual deficit spending in order to allow extra arms purchases without breaking EU deficit rules.

The so-called National Escape Clause (NEC) would have boosted Italian defense spending by about €12 billion over three years if used.

Meloni’s government is now pushing the EU to allow it to use the NEC scheme for a different reason: to park extra spending on soaring energy costs outside the deficit calculation.

In a letter to Von der Leyen on Sunday, Meloni said it was imperative to use state cash to soften the blow of rising energy costs — and the consequent hike in the cost of living — caused by the current slowdown of oil supplies to Italy due to the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz.

“If we rightly consider defense a strategic priority that justifies the activation of the National Escape Clause, we must have the political courage to recognize that today energy security is also a European strategic priority,” Meloni wrote in the letter, which has been seen by Defense News.

Meloni argued that “helping companies and families confront energy costs will make the economy stronger and therefore better able to reinforce its defensive capacities.”

The prime minister said that was why she wanted the EU to allow the use of the NEC scheme for energy spending, and she added that if permission was not forthcoming, she would consider scrapping Italy’s application to obtain the SAFE loan.

She explained: Without the permission to alter the NEC scheme, “it would be very difficult for the Italian government to explain to the public any use of the SAFE program in the way it is currently set up.”

Last year Italy applied for SAFE loans from a €150 billion EU warchest and planned to spend the €14.9 billion it was allocated on programs including new armored fighting vehicles and tanks.

Meloni’s threat to do without defense spending which would flow from the use of the NEC scheme and the SAFE loans — totalling about €27 billion — comes as polling in Italy shows arms purchases are unpopular with voters, one year ahead of a national election.

Meloni has previously battled to beef up defense spending from the current two percent to hit five percent of GDP requested by NATO following pressure on European low spenders from President Trump.

But if Meloni originally sought to raise spending to avoid criticism from Trump, that motivation arguably no longer counts since Trump has already turned on the Italian leader over her decision not to assist the U.S. in its Iran campaign.

“I thought she had courage, but I was wrong,” Trump said of Meloni last month.

Meloni will nevertheless need to explain to NATO partners why she is considering passing on EU plans to boost defense spending at the next alliance summit in Turkey on July 7-8.

After years of U.S. pressure, the decision was taken by the UN Security Council in August last year through the adoption of Resolution 2790. The decision also tasks the Secretary-General with presenting options by June 1 of this year for the future implementation of the resolutions currently overseen by UNIFIL, most notably Resolution 1701 (2006), which recalls a number of earlier ones.

Following the 2006 war between Israel and the armed group Hezbollah, Resolution 1701 ended the conflict and expanded the mission’s mandate to monitor the cessation of hostilities, ensure humanitarian access for civilians, and support the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces in southern Lebanon.

UNIFIL currently fields around 8,500 peacekeepers from nearly 50 troop-contributing countries. Established in 1978 to oversee Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon and help restore peace and security, the mission operates exclusively on the Lebanese side of the border and also assists the Lebanese government in re-establishing its authority in the area.

The tenets of Resolution 1701 remains central to follow-on arrangements, as its implementation will technically continue beyond UNIFIL’s withdrawal. “This is why the Security Council asked the Secretary General to present options, in June, to implement Resolution 1701 when UNIFIL leaves,” UNIFIL spokesperson Kandice Ardiel told Defense News.

The Security Council has given no indication that it is revisiting the decision of ending the mission in southern Lebanon, and UNIFIL is not involved in the process of developing proposals.

The decision to end the mandate was largely driven by Washington, where leaders have argued the time had come for the Lebanese army to assume greater responsibility without the presence of UN peacekeepers.

Some analysts see the proposition as a contradiction in terms. Largely under-equipped, underfunded and understaffed, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) are in no position either to forcibly disarm Hezbollah, a move that could also trigger internal sectarian strife, or to confront the Israeli military.

As part of the process of winding down the mission, UNIFIL has developed plans for the withdrawal of personnel and the disposal of bases and equipment.

“Based on other cases, facilities could become Lebanese state buildings where the Lebanese Armed Forces could potentially be stationed,” said Chiara Ruffa, professor in political science at the Centre for International Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po Paris. “Ultimately, however, it depends on Israel’s intentions. If the objective is to maintain an occupation, then these sites could be taken over by the Israeli forces.”

As the process remains ongoing, analysts describe potential scenarios. “The UN Security Council could choose to dismantle UNIFIL and assign a greater role to the military Observer Group Lebanon (OGL) which still is a UN-led mission, but much smaller than UNIFIL,” Ruffa explained.

“In any case, Resolution 1701, together with Resolution 1559, is likely to form the backbone of the future configuration in southern Lebanon,” said Raymond Murphy, former UNIFIL peacekeeper and professor at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at University of Galway. Both resolutions call on foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon and on the disarmament of all armed groups in the country.

According to analysts, the UNIFIL withdrawal will have significant implications for southern Lebanon, particularly in terms of shedding light on potential war crimes, creating humanitarian corridors, and reducing civilian casualties and protection.

Other implications include the loss of coordination mechanisms, in particular the Tripartite series of military meetings organized by UNIFIL and held between 2006 and 2023, which brought together the Israeli and Lebanese armed forces and helped defuse minor tensions along the Blue Line.

UNIFIL’s withdrawal also is expected to have an economic impact on an area already neglected, as it has acted as “a financial lifeline for the area,” said Dina Arakji, a UAE-based analyst at Control Risks and non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute. The mission has also provided employment opportunities for locals and worked with municipalities.

Overall, the result is a diminished role for the multilateral system and the United Nations in addressing conflicts worldwide, said Ruffa, the political science professor.

“Shutting down the mission suggests that the UN is not important in conflict resolution, which runs counter to the evidence, as research shows that, notwithstanding its limitations, the United Nations does reduce the number of killings and helps protect civilians,” she said.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced the maneuvers without prior public notice on May 19, framing them as a rehearsal for “the preparation and use of nuclear forces in the event of a threat of aggression.” The exercises involve the Strategic Missile Forces, the Northern and Pacific Fleets, Long-Range Aviation Command, and units from the Leningrad and Central Military Districts, according to the ministry statement. Live launches of ballistic and cruise missiles at ranges inside Russia are planned as part of the drills.

The timing is conspicuous on multiple fronts. Russia had not previously announced nuclear exercises for May; its annual strategic nuclear drill − informally known as “Grom” − has traditionally been held in October since 2022. The last time Moscow staged a surprise nuclear exercise was in the summer of 2024, when it focused on non-strategic weapons apparently timed to Western debates over supplying long-range missiles to Ukraine. Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War assessed that the current drills are similarly aimed at “influencing NATO decision-making and masking Russia’s own weaknesses,” characterizing them as an information-pressure operation at least as much as a purely operational readiness check.

The exercises kicked off as President Vladimir Putin was en route to Beijing for a two-day visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, a diplomatic tableau that military expert Dmitry Kornev described to the Russian newspaper Izvestia as deliberately synchronized. The dual messaging − nuclear muscle-flexing at home, high-profile diplomacy abroad − fits a pattern the Kremlin has used repeatedly since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

Russia’s strategic weapons ensure it a place among the great powers. Its nuclear arsenal is the world’s largest, with the Federation of American Scientists estimating last week that Russia currently has a total active stockpile of 4,400 nuclear weapons.

A new dimension of these drills is the explicit integration of Belarus. The Belarusian Defense Ministry announced its own parallel exercise on May 18, with units practicing the delivery and preparation of nuclear munitions “from unprepared positions on Belarusian territory” in coordination with Russian forces. Russia has stationed its Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile in Belarus since 2025, following an agreement made two years earlier. It can deliver either conventional or nuclear warheads.

