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 Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations,” Xi told Trump during a summit in Beijing, according to a Chinese government readout. “If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability. Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.”

For decades, Washington’s ties with Taipei have been among one of the most combustible flashpoints in U.S.-China relations. The Chinese Communist Party regards the island as a wayward province destined for reunification. Xi has instructed the People’s Liberation Army to be prepared to invade by 2027.

Since the 1970s, successive American administrations have adhered to a policy known as “strategic ambiguity,” deliberately maintaining uncertainty over whether the U.S. would come to Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese attack.

George Chen, partner for the Greater China practice at the Asia Group, said in an interview with Military Times that Xi’s message to Trump should not be seen as an escalation, but rather an effort to establish boundaries from the outset.

“President Xi’s opening remarks, right in front of President Trump, puts a huge emphasis on Taiwan because Xi wants to make it crystal clear that he has zero tolerance for any moves toward Taiwan independence,” Chen said.

“It’s clear that Xi is not interested in taking the military path for Taiwan issues — at least not yet,” he added. “And he hopes Washington will align with him to avoid bringing military forces into the Taiwan issues, which could only destabilize Northeast Asia.”

The State Department recently stalled a proposed $14 billion arms package for Taiwan, a move that Trump said he would underscore with Xi.

“President Xi would like us not to. And I’ll have that discussion,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday ahead of the planned trip.

U.S. officials, however, have highlighted last year’s largest-ever arms sale to Taiwan, valued at approximately $11 billion, as a sign of Washington’s commitment to Taiwan.

The war in Iran previously forced a postponement of the high-stakes summit in Beijing, which had originally been scheduled for six weeks ago.

Trump and Xi met in the Chinese capital on Friday for a welcome ceremony steeped in pageantry, featuring a 21-gun salute and crowds of children waving U.S. and Chinese flags, followed by bilateral talks, a tour of the Temple of Heaven and a state banquet.

But the trip unfolds against a continued air of crisis and uncertainty around Iran. The fragile ceasefire between Washington and Tehran teeters on collapse, while the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed.

According to a White House readout, Trump and Xi concurred Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon and the Strait of Hormuz needs to reopen.

“The two sides agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open to support the free flow of energy,” the White House said. “President Xi also made clear China’s opposition to the militarization of the Strait and any effort to charge a toll for its use.”

In a subsequent interview with Fox News, Trump said that Xi had signaled interest in facilitating the reopening of the strait.

“President Xi would like to see a deal made,” Trump asserted. “Anybody that buys that much oil has obviously got some sort of relationship with them.”

The president also claimed Xi had assured him China would not supply military equipment to Iran, calling it “a big statement.”

“It’s a very large country,” Cooper testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He acknowledged that Iran still possessed “a very moderate, if not small, capability” to conduct strikes on regional neighbors.

Washington and Tehran remain locked in a month-long stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz, with no clear path forward as both sides have rejected proposed off-ramps from the crisis.

Initially, Iran retaliated for the joint U.S.-Israeli attack on its territory by throttling traffic in the waterway — where roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil typically flows. The Iranians accomplished this in part through the mere threat of naval mine warfare, though some vessels were also attacked. The United States, in turn, imposed a blockade on all vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports.

“The Iranian capability to stop commerce has been dramatically degraded through the straits,” the CENTCOM commander said. “But their voice is very loud, and those threats are clearly heard by the merchant industry and the insurance industry.”

Cooper — who did not address how the impasse in the strait might be resolved — asserted that U.S. forces had severely degraded Iran’s warfighting capacity, including the elimination of roughly 90% of its inventory of more than 8,000 naval mines.

He also declared that U.S. forces had “met every military objective” under Operation Epic Fury, citing the destruction of 90% of Iran’s defense industrial base.

Pentagon seeks additional funding as cost of Iran war tops $29 billion

In recent days, media reports have cast doubt on the most expansive claims made by the Trump administration about military triumph over Iran, however. A New York Times report on Tuesday, for example, indicated that U.S. intelligence agencies believe Iran has held onto about 70% of the missiles it had before the war and that it retains access to about the same proportion of its mobile launchers.

Cooper declined to discuss specific intelligence assessments, but contended that the number he’s seen in “open source are not accurate.”

He added: “It’s more than just the numbers. It’s the command and control that’s been shattered. It’s the significant degradation and capability. And it’s the lack of any ability to then produce any missiles or drones on the backend.”

More broadly, Cooper insisted, “Iran has a significantly degraded threat. They no longer threaten regional partners, or the United States, in ways that they were able to do before, across every domain.”

“Most notably, we degraded Iran’s ability to project power outside its borders and threaten the region and threaten our interests,” Cooper continued. “Today, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are all cut off from Iran’s weapons and support.”

Those groups, commonly known as Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” have enabled the Islamic Republic to wield influence across the Middle East while maintaining plausible deniability regarding their armed actions. In the 30 months before Epic Fury commenced, Cooper said, those aligned militias carried out more than 350 attacks on U.S. service members and diplomats stationed in the region.

A statement seen by Reuters ahead of its release said that the Pentagon’s agreements are with Anduril, CoAspire, Leidos and Zone 5, and will together launch the “Low‑Cost Containerized Munitions (LCCM) program.”

The assessment phase of the program will involve purchasing test missiles from all four companies starting in June 2026. The statement did not provide a cost or specify the weapons systems from the four firms, but said the agreements established the terms for future firm-fixed-price production contracts.

The Army has long touted containerized weapons systems as a low-cost, mobile way to deploy missiles in standard shipping containers.

A separate agreement with defense startup Castelion lays out a plan to award a two-year contract for a minimum annual purchase of 500 Blackbeard missiles, which are Castelion’s first hypersonic strike weapon, once Castelion achieves testing and validation, the statement said.

It said the Pentagon was seeking authorizations and appropriations to purchase over 12,000 Blackbeard missiles over five years.

US Air Force looks to launch cheap missiles from cargo aircraft

Michael Duffey, who as under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment is the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, said in the statement that the agreements show how the U.S. is moving beyond traditional “prime” contractors to expand the industrial base.

The agreements, he added, send “a clear, long-term demand signal to innovative new entrants.”

Emil Michael, under secretary of defense for research and engineering, said the agreements commit the firms to on-time, on-cost delivery.

“We will deliver affordable mass for our warfighters at unprecedented speed,” Michael said in the statement.

The Pentagon is ramping up its requests from Congress for funding for munitions, which are in high demand with the ongoing war in Iran.

General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in written testimony this week that the Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 budget would fund over $26 billion for multi-year procurement contracts for critical munitions.

The problem is especially acute for unmanned systems, they said, as technology is evolving far faster than the ability of U.S. Special Operations Command to modify its drones.

“The biggest challenge that that we face, at least within the majority of our formations, is the inability of the operator at the edge to have the authority to tinker,” Lt. Gen. Lawrence Ferguson, chief of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, told the Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on Tuesday.

“Specifically, I’m thinking of unmanned systems, mainly unmanned aerial systems. We are bound right now to the actual vendor of that system that has the proprietary capability. And so what we are looking for is an ability for our people at the edge to have the right to repair.”

Ukraine’s battlefield integration surpasses US military’s, Army secretary says

Ferguson was joined by the heads of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps special operations commands, who told the committee of similar issues.

To add a small, long-range cruise missile to an aerial platform, “I want to be able to iterate quickly on the software,” Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, chief of Air Force Special Operations Command, told the subcommittee.

“Often working with the large vendors, there’s proprietary information to get into the mission computers we hit. We hit walls that small vendors that are trying to move fast and give us those capabilities, sometimes get outmuscled by the bigger vendors and they can’t break through.”

Despite prodding by Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., the special operations commanders did not name any of those big manufacturers.

As with civilians resentful over an inability to fix everything from cell phones to farm tractors without having to go through the manufacturer, right to repair has become a controversial issue for the U.S. military. Nonetheless, right-to-repair provisions were stripped from the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.