The exercises also follow a successful Sarmat ICBM test launch on May 12, just one week prior, after a series of earlier failures, including a silo-destroying misfire in September 2024. Putin personally confirmed after that test that the Sarmat would be placed on combat duty “at the end of the current year.”

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov escalated the rhetoric in parallel with the drills, warning in an interview with Russian state-owned news agency TASS that “strategic risks are mounting, as is the danger of a head-on clash between NATO and our country, with all the potentially catastrophic consequences that would entail.”

Moscow has pointed to statements by Lithuania’s foreign minister about a potential strike on Kaliningrad, as well as broader European rearmament and debates surrounding nuclear sharing, as justifications for the drills.

Western analysts and Ukrainian officials have taken a more sober view. Ukrainian sources cited by ISW suggest one secondary purpose of the exercises may be to create a threat from the northern direction − via Belarus − thereby drawing Ukrainian reserves away from the front ahead of a planned Russian summer offensive. The Kremlin, for its part, insists the drills are defensive in nature and directed at no specific country.

Latvian troops tried out unmanned ground vehicles during the Crystal Arrow exercise as part of operational testing to integrate new technology into NATO’s Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative, inspired by lessons from Ukraine, said Brig. Gen. Chris Gent, deputy chief of staff transformation and integration at NATO Allied Land Command.

“There’s no secrets here, it’s how warfare develops,” Gent told Defense News in an interview at the Sēlija training area in Latvia last week. “There is now a zone in front of you where you’re not going to put humans in harm’s way, and it’s all about machines taking the risk and absorbing that risk for you, and attrition.”

With European intelligence agencies warning Russia could threaten NATO territory within a few years after fighting ends in Ukraine, the alliance’s Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative aims to help build up a more credible border defense. Several countries on NATO’s eastern flank, including Latvia and Poland, have faced drone incursions from the direction of Russia over the past year.

The initiative, shorthanded as EFDI, “has really picked up momentum very quickly,” United States Army Europe and Africa commander Gen. Chris Donahue told officers and officials in a briefing at the Sēlija range, describing it as NATO’s war-fighting concept.

Donahue first discussed the concept at a conference in Germany last July. He said that beyond showing PowerPoint slides, it’s now about fielding capabilities and countries exercising with them to prove they work, and “make sure we have deterrence every day.”

The concept includes a unified network of connected sensors, unmanned systems and both offensive and defensive effectors, according to Gent. The Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative envisions “an autonomous zone, well documented already” where only unmanned systems can operate effectively before either side starts taking casualties, Gent said.

“This is here right now,” Gent said, citing press reports of Ukraine capturing a position in April using only unmanned systems. “We’re not talking about science fiction, we’re not talking about the future. We’re not talking about 2040. We are talking about the requirement today.”

The challenge then becomes how many autonomous systems one side has, how effective they are, and how effective the counters are, according to Gent, who said the only way to understand that is through exercises such as Crystal Arrow. One hurdle remains different levels of permissions between NATO nations about allowing autonomous sensors to fire effectors, he said.

“More and more nations are being challenged or are having that argument developed for them in real time, when, for example, you might see a drone incursion in peacetime,” Gent said. “Do we shoot that drone down, where might it land, for example. It’s become very real here in Latvia.”

NATO has been testing new technologies in support of the EFDI since September within the Task Force X framework. During the first pilot in Lithuania in September, German forces integrated unmanned ground vehicles and counter-UAS in their operations, while testing in Finland in December focused on connectivity, according to Gent.

The alliance is developing a “data backbone” across the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative, with a network tying together thousands of sensors and effectors, including acoustic and electro-optical sensors as well as counter-UAS and UGVs, Gent said. The idea is for sensors across the eastern flank to talk to each other and “trigger each other’s effectors across international boundaries,” he said.

Trying out new capabilities during exercises is key to helping troops integrate them, Gent said, noting how Latvia’s Mechanized Infantry Brigade used UGVs during Crystal Arrow. NATO covered the cost of travel and accommodation for media attending the exercise, including for Defense News.

The alliance is also asking companies to talk about how they’ll connect unmanned ground systems into NATO operating systems, with Gent saying there are lessons to be learned from Task Force X Baltic.

Work is ongoing within NATO’s operational experimentation to establish the effective size of the autonomous zone, which varies depending on the terrain, according to Gent.

In Ukraine, the term “kill zone” is used informally to describe an area near the front where movement is rapidly detected and targeted by drones, artillery or loitering munitions, and which can range to 15 kilometers or more from the line of contact in some areas.

Latvian troops are training every day to secure this “kill zone” with only unmanned systems, said Maj. Eduards Šinkūns, chief of the operational, planning and training department of the Mechanized Infantry Brigade, in a briefing with reporters during Crystal Arrow. He described a multilayered system of drones supported by infantry and artillery.

“What we see in Ukraine, no vehicle movements are in the gray zone at all,” Šinkūns said. “Any movement is destroyed.”

Šinkūns declined to detail how Latvia would defend against a Russian invasion, saying “we Latvians, especially the mechanized brigade, we have a plan, and we know how to execute it. That’s all I can say about it.”

The Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative is one part in a multilayered approach to dissuade a Russian attack, said Brig. Gen. Jamie Murray, the deputy commander of the Estonian Division, in an interview with Defense News at the Sēlija training area.

While the deterrence initiative creates a “day zero problem” by being able to detect and strike an attacker immediately, the next layer is the ability of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania to hit targets in the deep if Russia does invade. He noted Estonia’s purchase of additional Chunmoo rocket artillery systems from Hanwha Aerospace with a range of 290 kilometers.

He said the most demanding challenge for the alliance would be “a gambling Putin, throwing some forces, gambling that NATO doesn’t react, nibbling a bit of any of our countries,” Murray said.

“If deterrence has failed, we reserve that right to then strike back at military targets,” Murray said. “The thing about the kill zone, it’s not going to be symmetrical. The Estonians, for example, have a very clear ‘no Russian boots on our territory.’ So the kill zone could be conceivably on their side of the border.”

Shaping the terrain with physical barriers in combination with the deterrence initiative can allow NATO forces to compensate for the force-ratio imbalance with Russia, Murray said. He cited the Baltic Defense Line of anti-tank ditches and physical obstacles, and the difficulty Soviet troops faced in 1944 to remove German troops due to the forest cover.

“The first act is to deter them, the second is to stop them, and the third is to get them into a position where ultimately they’ve culminated, we’re forcing them to do an echelon change, and as they do that, they’re really vulnerable,” Murray said.

He said NATO’s logic has moved from the tripwire force to “deterrence by punishment and denial.”

“The end state is clear, and we’re all working towards it,” Murray said. “Prove to Russia that they shouldn’t invade.”

The purchase, which was announced by the European Union’s TED public procurement platform, envisages ten years of logistic support and indicates the A330 was the only aircraft in the bidding.

The deal marks a shift from Boeing to Airbus for the Italian Air Force, which flies four Boeing 767-based tanker aircraft which entered service from 2011.

In 2021 Italy announced plans to upgrade its B-767 tankers and purchase two more, but the following year Rome changed its plans, deciding instead to buy six new KC-46 aircraft.

In 2024, however, Italy started to consider Airbus after suspending plans to acquire the KC-46 tankers.

At the time, Italy stated the €1.1 billion KC-46 purchase had been halted “due to changed and unforeseen needs.”

At the time, Defense News reported the halting of the order was linked to cost and the promised delivery time of the new aircraft.

The Airbus order comes at a time when European militaries are seeking greater commonality and are warier of purchases of U.S. products as President Trump regularly disparages the traditional U.S.-Europe trans-Atlantic alliance.

France, Spain and the U..K are customers of the A330 MRTT while a host of other European nations fly the aircraft through NATO pooling.