This may be particularly galling to the U.S. special operations community, which often uses specialized and cutting-edge equipment — and which can be the first to test that equipment in combat.

The proprietary agreements make it difficult to keep up with adversaries, the leaders said.

For example, drug cartels, or militant groups like Al-Shabaab in Somalia, can easily acquire and modify small drones, said Maj. Gen. Peter Huntley, chief of Marine Forces Special Operations Command.

“I can buy them right now,” Huntley testified. “I can put them in the hands of our operators. But the ability to kind of adapt them, and make them a real military capability at some form of scale, is very challenging right now.”

US-European relations create complications

The subcommittee also heard about the strain that that the war on Iran and other operations have placed upon the SOCOM community.

“AFSOC executed the two largest presidentially directed deployments in our 36-year history, while also maintaining a persistent operational tempo across five other geographic commands,” Conley said.

Fractures in the relationship between the U.S. and Europe over the Iran war — and the refusal of nations such as Spain to allow American forces to use host-country bases — has also complicated SOCOM’s work.

“I think maybe we’ve taken that for granted to some degree over the years, that the bases are always going to be open for our use,” Conley said in response to questions from Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich.

“We’ve been able to adapt and we’ve been able to get the missions complete. But not having the assured access that we’re used to with mainly European countries as we transit transatlantic towards CENTCOM, has been something we’ve had to work hard to make happen.”

“The things that affect Mike’s [Conley’s] formations as far as access basing and overflight, those do affect us because we’re usually along for the ride,” echoed Ferguson.

However, Ferguson added that “generational” ties between U.S. special operations forces and American allies have helped ensure a smooth relationship.

“I’ve not seen any impact as far as allies being hesitant to work with us,” Ferguson added.

Acquisition costs would total just over $1 trillion, said the CBO, a nonpartisan federal agency that provides budgetary analyses for Congress. The estimate is significantly more than the $185 billion the Trump administration set aside for the project in its proposed fiscal 2027 defense budget.

That gap is due, at least in part, to the fact that there are no publicly available plans from the White House nor the Pentagon about what the system will look like, “making it impossible to estimate the long-term cost of the GDA system being contemplated by DoD,” per the report.

“DoD’s stated cost appears to cover a shorter time frame than CBO’s analysis and may reflect a different scope of activities and budget categories,” the report continues. “Even so, that stated cost is far lower than CBO’s estimate for a notional NMD [national missile defense] architecture consistent with the ‘Iron Dome’ executive order.

“That difference suggests either that GDA’s objective architecture is more limited than CBO’s notional NMD system or that DoD expects significant funding from other accounts to contribute to GDA (or both).”

The CBO based its estimate on a four-tiered defense system: a space-based layer, upper- and lower-level surface interceptor layers and multiple spread out surface interceptors, which would provide protection for all of the continental U.S. plus Alaska and Hawaii.

This proposed system would be able to defend against multiple missiles fired simultaneously and would protect against threats from hypersonics, ballistics and cruise missiles.

But the system could not successfully engage with a large-scale attack from a peer or near-peer adversary like Russia or China, according to the report.

As the cost estimate is based on the desired capabilities laid out in a January 2025 executive order, it doesn’t include funding for research and development of future technologies, nor does it take into account ground forces or a communication system necessary to make the proposed system work.

The report also notes that the project may face delays due to the need to replenish the nation’s stockpile of THAAD and Patriot interceptor missiles, as well as radar systems, a great number of which have been deployed in the war on Iran.

Other potential roadblocks include Pentagon funding constraints, plus the training necessary to deploy the system, the CBO said.

Some lawmakers have already expressed their concern over the proposed cost.

“The president’s so-called ‘Golden Dome’ is nothing more than a massive giveaway to defense contractors paid for entirely by working Americans,” Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who requested the CBO estimate, said in a statement. “It will do little to advance American national security.”