Under a framework known as the NATO Force Model, the alliance’s member countries identify a pool of available forces that could be activated during a conflict or any other major crisis, such as a military attack on a NATO member.

While the precise composition of those wartime forces is a closely guarded secret, the Pentagon has decided to significantly scale down its commitment, said the sources, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the plans.

U.S. President Donald Trump has made clear he expects European countries to take over primary responsibility for the continent’s security from the United States. The message to allies this week is a concrete sign of that policy being implemented.

Several details were unclear, such as how quickly the Pentagon plans to shift crisis-mode responsibilities onto European allies. The sources said, however, that the Pentagon plans to announce its intention to lessen its commitment at a Friday meeting of defense policy chiefs in Brussels.

Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby has said publicly that the United States will continue to use its nuclear weapons to protect NATO members, even as European allies take the lead on conventional forces.

More US troop withdrawals from Europe expected, NATO commander says

The U.S. will likely be represented by Alex Velez-Green, a key aide to Colby, the sources said. Adjusting the NATO Force Model has emerged as a key priority of Colby’s team heading into the next NATO leaders’ summit, which will take place in Turkey in July, one of the sources added.

A NATO spokesperson directed a request for comment to the United States. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Alliance under strain

The NATO alliance is under unprecedented strain, with some European countries concerned that Washington may withdraw outright. A major adjustment to the forces the U.S. would make available during wartime will only intensify those concerns.

In the past few weeks, the Trump administration has announced plans to cut some 5,000 U.S. troops from Europe, including a decision to cancel a deployment of an Army brigade to Poland — a surprise decision that was slammed by U.S. lawmakers.

Army leaders in hot seat over Poland deployment cancellation

One of the sources and another source familiar with the matter said aides on Capitol Hill were aware of and concerned about the Pentagon’s plans to narrow its commitments under the NATO Force Model.

A senior NATO diplomat said, however, they still believed there is an understanding that the United States would come to Europe’s aid if it was in trouble.

Trump and many of his aides have slammed European allies for not spending enough on their militaries and relying on the U.S. for conventional defense, and they point out that the U.S. still has tens of thousands of troops in Europe.

The president’s ambition to take control of Greenland, a Danish overseas territory, has further inflamed transatlantic tensions, as has an ongoing spat between Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has sharply criticized Trump’s war with Iran.

European allies generally counter that they are rapidly beefing up their military capabilities, but that doing so cannot be done overnight.

The single-engine, prop-driven OA-1K, a militarized version of the Air Tractor AT-802 crop duster, is built to give isolated special operations teams eyes overhead and firepower on call from rough dirt strips with little support.

“It is essentially a Swiss Army Knife of airborne capability,” Lt. Col. Robert Wilson, AFSOC’s armed overwatch requirements branch chief, told reporters.

“Rapid disassembly and reassembly means, in a matter of hours, the aircraft can be loaded into mobility aircraft like a C-5 or C-17 for worldwide deployment,” Wilson said in an AFSOC release. “With the OA-1K, ‘any place, any time, anywhere’ is not just a motto, but an actual capability.”

Lt. Gen. Mike Conley, AFSOC commander, added in the release that the OA-1K “offers a unique and modular solution for a wide range of operations, including armed overwatch, at a fraction of a cost of other platforms.”

The cost case rests on platform consolidation. A 2023 Government Accountability Office report noted SOCOM refers to the mix of close air support, strike and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft flown over a single special operations mission as “the stack.” AFSOC has pitched the modular Skyraider II as a cheaper airframe that can do the work of many.

The Air Force now flies 18 Skyraider IIs and expects “a handful more” by October, Wilson said.

The aircraft, named for the Vietnam-era A-1 Skyraider, currently operates out of Will Rogers Air National Guard Base, Oklahoma, and will eventually operate from Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona.

The program of record is 75 aircraft, but the Pentagon has cut the funded total to 53. The same GAO report found that SOCOM had not justified the 75-aircraft fleet and urged a slowdown.

The cuts align with a broader Pentagon shift toward a potential high-end fight with China, where a slow, low-flying turboprop with no ejection seat is a hard sell.

“The 75 quantity figure is the program record,” Wilson said. “I would say, as the capability sponsor, less than 75 is not desirable. We would like to see it at the program record of 75, but ... just being pragmatic, obviously, with resource constraints that could potentially limit the program less than that.”

Boeing’s MQ-25A is the first operational carrier-based unmanned aircraft and as the Stingray enters the force, it is intended to relieve the Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornets of their aerial refueling role.

“Integrating unmanned refueling extends the lethality of our Carrier Strike Groups and equips our force with a decisive advantage to fight and win against any adversary,” Cao wrote in a post on X.

The Stingray has reached milestone C, which in the defense acquisition process, authorizes a program to transition from the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase into production and deployment — a process that in this instance has been nearly eight years in the making.

Inked in 2018, the $805 million Boeing-Navy contract covered the design, development, fabrication, test and delivery of four Stingray aircraft, a program that the service expects will cost about $13 billion for 72 aircraft, according to previous Military Times coverage.

Despite its first test flight running a year later than previously planned, on April 25 the Stingray inched closer to operability when it successfully completed its first flight from Mascoutah, Illinois.

The MQ-25A was airborne for roughly two hours, according to a Navy release, with Navy and Boeing Air Vehicle Pilots controlling the Stingray from the Unmanned Carrier Aviation Mission Control System MD-5 Ground Control Station.

“Boeing is honored to work alongside our U.S. Navy partner in achieving this historic milestone in the MQ-25A Stingray’s development life cycle,” said Troy Rutherford, vice president, Boeing MQ-25 program. “We remain focused on getting this game-changing unmanned aircraft into the hands of the fleet and integrated into the carrier air wing.”

A low-rate initial production, or LRIP, Lot 1 contract for three aircraft is expected to be awarded this summer and include priced options for Lot 2 (three aircraft) and Lot 3 (five aircraft), according to the Navy release.

The role of the MQ-25A is intended to provide the Carrier Air Wing with unmanned refueling, freeing up F/A-18E/F aircraft to focus on strike missions.

“This will expand the operational reach of the air wing while preserving the service life of F/A-18E/Fs, improving readiness across the Super Hornet fleet,” the release said.

The redeployment of U.S. troops from Europe will be an ongoing process for several years, even if there’s no exact timeline, Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Alexus Grynkewich said in a press conference in Brussels on Tuesday, following a meeting of NATO military chiefs.

“What we’re basically saying is, as the European pillar of the alliance gets stronger, this allows the U.S. to reduce its presence in Europe and limit itself to providing only those critical capabilities that allies cannot yet provide,” Grynkewich said. “So we should expect there to be a redeployment of U.S. forces over time as allies build their capacity.”

The remark comes as Polish government leaders expressed concern about the Pentagon abruptly canceling a planned rotation of an armored brigade combat team of more than 4,000 soldiers to the country on NATO’s eastern flank.

The military chiefs discussed the U.S. decision to redeploy the armored brigade combat team, which Grynkewich said doesn’t impact what he called “executability” of NATO’s regional plans. He said the U.S. is withdrawing a total of 5,000 troops from Europe, with the armored brigade combat team accounting for a large part, as well as the cancellation of a long-range fires battalion deployment.

Grynkewich said planning is ongoing to redeploy “additional minor elements” accounting for another several hundred troops.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed animosity towards European NATO members, prompting concern in European capitals about whether American commitments to the alliance still hold. The Pentagon said earlier this month it will withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany, whose Chancellor Friedrich Merz has criticized Washington’s handling of the war with Iran.

The withdrawal of additional troops is a decision for U.S. political leadership, according to Grynkewich. He said the timeline will “vary broadly” across different capabilities as NATO members meet spending commitments agreed in 2025 in The Hague and as they meet their capability targets.