The defense industry donations — comprising both traditional firms like Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon) and Northrop Grumman and newer companies like Anduril — make up only a small percentage of the cash going to Congress, according to OpenSecrets. Even so, the industry has enormous sway in politics through these contributions and through lobbying efforts.

Republicans and Democrats alike benefit from these donations and notably, plenty of this money is directed at congressional decision makers who can influence legislation around defense acquisition, including the National Defense Authorization Act.

California Rep. Ken Calvert raised roughly $200,000 in campaign funds from PACs and individuals affiliated with companies like RTX, BAE Systems, Leidos and others. Calvert, a Republican, is the head of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and will face a battle to keep his seat during the midterms this year.

And it’s not just company PACs contributing, but individual donors — powerful corporate leaders like Anduril co-founder Brian Schimpf, who donated $7,000 to Washington Rep. Adam Smith last quarter.

Smith is the Democratic leader on the House Armed Services Committee, which has a broad jurisdiction over defense matters including “acquisition and industrial base policy [and] technology transfer and export controls,” according to the committee’s website.

All in all, Smith received nearly $130,000 in donations from defense industry PACs and individual executives last quarter, according to NOTUS’ reporting, which is based on publicly available documentation from the Federal Election Commission.

Yet these donations do not exactly translate into government contracts; it’s not that straightforward, according to Greg Williams, the director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight.

“A big part of the push over the last year or so is to deregulate the defense acquisition process,” like pushing for faster procurement and an expanded ability to bypass oversight mechanisms in that process, according to Williams.

One example of that is the Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery (SPEED) Act, which Smith and HASC Chair Mike Rogers, R-Ala., co-sponsored. Rogers received $68,000 in defense industry donations, including $7,000 from Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, in the first quarter of 2026.

Defense firms — whether they’re primes like RTX or newer entrants — have long expressed frustration with what they call a tedious and overly bureaucratic acquisition process. But the DoD’s own independent inspector general has repeatedly found these firms overcharging, which is a problem only likely to get worse with fewer regulations, according to Julia Gledhill, a research analyst for the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center.

“The United States has production capacity limits,” she told Military Times. “Policymakers should be figuring out how to operate within those limits rather than assuming money and deregulation will solve their production problems.”

And there are real risks, too, particularly given that the Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation has essentially been gutted under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“Gutting the office of the DOT&E increases risk that the Pentagon will develop weapons that the military doesn’t need and that don’t work as intended, threatening service members’ safety,” Gledhill added.

Last week Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., who raised $32,500 from defense industry PACs by March 31, introduced a bill allowing the Secretary of State to issue loans — and set terms for those loans — to foreign countries in order to purchase U.S. arms. That arrangement could encourage the U.S. to increase arms sales to other countries, since the government would expect to be paid back with interest for the loans as opposed to the non-repayable grants system currently in place.

“This bill would ensure we continue to arm our partners and allies under terms that put America first,” Mast said in a press release. “At its core, this is about increasing integration with our allies, deterring adversaries, and strengthening our defense industrial base.”

Much of this new legislation also references the need to strengthen the defense industrial base, which Williams cautions may not provide the economic boost Americans are looking for.

“It’s widely understood that a dollar [spent on] defense creates far fewer jobs than dollars spent otherwise,” Williams said. “And so the idea that you’re supporting the economy by supporting the defense manufacturing base, I think that just doesn’t hold water.”

The combination of threadbare campaign finance regulation, a poor economic outlook and an increasingly militarized foreign policy could be a boon for defense firms. However, it could be perilous not just to the military, but to the democratic system overall, Gledhill said.

“I look at it as legalized corruption,” she added.

Jules Hurst III, the Defense Department’s acting comptroller, said the increase from $25 billion just two weeks ago reflects “updated repair and replacement of equipment costs,” along with the “general operational costs” of sustaining forces in the theater.

Hurst emphasized that the projection does not include expenditures for repairing damaged military installations in the region.