NATO’s top military commander said a lot has happened since 2022, as the Baltic countries, Poland and “many others have really built up their ground combat power. So there’s substantially more capability in the ground domain than there was previously.”

Army leaders in hot seat over Poland deployment cancellation

Grynkewich name-checked the Canada-led Multinational Brigade in Latvia, which he said is fully operational and “highly effective,” and noted Germany continues to build up a brigade in Lithuania.

“As allies build up their capability, the United States is able to pull capability back and use it for other global priorities,” Grynkewich said.

The general said he’ll continue work in his joint role as the commander of U.S. European Command and NATO’s top military commander, “to ensure we’ve got the right coverage in the right places to maintain deterrence.”

The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have shown war is now shaped by “speed, mass, software, drones, electronic warfare, space and data, areas where we have a lot to do,” said Adm. Pierre Vandier, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, at the press conference.

While NATO needs more missiles, artillery shells, air defense, high-end capabilities and stockpiles, those will not be sufficient on their own, according to Vandier. He said legacy platforms are not obsolete, but “the decisive question is the force mix” of combining ships, aircraft and tanks with robots, drones, sensors, software and new effectors.

 ”More of the same is necessary, but more of the same will not be enough by far,” Vandier said. “If we want mass and speed, we need to know how we can build fast, produce at scale, adapt quickly, and still deliver real operational effect. And we need to identify which part of our industrial base can actually deliver it.”

According to Monday’s press release, the decision to award the contract was made by the Joint Interagency Task Force 401, or JIATF-401, a Defense Department organization charged with researching, testing, and procuring counter-drone technology.

Perennial will deliver a range of AI-enabled counter-unmanned aerial systems currently used by U.S. forces. These include Merops interceptors, Bumblebee quadcopters and Hornet midrange strike drones.

In a statement, the company said the contract “validates the operational reliability of that technology in the world’s most actively contested environments,” and “deepens the existing strategic partnership” between it and the Defense Department.

U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, director of JIATF-401, in the statement called drones “the defining threat of our time,” and reiterated the need to maintain partnerships with companies like Perennial.

“We must be proactive with creating a layered defense that deploy and scale low-cost, attritable air-to-air drone interceptors at all our facilities at home and abroad,” he added.

In December, the Pentagon launched the billion-dollar Drone Dominance initiative to equip troops with cheap, disposable drones and prepare them for technological changes on the battlefield, many of which were demonstrated in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Another part of the initiative included investing heavily in the domestic drone industry, so within the next few years, equipment could be produced at scale for significantly less money.

But the Iran war further accelerated the U.S. military’s demand for the types of drones combatants have been using to attack or harass troops, destroy equipment or infrastructure and conduct surveillance, among other things.

During last month’s budget hearings, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll told lawmakers that Perennial began rapidly scaling production of its Merops drones.

Perennial, originally launched by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt as Project Eagle, developed the Merops interceptor for Ukrainian forces to counter Russia’s one-way attack drones known as Shaheds.

The U.S. military is using the interceptors the same way against Iran’s Sheheds.

When answering questions about the investment, Driscoll described a war of attrition, saying the Merops currently costs about $15,000 per unit, whereas a Shahed costs somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000.

Additionally, JIATF-401 awarded Perennial a separate $5.2 million contract in January for the Bumblebee V2 counter-drone system, and the Army reportedly tested the Hornet midrange strike drones in March.

The company has also opened manufacturing operations in Europe through a partnership aimed at expanding production of its Merops drones.

Perennial’s contract will end in three years or whenever the Pentagon pays out the full $500 million, whichever comes first.

The drone was shot down by a Romanian F-16 fighter jet stationed in Šiauliai, Lithuania, Estonian media reported from a press conference by the defense ministry in Tallinn. Estonian radars had detected the threat before it entered the country’s airspace, according to the Estonian minister of defense, Hanno Pevkur.

The shootdown has been confirmed by several high-ranking Estonian government officials.

The drone fell into a swampy area between Lake Võrtsjärv and Põltsamaa just before 13:00 local time.

Around two hours after the incident, Ukraine issued a public apology, with Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi saying that “we apologize to Estonia and all of our Baltic friends for such unintended incidents.”

Estonia’s air force commander, Brig. Gen. Riivo Valge, was cited as saying that a residual threat to the Baltic states remained, adding that “it may happen that we may have a repeat of the situation today.”

The wreckage of the drone shot down today has not yet been recovered, and Estonian authorities warned residents not to touch any debris. The civil alert associated with the airspace incursion has been lifted.

The shoot-down comes just hours after Russia had used martial language to threaten Latvia, with the SVR − Russia’s foreign intelligence agency − claiming without evidence that Latvia was planning to allow Ukraine to use its territory to launch drones against Russia. The Moscow-based agency said that NATO membership “will not protect the accomplices of terrorists from just retribution.”

Latvia has denied any such claims, with the country’s foreign minister taking to X to state that “Russia lies again.”

Tykhyi, the Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson, said that “neither Estonia, nor Latvia, Lithuania, or Finland have ever allowed to use their airspace for strikes against Russia. Furthermore, Ukraine has never requested such a use.”

This year has seen several incidents of Ukrainian drones entering Baltic NATO countries’ airspaces and, in some cases, even crashing into critical infrastructure. An accidental strike on an empty Latvian oil refinery last week prompted the resignation of both the prime minister and the defense minister there. Previously, drones had hit a power plant chimney in Estonia and fallen into a lake in Lithuania.

Speculation and some tacit official acknowledgment have surfaced that Russia may be using electronic warfare measures to redirect long-range strike drones from Ukraine meant for Russian targets towards the NATO countries at the eastern end of the Baltic Sea.

“Russia continues to redirect Ukrainian drones into the Baltics with the use of its electronic warfare,” the Ukrainian MFA said. “And Moscow does this on purpose, together with intensified propaganda.”

Russia has exploited the drone incidents in a coordinated media campaign, sidestepping claims of EW measures to place blame on the Baltic States and Finland for allegedly “opening their airspaces” to Ukrainian drones. Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in April that those countries “will face consequences.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated with a comment from the Ukrainian government.

The frigates are expected to cost a little over 10 billion Swedish kroner each, with the final price depending on the integrated equipment and systems, Swedish Defence Minister Pål Jonson said in a press conference in Stockholm on Tuesday. The vessels will be equipped with MBDA’s Aster 30 missiles for long-range air defense.

The frigate purchase represents one of Sweden’s biggest defense investments since the Gripen fighter jet in the 1980s and will triple the country’s air-defense capabilities, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said. For Naval Group, the selection is a welcome win after Norway in August last year picked the U.K.’s Type 26 frigate, primarily manufactured by BAE Systems, over the smaller French design.

Rapid delivery is “absolutely essential given the very serious security situation we are currently in,” Jonson said. With the FDI, “Sweden is acquiring a highly advanced surface combatant for which an adversary would also need to allocate significant resources to counter,” he said.

Sweden picked the Naval Group vessel, known in French as the Frégate de Défense et d’Intervention, due to a combination of delivery time, an active production line ensuring a “very high degree of delivery reliability,” and an integrated and proven air-defense system, according to Jonson. He also cited the possibility of sharing costs with FDI operators France and Greece as important.

The first frigate in what will be named the Luleå class is expected to be delivered in 2030, based on the bid, with one frigate delivered per year, Jonson said.

France has been ordering Swedish equipment recently, including a contract for two of Saab’s GlobalEye airborne early warning and control aircraft in December, with an option for two more.

Jonson said the time of delivery has been the main consideration for the choice of the French frigate, rather than offset agreements.