“We have a lot of unknowns there,” he said. “We don’t know what our future posture is going to be. We don’t know how we construct those bases, and we don’t know what part our allies or partners could pay into our MILCON costs.”

The tenuous month-long ceasefire in the Middle East hangs in the balance after President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed Tehran’s latest proposal to end the war as “garbage.” Hours later, the Speaker of Iran’s parliament warned that the country stands ready to “deliver a lesson-teaching response” to any act of aggression.

Despite a declared truce, the two sides have continued to exchange limited fire near the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Republic recently launched missiles, drones and small boats at U.S. warships transiting the sea, prompting American strikes on Iranian military sites in response.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday suggested that the situation remains fluid.

“As you know, for the most part, ceasefire means fire is ceasing,” Hegseth said. “We have a plan to escalate, if necessary. We have a plan to retrograde, if necessary.”

Asked about the status of Project Freedom — a one-day campaign in which U.S. warships and aircraft briefly guided commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz — the defense secretary described it as “paused” and added, “It’s an option we could always recommence, should the commander in chief want us to.”

Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also sought to dispel concerns that Operation Epic Fury had triggered significant munitions shortages within the U.S. military.

“I take issue with the characterization that munitions are depleted in a public forum — that’s not true,” Hegseth claimed. “Ultimately, we have all the munitions needed to execute what we need to execute and we are going to ensure that we supercharge that going into the future.”

Caine said, “We have sufficient munitions for what we’re tasked to do right now. That’s what I hear from the [Unified Combatant Commands],” noting, “We’re always going to want more munitions.”

Hegseth, Caine and Hurst appeared on Capitol Hill to advance a two-pronged appeal encompassing the annual budget and additional funding for the ongoing war in Iran. A substantial portion of the request, they indicated, would be directed toward replenishing depleted weapons stockpiles.

The confirmation of potential outsourcing comes after President Donald Trump reportedly rejected previous Navy Secretary John Phelan’s suggestion to build Trump-class battleships abroad to meet the president’s desired delivery of 2028.

“Building and maintaining ships in America is central to the president’s vision and strengthens the nation’s industrial base,” the budget document said. “While American shipbuilding remains the priority, the Navy will evaluate overseas options and whether allied and partner shipbuilding can supplement domestic production if U.S. industry cannot meet required timelines.”

Phelan told reporters at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space symposium in April that the Navy was going to study the possibility of building warships outside the U.S.

He cited labor shortages in the U.S. as a catalyst for the potential move.

He was fired one day later, with the Trump administration citing a needed change in leadership.

But over the coming days, reports surfaced that a brewing fissure between Trump and Phelan came to a head after Trump bristled at Phelan’s idea to build Navy battleships abroad, a sentiment that flew in the face of Trump’s previous promise to build his namesake ship class in the U.S.

Phelan’s comments at SAS undercut the Trump administration’s messaging about revitalizing the American maritime industrial base by investing in U.S. shipyards, according to Hunter Stires, maritime strategist for previous Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro.

The fiscal 2027 shipbuilding plan, meanwhile, raises the possibility of turning overseas to build auxiliary ships, or ships that can provide fuel and ammunition to U.S. Navy combatant ships.

Specifically, the Navy would like to invest $450 million in obtaining one consolidated cargo replenishment at sea, or CONSOL, tanker in fiscal 2027. CONSOL references a commercial tanker chartered by Military Sealift Command that refuels a U.S. Navy ship while underway.

The Navy also aims to spend $2.3 billion over the next five years to purchase five tankers for fuel support, built “potentially” and “initially” at overseas shipyards.

The sea service is asking Congress for approval to build two auxiliary ships and the “flexibility for fabrication of some combatant modules overseas,” the shipbuilding plan says.

The budget also negates another of Phelan’s previous comments regarding the fiscal 2027 Defense Department budget request. The Navy announced that Golden Fleet-era battleships will be nuclear powered, despite Phelan saying at the Sea-Air-Space exposition that the presence of nuclear power aboard the future vessels was “unlikely.”

Overall, the service aims to increase its number of ships dramatically, according to the plan.

There are currently over 290 battle force ships, though the number, according to Navy requirements by law, is 355, the document stated. The service intends to have 395 vessels in fiscal 2027 and 450 vessels by the end of fiscal 2031.

The shipbuilding plan emphasizes three primary points the service views as key to asserting maritime supremacy: ending backlogs by rewarding industry partners that prioritize speed; making good on the Golden Fleet promise by building a high-low mix of advanced combatants, cost-effective ships and unmanned systems; and reinvigorating the maritime industrial base by creating jobs and attracting private investment.

The Navy plans to address the latter issue by increasing reliance on distributed shipbuilding sites, or sites away from a main shipbuilding yard.

Currently, only 10% of shipbuilding is taking place at distributed sites. The service wants to increase that number to 50% to increase flexibility, reduce reliance on legacy shipyards and accelerate delivery.

President Donald Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion fiscal 2027 defense budget calls for a $65.8 billion investment in shipbuilding, including funding for 34 manned ships and five unmanned platforms.

The U.S. Army-led Joint Interagency Task Force 401, which was stood up in August 2025 and included in the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, selected two southern border installations to join and assist the program in advanced directed energy capabilities, according to a May 6 Department of Defense release.

“Countering unlawful and adversarial drone activity is a homeland defense imperative,” Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, JITF 401 director, said in the release.

“There is no ‘silver bullet’ to address this challenge, and this pilot program integrates cutting-edge technology into the department’s broader counter-drone toolkit,” he continued.

The chosen five installations include Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and Fort Bliss, Texas, along the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as: Naval Base Kitsap, Washington; Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota; and Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.

The locations were picked to support testing and operational assessments across a variety of mission goals and environments, per the release. The statement did not specify which systems the bases will focus on.

But the announcement does highlight certain counter-unmanned aircraft systems’ tools, such as high-energy lasers and high-powered microwave systems, that can counteract adversarial or unlawful drone activity while diminishing risk to nearby personnel and infrastructure.

The release comes after the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration conducted anti-drone laser tests in New Mexico in March.

Those tests were the result of safety concerns after the Pentagon allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to utilize anti-drone lasers in February, causing the Federal Aviation Administration to suddenly close El Paso, Texas, airspace twice in one month.

In April, the DoD and FAA released a joint statement saying that a safety assessment proved the technology does not pose a risk toward passenger aircraft and that the two will work together to implement a safety agreement, according to the April release.

“Our collaboration with the FAA and the successful demonstration at White Sands were pivotal steps forward in our counter-UAS efforts,” Col. Scott McLellan, task force deputy director, said in the release.

“We showed that directed-energy systems can counter drone threats while preserving the safety of air travelers,” McLellan continued. “This pilot program now allows us to translate that progress into evolving operational capability for the homeland.”

Within 180 days, the Defense Department will complete deployment plans with installation commanders, the release states, and operations will commence this year.

The announcement did not specify exactly when operations are slated to begin.

Dubbed “Deal Team Six,” the crew is tasked with creating better deals with defense companies to ensure their production of U.S. military equipment is not at the expense of the taxpayer, but that of the contractor, according to a Thursday social media video posted by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth claims in the video that for decades, the department allowed contractors to “double-dip” when service members needed weapons, aircraft or ships, charging the taxpayer for factory builds and again for the final product.

“Despite paying companies to make weapons faster, scheduled delays were constant and cost overruns were the norm, all while their CEOs got rich,” Hegseth says in the video.

Deal Team Six, which is folded inside the Pentagon’s Economic Defense Unit, stood up in early April after it was introduced by Hegseth in a November 2025 memorandum that referred to the unit as a way to modernize contracting and provide incentives and possible penalties to industry partners.

Hegseth has sought to revamp the defense industrial base by scrapping the Defense Acquisition System and turning it into a Warfighting Acquisition System, designated the “arsenal of freedom.” The new system is meant to speed up project timelines and increase production.