The Swedish Defence Materiel Administration will now start negotiations with France and Naval Group. The final price will depend on the subsystems and armament, with the acquisition a “very large deal” that will strengthen ties with France and open the door to further cooperation, according to the defense minister.

Kristersson said he put in a call to French President Emmanuel Macron this morning so the French president wouldn’t learn of the Swedish decision via the media.

The Swedish prime minister said there’s no connection between the frigate pick and discussions around cooperation regarding France’s nuclear capabilities.

The new frigates will make the Swedish Navy and armed forces significantly stronger, also because Sweden plans to continue to use the existing Visby corvettes “for a long time to come,” alongside the future Luleå class, according to Jonson. The corvettes will be upgraded with additional air-defense capabilities, Swedish Chief of Defence Gen. Michael Claesson said.

Kristersson, Jonson and Claesson spoke at a press conference held on the Visby-class corvette Härnösand moored on the historical Skeppsbron quay in Stockholm. The Swedish corvettes are 73 meters long and displace 650 tons.

The new surface combatants are expected to be capable of operating in NATO’s entire area of operations, and that requires larger vessels than the Visby-class corvettes, with improved long-range air defenses, according to Jonson. The FDI is 122 meters long and displaces around 4,500 tons, smaller than many recent frigate designs being built or planned in the U.K., Spain, Italy and Germany.

In addition to the Aster 30, which Jonson described as capable of shooting down ballistic missiles and comparable to the land-based Patriot air-defense system, the frigates will be equipped with the CAMM-ER medium-range air-defense system, also from pan-European missile maker MBDA.

The Aster 30 has a “completely different” range compared to what the Visby corvettes can offer and can be integrated in NATO’s integrated air and missile defense system, said Claesson, who didn’t answer a question about how many vertical launch cells the Swedish frigates will carry.

In the contract talks, Sweden will stipulate inclusion of Swedish components including Saab’s RBS-15 anti-ship missile, Torped 47 lightweight torpedo, Giraffe G1X compact radar and Trackfire remote-weapon station, as well as the BAE Systems Bofors 57mm naval gun and 40mm cannon, Jonson said.

Claesson noted the FDI has an integrated command-and-control system that can interface with NATO systems, and Sweden will be “very careful” about system compatibility.

“The frigates mean that we get a significantly greater freedom of action to be able to participate in a much larger range of the tasks that NATO sets,” Claesson said. He said one reason to move forward with the frigate purchase was because of NATO capability targets.

France had previously touted its ability to supply Sweden with a fully equipped and armed frigate in 2030, and Naval Group said in October it can produce two of the FDI frigates per year.

For the Swedish frigate acquisition, Spain’s Navantia had offered its Alfa 4000 model, with a length of 120 meters and a displacement of 4,300 metric tons, while the United Kingdom’s Babcock had pitched its Arrowhead 120 model for Sweden, with a length of 124 meters and a displacement of 4,650 tons.

France placed an order for its fifth FDI frigate in March, the final vessel currently planned in the class for the French Navy, with delivery planned for 2032. The French budget for five vessels was €4.28 billion ($5 billion), according to the 2019 defense spending plan, putting the price at around €850 million per unit.

Greece in November exercised an option for a fourth FDI frigate, and in March sent the frigate Kimon, its first vessel in the class, to Cyprus.

The FDI is equipped with a Thales Sea Fire radar with four fixed panels, and France describes the frigate as fully digital, equipped with “significant computer power” to process sensor data.

The roughly 150 soldiers drawn from Flugabwehrraketengeschwader 1, based in Husum, Germany, will form a Patriot Air and Missile Defence Task Force (AMD TF) and will relieve a U.S. unit currently stationed in the country. The German contingent will operate under NATO’s Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) framework in close coordination with Turkish and remaining American forces, according to a Bundeswehr press statement.

The deployment comes after a period of acute alarm on NATO’s southern perimeter. In early March, NATO air defenses intercepted at least four Iranian ballistic missiles that entered Turkish airspace within days of each other, with one apparently targeting Incirlik Air Base in Adana province, where U.S. forces − including nuclear weapons − are stationed. The incidents prompted NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe to boost the alliance’s ballistic missile defense posture and to deploy additional U.S. Patriot systems to Adana and Malatya. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned that Iran “is also posing a huge threat to us here in Europe.”

Germany’s contribution is framed in Berlin as an exercise in burden-sharing − a politically loaded term in an alliance increasingly strained with U.S. accusations of European free-riding. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius cited Germany’s simultaneous commitments on the eastern flank and in the High North, describing the Turkey deployment as further evidence that Berlin is “taking on more responsibility within NATO.”

The Bundeswehr last stationed Patriot units in Turkey from 2013 to 2015 under NATO’s Operation Active Fence, guarding the Syrian border from Kahramanmaraş. More recently, the same squadron spent much of 2025 protecting the NATO logistics hub at Rzeszów, Poland.

Germany operates a limited number of Patriot fire units and has faced persistent pressure to deliver systems to Ukraine − requests it has accommodated, though not without strain on its own readiness.

On May 18, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, the country’s deputy prime minister and national defense minister, attended a ceremony in eastern Poland related to the launch of a new engine servicing hub for the Polish fleet of Abrams tanks. The event, designed to highlight existing trans-Atlantic defense ties, was overshadowed by Washington’s recent order to halt a planned nine-month U.S. Army rotation to Eastern Europe.

“The United States military that is stationed in Poland, stationed in Europe, gives security guarantees,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said at the event. “On the other hand, we have not only a [U.S.] military presence, but also great, strategic purchases in the United States. And it is difficult to find in the world, not only in Europe, a second country that has invested so heavily in purchases of the best American gear for its own needs.”

Kosiniak-Kamysz referred to Poland’s numerous U.S. weapon purchases from the past years which, in addition to tanks, comprise procurements of fighter jets, helicopters, missiles and rocket launchers.

“More than fifty billion dollars is the sum of the purchases that we are implementing in the United States,” the minister said. “This is all a great investment in the Polish-American alliance”.

Polish officials say that, if the U.S. military presence is to be decreased in Europe, they expect the cuts not to concern the troops who are already deployed to Poland.

“We understand that there is a reorganization of the American military presence in Europe. But this reorganization cannot be made at the cost of the biggest ally of the United States in Europe,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said. “We invest around 15,000 dollars every year for the deployment of each [U.S. soldier], which distinguishes us from other European countries.”

Around 10,000 U.S. soldiers are currently stationed in Poland, the majority of which have been deployed to the country as part of a rotational presence.

Gen. Dagvin Anderson, head of U.S. Africa Command, seemed concerned that the answer might be “no” when he testified to Congress last week.

Anderson said that Africa is the epicenter of global terrorism, but warned that a 75% U.S. force reduction over the past decade – coupled with a parallel drawdown of allied troops – has created “an intelligence black hole” on the continent.

“AFRICOM’s lack of expeditionary capabilities and diminished force posture compromise our crisis response,” Anderson testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, noting the command is operating with “minimum necessary resources.”

“Our reduced presence on the continent also allows disruptive actors to drive the agenda, undercutting American interests,” he said. “ISIS leadership is [in] Africa. Al-Qaeda’s economic engine is in Africa. Both of these groups share the will and intent to strike our homeland.”

Asked whether his command is capable of disrupting such threats, Anderson gave a circumspect response. “That is very difficult for us to ascertain in the Sahel right now given our limited posture,” he cautioned.

The implicitly critical remarks came just before President Donald Trump ordered a strike that killed the Islamic State’s second-in-command in Lake Chad Basin. Additional armed actions in northeastern Nigeria followed soon after.

“At my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday night. “He will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans.”

Trump identified the target as Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, a top figure in ISIS who was labeled a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” by the State Department in 2023 during former President Joe Biden’s administration.