In a November 2025 speech at the National War College at Fort McNair in D.C., Hegseth announced that the department would grant larger and longer contracts to companies for systems that have shown their merit.

In exchange for the companies to foot the bill for certain items — such as expansion efforts, new factories, assembly lines and factory plants — the department will provide “steady, long-term orders” for what the service members need, Hegseth’s recent video explains.

This is meant to guarantee that these defense companies can create equipment in higher volumes faster, while keeping to a flat price. Hegseth warned in the video that if companies don’t comply, the department will simply find others who will.

“We’re not tolerating delays in production or cost overruns anymore,” Hegseth says in the video.

“We’ve pushed out the bureaucrats who have made these deals in the past and replaced them with the most talented negotiators in the private sector,” he continued.

This unit was included in fiscal year 2026’s National Defense Authorization Act and appropriated more than $266 million for research, development, test and evaluation.

Included in President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2027 $1.5 trillion defense budget, the unit is allotted over $593 million in the same type of funding section as the 2026 fiscal year.

Although the team’s entire roster has not yet been revealed, George Kollitides, the former head of defense at Cerberus Capital Management, was named its director, according to Wall Street Journal reporting.

While officials say that extra $2.1 billion will allow the Army to “keep a technological advantage,” congressional leaders have expressed concern that it could come at the expense of accountability.

During the Army’s congressional budget hearing, Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., the ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, noted that while R&D spending is increasing, funding for financial management and audit readiness is declining.

McCollum said that although much of the budget is aimed at “applications, infrastructure, data and transport,” it provides less detail on how those investments will be tracked. She added that the number of budget lines dedicated to auditing has been reduced from 41 to four.

“It has an unintended consequence when you compress these activities to make it easier for the Army to move funds without keeping Congress involved,” she said. “We might have a discussion about what you’re going to do, but without the lines, we don’t have the accountability for both of us.”

While the accountability concerns are clear, they also raise a practical question: where will the R&D money go?

According to the Army’s budget highlights, R&D spending will increase from $16.6 billion in 2026 to $18.7 billion in 2027. Of that, $2.9 billion will be set aside for a general science and technology fund, which officials say will be “dedicated to developing the next-generation systems and platforms that will support the Army of 2040 and beyond.”

The budget highlights also include a variety of procurement items, such as loitering munitions, Infantry Squad Vehicles, Next Generation Squad Weapons (with ammunition) and advanced night vision goggles.

Other specific investments include:

• $904 million for Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2), an initiative to modernize the Army’s communications and networking technologies. Last year, Anduril Industries developed a prototype for $99.6 million. The finished system integrates technologies from a range of industry partners, including Palantir and Microsoft, to support real-time decision-making. The proposed R&D funding would be used to deliver the system at scale.
• $2.1 billion for the MV-75 Cheyenne II tiltrotor aircraft, which the Army describes as “a revolutionary platform” capable of providing the speed and range needed for future conflicts. Introduced last year, the aircraft is intended to supplement — and eventually replace — the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, which has been in service for more than 50 years.
• $474 million for Abrams M1E3 modernization, part of a yearslong effort to upgrade the Army’s main battle tank. In 2023, the Army announced plans to move beyond the M1A2 upgrade package and develop the M1E3, with fielding targeted for 2030. The modernized platform is expected to include a hybrid-electric drive, improved armor, advanced munitions and enhanced networking and artificial intelligence capabilities.
• $1.1 billion to transition the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, from the Missile Defense Agency to Army control. The Army began developing the system in the early 1990s to intercept ballistic missiles inside or outside the atmosphere, and it became operational in the mid-2000s. According to the Congressional Research Service, the transition is intended to simplify “integration and oversight.”

In response to McCollum’s questions, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll acknowledged that the service has struggled in the past to manage taxpayer dollars effectively.

“We have a history of spending money in a way that didn’t defend taxpayers’ right for their dollars,” he said, adding that lengthy acquisition timelines often mean new systems are outdated by the time they are fielded.