The joint commando raid was the result of extensive intelligence sharing and reconnaissance between the U.S. and Nigeria, according to the Nigerian Army. The assault on al-Minuki’s fortified enclave in Metele, Borno State, commenced shortly after midnight and culminated in airstrikes on the site following a three-hour clash. Several of the ISIS leader’s lieutenants were also killed in the firefight.

There were no American or Nigerian military injuries reported as of Monday, a U.S. official told Military Times.

AFRICOM, in a statement, said al-Minuki provided “strategic guidance to the ISIS global network on media and financial operations as well as the development and manufacturing of weapons, explosives, and drones.” It added that he had a “significant history of involvement in planning attacks and directing hostage taking.”

Officials in Washington and Lagos announced on Sunday that the two countries conducted further strikes against ISIS in Metele in the ensuing days, resulting in the deaths of at least 20 militants.

The Islamic State has transformed the Sahel into a breeding ground for some of its most lethal affiliates, notably ISIS-West Africa, also known as ISIS-WA, and its rival, Boko Haram.

Both groups are especially active in the Lake Chad Basin, which spans Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. Myriad factors — including violent extremism, poverty, food insecurity, climate change and weak governance — have converged to make the theater the locus of one of the world’s most intractable humanitarian crises.

The operation that killed al-Minuki was the most dramatic moment so far in the ongoing effort by the Pentagon to aid the Nigerian government in its quest to beat back insurgents.

On Christmas night, American and Nigerian forces carried out joint missile strikes in the Sokoto State. Trump said “ISIS Terrorist Scum” were the targets. Soon after, the Pentagon deployed roughly 200 troops to the West African nation to assist in training the country’s armed forces as they battle an Islamist insurgency.

Dr. Omar Mohammed, a senior research fellow within the program on extremism at George Washington University, told Military Times that Africa has emerged as a focal point of terrorist activity since the collapse of the Islamic State’s territorial caliphate in 2017.

He said jihadist movements have expanded rapidly across the Sahel, in part through the recruitment of child soldiers who become more susceptible to radical recruitment amid destitution.

“Poverty is the reason that leads to child soldiers,” Mohammed asserted, adding that the Islamic State has infiltrated schools to create conditions in which indoctrinations begin early. “When there is no access to regular schools, imagine: Their teacher is an imam with the Islamic State teaching them how to be terrorists, promising them money. It makes it very concerning.”

According to the United Nations, violence has forced more than 1,827 schools across the Lake Chad Basin to close, depriving thousands of children access to education. Today, Sub-Saharan Africa remains one of the least educated regions on earth.

Mohammed argued that the U.S. must bolster efforts to confront the rise of terrorism in Africa, not scale back.

“Without continued pressure, terrorists will always find a way to plot against the United States, the West and American interests around the world,” he said. “It is their ideology that goes against everything civil and everything democratic.”

The aerial bomb is a winged but engineless weapon that drops from an aircraft at altitude, gliding to its target on the speed and altitude of release, steered by satellite guidance. It costs much less than cruise missiles per shot, carries much larger warheads than most drones and lets aircraft stay outside the densest air defenses.

“The first Ukrainian guided aerial bomb is ready for combat use,” Minister of Defense Mykhailo Fedorov wrote in a Telegram post announcing the milestone, noting the Ministry has already purchased an experimental batch and is gearing up to deploy the bombs on the front.

“Ukraine is moving from importing individual solutions to creating its own high-tech weapons, which systematically strengthen the Defense Forces and provide a technological advantage on the battlefield,” Fedorov said.

Until now, Ukraine had no domestic precision glide bomb. The country has relied on scarce Western donations for strikes beyond the reach of conventional artillery, like American-made JDAM-ERs and ATACMS missiles, British Storm Shadows and French SCALP-EG cruise missiles.

Cheap to produce and free of donor restrictions, the new bombs let Kyiv press the fight at mid-range and conserve scarce longer-range Western missiles for deeper targets — part of a broader Ukrainian push to use tech to change the mathematics of war in its favor after over four years of defending itself against a much larger and richer enemy.

“We are scaling up solutions that increase the range and accuracy of strikes and change the rules of modern warfare,” Fedorov said.

DG Industry, a little-known Ukrainian firm sponsored by the state-backed defense innovation cluster Brave1, started work on the munition 17 months ago, MoD said.

Ukraine had no guided aerial bomb. Now it does.

DG Industry, a Brave1 participant, has completed all required trials and declared the weapon ready for combat after 17 month of development. The bomb carries a 250 kg warhead, hits targets dozens of kilometers behind enemy lines,… pic.twitter.com/EXP0PiLOHl

— BRAVE1 (@BRAVE1ua) May 18, 2026

The team faced a challenging environment, requiring guidance that could survive Russia’s electronic jamming, an airframe that stays stable across release speeds and altitudes and an interface that integrates with whichever aircraft will carry it, according to Brave1.

The result is a system officials say is different from others in its class.

Russia’s UMPK-equipped FAB bombs, for example, are glide kits bolted onto Soviet-era bomb bodies that were never meant to glide. The Ukrainian weapon is purpose-built from the airframe up, not a glide kit.

“This is not a copy of Western or Soviet solutions, but a development of Ukrainian engineers for effective destruction of fortifications, command posts, and other enemy targets tens of kilometers deep after launch,” Fedorov said.

Glide bombs also offer another edge.

Released from standoff distance, they appear over the target only in the last seconds of flight, leaving traditional air defenses little time to react.

They can be harder to detect, too, flying at different speeds, arcs and altitudes than the threats most air defense systems are optimized to track, according to NATO’s Joint Air Power Competence Centre.

Russian Su-34s release the bombs from well beyond Ukrainian air-defense coverage, and once airborne, the bombs themselves are small, unpowered and hard to track.

Ukraine knows from experience how hard they are to stop.

Russia now drops an average of more than 250 guided aerial bombs on Ukrainian positions and cities each day, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Earlier this month, three FAB-250 strikes on Kramatorsk killed five civilians and injured 12 more, according to regional military officials.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has named glide bombs among Russia’s most dangerous weapons since Moscow began deploying them regularly in 2023.

And they cost far more to shoot down than to produce and deploy.

A UMPK-equipped FAB costs tens of thousands of dollars to manufacture, while a single Patriot interceptor capable of stopping one runs in the millions.

The new Ukrainian glide bomb is built to make that asymmetric cost ratio Russia’s problem, too.

“Soon, Ukrainian guided aerial bombs will be used against enemy targets,” the Ministry of Defense said.

The proposal, called Project Able Baker, would solve two problems, the Air Force said. First, the new Sea-Based Recovery Stations would offer a cheaper way of retrieving reusable heavy-lift rockets so they can be launched again. And, it would provide a new purpose and refurbishment for decommissioned oil platforms before they become environmental hazards.

“This approach aims to provide the U.S. Space Force and its commercial partners with a distributed network of recovery sites that enhance launch cadence, reduce sonic-boom exposure, and leverage existing maritime infrastructure to lower operational costs,” according to an Air Force solicitation posted through the Small Business Innovation Research program.

The Air Force sees these old oil platforms as an alternative to using ships to recover rockets — a method used by companies like SpaceX. One benefit would be “reducing dependence on expensive, custom-built drone ships and facilitating higher launch frequencies,” the solicitation says.

To accomplish this, old oil rigs must be strengthened to handle the “specific plume, vibration, and high-intensity point-load dynamics” of modern rockets, such as SpaceX’s Falcon 9, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn, the Air Force said. The rockets are capable of sending heavy equipment into orbit.

Other desired features of the offshore oil platforms include “passive/active flame deflection, remote fire suppression systems, and precision navigation aids for autonomous landing guidance.”

In addition, these platforms should have “integrated barge or Vertical Takeoff and Landing systems to move boosters from the landing pad to transit vessels.”

The first phase of the solicitation calls for companies to establish the technical and economic feasibility of the concept. The focus is on “structural load analysis, environmental impact assessment, and the development of a regulatory roadmap for operations in federal waters.”

Companies may also be asked to identify at least three offshore platforms that can handle heavy-lift rockets.

Part of the assessment process should include the impact of sonic booms on nearby shipping and coastal populations, as well as the impact on the local ecosystem, the Air Force said. The platforms must align with the federal government’s Rigs to Reefs initiative to turn decommissioned oil rigs into aquatic habitats.

The second phase would involve fabricating and installing “a modular reinforcement kit on a representative deck section of an offshore structure to validate construction techniques and material resilience,” said the SBIR. Testing would use “inert-mass drops (10—25 tons) or static-fire simulations —to capture high-fidelity strain, vibro-acoustic, and plume-interaction data.”

The Project Able Baker SBIR has an unusually detailed list of potential dual-use benefits for the government and commercial sectors.

With the number of space launches and orbital satellites soaring in recent years, the Air Force envisions a series of converted oil platforms that can ease the strain on land-based sites to speed up the entire launch and recovery process.

“By repurposing legacy offshore assets, the system provides a strategic alternative to traditional coastal launch-landing operations, significantly increasing launch cadence while reducing acoustic and debris risks,” the SBIR said.

It would also enable Tactically Responsive Space capabilities “in deep-sea or high-latitude environments, critical for responsive space access.”

China is already building offshore platforms to recover heavy rockets.

Perhaps anticipating scrutiny from environmentalists, the Air Force emphasizes that the Sea-Based Recovery Station concept is an “environmentally conscious solution.”

There are “hundreds of offshore oil and gas platforms in federally controlled waters are reaching the end of their operational lifecycle,” the Air Force said. “Traditional decommissioning and full-removal processes are capital-intensive, costing upwards of $1.6 billion per platform, and often cause significant disruption to established marine ecosystems.”

According to a criminal complaint filed last week, Chuan Wang allegedly denied involvement in the production of military products during an interview with customs officers in 2023 when in reality he ran a company that designs and manufactures unmanned aerial vehicles and drones for the Chinese military.

According to the complaint, Wang entered the United States in 2012 on a visa for visiting students and scholars to conduct research on aeroelastic wing design at the University of Michigan. In his visa application, Wang wrote that he planned to develop a “radio-controlled model airplane with high aspect ratio” and conduct related “design, fabrication, test, flight and analysis.”

A few years later, Wang obtained a 10-year tourist visa, describing himself as a business student employed by a media production company. Federal authorities noted that the employment information Wang later submitted — which required biennial updates — changed multiple times.

In one filing, Wang identified himself as a technical engineer for Volition Innovations Science and Technology. In another, he listed his employer as his father, Zhi Yuan Wang. In a third, he identified Tianxun Chuangxin Tech as his employer.

Then, in July 2023, Wang was interviewed by Customs and Border Protection officers while attempting to board a flight to China from Detroit Metropolitan Airport. When officers asked Wang about Tianxun, investigators said he could not explain his engineering specialty and eventually stopped answering questions. CBP officers then searched Wang and his luggage and seized his phone.

By November 2023, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had opened an investigation into Wang and Tianxun. According to the complaint, investigators found Chinese news articles, promotional materials and other online records as early as 2015 describing Wang as the co-founder of Tianxun, a drone manufacturer supplying the Chinese military.

Authorities also cited blog posts allegedly written by Wang discussing his success at Tianxun and how he developed a passion for drone design in high school. The posts reportedly included photographs of Wang presenting one of his drones to former Chinese air force general Xu Qiliang.

When investigators reviewed Wang’s cell phone, authorities say they found thousands of documents related to the design, manufacture and sale of unmanned aerial vehicles. In a message dated Sept. 13, 2022, authorities say Wang received confirmation of a bank deposit paid by the Chinese military’s Special Weapons Bureau.

Wang was reportedly the twelfth Chinese national tied to the University of Michigan to be charged in a federal national security case since 2023. In all, five were accused of smuggling research material: including fungus and roundworms; one allegedly voted illegally; and five were accused of photographing military equipment.

According to Wang’s online case docket, he has not yet been arraigned on charges for making false statements.

The new two-star command will combine the 7th Infantry Division and the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force, Army leaders announced during the 2026 Land Forces of the Pacific Symposium and Exposition in Hawaii.

Speaking to reporters at the symposium, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Matthew McFarlane, commanding general of I Corps and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, where the merging units are headquartered, lauded the change as a forward-looking departure from the days “when we’ve waited till all the equipment was produced and [then] created the formations.”

“We made the formations to test and integrate the equipment, and we’re adjusting,” McFarlane said. “We’re keeping an agile posture with making organizational changes.”

While McFarlane acknowledged the Army is still working through organizational details, he did note that the command would merge the 7th ID’s two Stryker brigades and a combat aviation brigade with a multidomain task force — or “forces,” he said — to share fires, space, electronic warfare, cyber and intelligence capabilities with other commands and services throughout the Indo-Pacific.

As part of the transition, which is slated to begin in mid-June, soldiers with the 1st MDTF will “re-patch” into the 7th ID.

The timing of the move, McFarlane added, is reflective of Corps-level successes during recent exercises and war games that replicated what a two-star merger might look like.

“We have opportunities to make sure we’ve got the right mix of capabilities with a two-star command,” he said. “The Stryker brigades obviously provide security on the ground, so it really becomes long-range sense and strike division. ... That’s important because [this command’s] effects can range the entire joint operational area versus just a corps-level battlespace. That’s exciting for the Army.”

The establishment of the far-reaching MDC-PAC, meanwhile, comes as Army leaders continue to hammer home the importance of Indo-Pacific collaboration to curtail emerging threats out of China and North Korea.

Speaking at LANPAC, Brig. Gen. William Parker, commander of the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, acknowledged that the U.S. military “can’t do any of what we do today without allies and partners.”

“We don’t fight alone, and we haven’t fought alone for a long time,” he said. “Our partners help us protect our critical assets and critical formations that we have within this theater.”

Days before the start of the symposium, the U.S. military wrapped up the 41st iteration of Exercise Balikatan, the largest annual bilateral exercise between U.S. and Philippine militaries.

This year’s 19-day exercise was also joined by Australia, Japan, New Zealand, France and Canada, the latter four of which put troops on the ground for the first time as part of the exercise.

“Balikatan 2026 marked a strategic evolution from a bilateral exercise to a full-scale, multinational mission rehearsal for the defense of the Philippines,” U.S. Navy Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said of the event. “That growth reflects the security environment. It reflects the sovereign choices of free nations.”

Over the course of the three-year framework agreement, Anduril will supply the Army with a minimum of 1,000 surface-launched Barracuda-500Ms per year, according to a company release.

“Long-range precision fires and stand-off strike weapons are fundamental to America’s ability to deter our adversaries, but existing solutions are too expensive, too exquisite and too hard to produce at scale,” the release states.

Meant for long-range strikes and designed for a variety of land and maritime targets, SLB-500Ms have a range of over 500 nautical miles and are equipped with a 100-pound munition payload.

The munitions are built into standard 20-foot shipping containers that can be loaded with up to 16 all-up rounds, per the announcement. It can then be transported and placed at the desired launch point, where an operator can use Anduril’s AI-enabled Lattice software or other fire control tech to select targets, munition combinations and coordinate launches.

The “simple” design of the missiles, meanwhile, permits a 30-hour assembly using only 10 common hand tools, furthering the ease of large-scale production, the release states.

Speaking with reporters this week at the 2026 Land Forces of the Pacific Symposium and Exposition in Hawaii, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Matthew McFarlane, commanding general of I Corps and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, said that developing these types of low-cost munitions is vital to adapting to modern warfare.

“The massive drones we’re seeing be produced around the world — we need to drive down that cost curve so we can make sure we have the lethal means at a lower cost,” McFarlane told reporters.

Discussing the balance between costly Pentagon contracts and lower-cost, emerging technology, McFarlane said that the department needs to continue working with industry partners to drive down cost, emphasizing that the current price points “can only go lower.”

“We got to get it lower if we’re going to prevail against the numbers of things that we think will be thrown our way,” he said.

Anduril is expected to increase production to “single-digit thousands” of Barracuda-500s by the end of 2026, according to the release. Production of the munitions will soon commence at the company’s new 5-million-square-foot facility in Columbus, Ohio.

Alongside Anduril, defense companies CoAspire, Leidos and Zone 5 comprise the Pentagon’s Low-Cost Containerized Missiles program. The program’s assessment phase, which includes the purchasing of test missiles from the companies, is set for June, according to the Pentagon agreement with the four firms.

Through the LCCM program, the Pentagon is aiming to obtain over 10,000 low-cost cruise missiles from the four companies, according to a Pentagon statement.

Acting Army Chief of Staff Gen. Christopher LaNeve said in an Army budget hearing that the order to halt a planned 9-month rotation to Europe by 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division to Eastern Europe came from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

LaNeve and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said they were informed of the order and had been consulted, but they wouldn’t provide the exact timing of the decision. On May 1, the unit had cased its colors in preparation for deployment, dispatched its advanced team and launched its equipment overseas.

Soldiers began discussing the decision to scrap the deployment publicly early Tuesday morning; the order was confirmed Wednesday by Army Times and other news media.

LaNeve said the decision was made “in the last two weeks” by the Defense Department and Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, commander of U.S. European Command and the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

LaNeve and Driscoll downplayed the move as part of routine manning reviews conducted throughout the year.

“We are constantly in contact with [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] and the combatant commanders … and this is not meant to hide the ball,” Driscoll said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

“This type of conversation is going on throughout the year, every single year, and the Army is always ready to move people and things based off combatant commander and Secretary of War preferences,” Driscoll added.

But lawmakers questioned the timing and the reasons, lambasting the order that Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said sent a “terrible message to Russia and our allies.”

Bacon said he had spoken with Polish leaders who were “blindsided” by the decision and understood that Grynkewich had expressed reservations to the order, saying that it was not without risk.

“This is a slap in the face to Poland. It’s a slap in the face to our Baltic friends. I think it’s a slap to the face in this committee, because we’ve put floors and restrictions on the Pentagon on further reductions in Europe because of what they did with Romania,” Bacon said.

CNN reported Thursday that Hegseth made the decision in relation to the administration’s efforts to pressure Europe to increase its own defenses.

CNN also reported that Hegseth’s order canceled a deployment of 3rd Battalion, 12th Field Artillery Regiment to Germany later this year and a command that oversees long-range rockets and missiles will be removed from Europe.

The news follows an announcement May 1 that the U.S. would withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany — a decision Pentagon officials said was made following a review of “theater requirements and conditions on the ground.”

But critics say the withdrawal is retribution for NATO countries deciding not to join the U.S. in attacking Iran. President Donald Trump repeatedly has criticized NATO countries for not investing more in their own defense and said in March that NATO would face a “bad future” if they didn’t help defend the Strait of Hormuz.

“If there’s no response, or if it’s a negative response, I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO,” Trump told the Financial Times.

Army leaders did not say how many soldiers were affected by the decision or provide the number of personnel in the advanced echelon that now must return to Fort Hood, where the brigade is based.

The order has upended the lives of at least 4,500 soldiers, however, many of whom made preparations to vacate homes and apartments, store belongings and relocate their families.

The order also cost money: in a text message reviewed by Army Times Tuesday, a brigade member estimated the cost and retrieval of equipment at $4 million.

Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez said Thursday the decision was “not an unexpected, last-minute decision,” but lawmakers pushed back on that assessment, with Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., saying he didn’t see how the “statement can be true.”

“These are major decisions that appear to many of the members of this committee to be last-minute decisions,” Scott said.

LaNeve and Driscoll noted that in their roles as chief of staff and secretary, their jobs are administrative and they have no authority in operational decisions.

LaNeve’s multiple references to the law that dictates the structure of the armed forces — and the pair’s lack of response — irritated several committee members.

“We have been very focused on this committee about force posture, and EUCOM in particular not being disturbed, particularly without — what the statute requires — is consultation with us, and we didn’t get that, so we don’t know what’s going on here, but I just tell you we’re not happy,” said Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala.

“It is a pretty dramatic decision to, at the last minute, pull a team that you’re trying to send over there,” agreed Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the committee’s ranking member. “If there’s some strategy behind it, then you guys ought to know, and you ought to be able to communicate it to us.”

The U.S. has roughly 80,000 service members in Europe.

European Command did not respond to a request for comment by publication.

The latest iteration of Project Flytrap, a multinational exercise to test new drone technologies in a realistic conflict setting, pitted U.S. and allied forces against each other in scenarios that featured drone swarms, jamming systems and counter-UAS defenses that continue to redefine modern warfare.

Army leaders have emphasized the need to integrate drones into doctrine and tactics, as they say the rise of inexpensive, mass-produced drones have forced the service to rethink everything from aviation to infantry patrols.

Project Flytrap took place in Lithuania, involved nearly 1,000 personnel and centered around pushing the Army’s technology to its limits amid variable weather and terrain.

Exercise leaders speaking during a Thursday roundtable said soldiers practiced massing unmanned platforms to test the limits of their systems and practice pinning down enemy forces, sometimes using tens of drones at a time.

Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington, a platoon sergeant for Eagle Troop, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, led soldiers in developing counter-UAS tactics during the exercise. The proliferation of drones has changed the basics of soldiering, modifying even the way units conduct basic patrols.

“I’m out there doing my patrols and all of a sudden you hear buzzing. No longer am I just scanning to my 12:00 and around me at ground level,” he said. Now, his troops must look up.

They must also learn to listen.

“You have to now learn the sounds of the drones,” Harrington said, adding a chilling and provocative question, “does it sound like one of the one-way attack drones coming in our potential direction?”

During the roundtable, leaders also highlighted how units used additive manufacturing — like 3-D printing — to quickly create replacement parts and modifications for drone systems in the field.

For the first time, the Army applied testing standards established by Joint Interagency Task Force 401, or JIATF 401, as troops trialed and collected data on over 20 different systems, including drones not yet fielded to the ranks.

The task force, which was established by the Pentagon in 2025, consolidates drone-related acquisition and standards across the country in an attempt to contend with the rapid evolution of unmanned aerial technology in conflicts across the world.

Warfare — from Eastern Europe to the Middle East — has shifted as both state and nonstate actors have begun to attack with hordes of drones that are cheap yet advanced.

The Army is grappling with how to defend its soldiers against these new air threats and also procure and use similar weapons advantageously.

The U.S. and its allies in the Middle East have sought Ukraine’s advice in defending against Iran’s Shahed drones, weapons that the eastern European country has ample experience countering in its war with Russia.

The lessons gleaned from exercises like Project Flytrap tie into broader modernization discussions in Washington.

In a Friday House Armed Services Committee hearing, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said the service was racing to restructure how it fights in a drone-flooded battlefield, “where swarms of drones are going to be attacking an Apache.”

Discussing aviation modernization during budget testimony, Driscoll added, “if you look all over the world, there are not good solutions for that.”