He argued that the increased budget, and the flexibility that comes with it, is necessary to keep pace with rapid technological change.

“The purpose, from our perspective, for something like the Next Gen C2 is the speed of innovation requires us to shift dollars between back end systems,” he said. “The speed of these innovations doesn’t allow us to stay as predetermined where the dollar will go.”

In the end, Driscoll suggested that technology — specifically, the Army’s Vantage dashboard by Palantir — might be the compromise they need because it “basically gives us a lot more visibility into where the dollars are going and [gives] your team access to run their own reports.”

But McCollum still wanted the audit, saying that budget discussions “needs to be a two-way conversation.”

Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, said in a social media post on Tuesday breaches of the four-week-old ceasefire by the United States and its allies had endangered shipping and energy transit through the vital waterway.

“We know well that the continuation of the current situation is unbearable for the United States, while we have not even begun yet,” he said.

The fresh volleys of missiles and drones came after U.S. President Donald Trump launched a new effort to get stranded tankers and other ships through the strait, the vital energy-trade chokepoint that has been virtually closed since the U.S. and Israel began attacks on Iran in February, a war that has killed thousands of people across the region.

On Monday, several merchant ships in the Gulf reported explosions or fires, the U.S. said it had destroyed six small Iranian military boats, and an oil port in the United Arab Emirates, which hosts a large U.S. military base, was set ablaze by Iranian missiles.

Trump gave scant details about his new effort, which he called “Project Freedom,” to assist stuck ships in getting through the strait when he announced it on social media, two days after a legal deadline under U.S. law for him to get authorization from Congress for the war.

Trump told Congress the war was “terminated” and the deadline was moot, a claim disputed by some lawmakers.

It was the first apparent attempt to use military force since last month’s ceasefire announcement to unblock the world’s most important energy shipping route, which Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has said can only happen with its permission.

The cost of shipping insurance has also skyrocketed. For weeks, the U.S. Navy has blockaded Iran’s trade by sea, which Iran says is itself an act of war.

But Trump’s latest move, at least initially, appeared to have backfired, bringing no surge of merchant ship traffic while provoking a promised show of force from Iran, which has threatened to respond to any escalation with new attacks on its neighbors hosting U.S. troops.

Major shipping companies said they were likely to wait for an agreed end to hostilities before trying to cross the strait.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Monday’s events showed there was no military solution to the crisis. He said peace talks were progressing with Pakistan’s mediation while warning the U.S. and the UAE against being drawn into a “quagmire by ill-wishers.”

“Project Freedom is Project Deadlock,” he wrote on social media.

Nonetheless, the U.S. military said two U.S. merchant ships made it through the strait, without saying when, with the support of Navy guided-missile destroyers.

While Iran denied any crossings had taken place in recent hours, Maersk said the Alliance Fairfax, a U.S.-flagged ship, exited the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz accompanied by the U.S. military on Monday.

The commander of U.S. forces in the region said his fleet had destroyed six small Iranian boats, which Iran also denied. Admiral Brad Cooper said he “strongly advised” Iranian forces to keep clear of U.S. military assets carrying out the mission.

Iranian authorities released a map of what they said was an expanded sea area now under their control, extending far beyond the strait to include long stretches of the UAE’s coastline.

South Korea reported one of its merchant ships, HMM Namu, in the strait suffered an explosion and fire in its engine room, though no one aboard was hurt, and a spokesman said it was unclear if the fire was caused by an attack or originated internally.

The British maritime security agency UKMTO reported two ships had been hit off the coast of the UAE, and the Emirati oil company ADNOC said one of its empty oil tankers was hit by Iranian drones.

IRAN SETS UAE OIL PORT ABLAZE

After reported drone and missile attacks inside the UAE throughout the day, including one that caused a fire at Fujairah, an important oil port, the UAE said Iranian attacks marked a serious escalation and it reserved the right to respond.

Fujairah lies beyond the strait, making it one of few export routes for Middle East oil that does not require passing through it.

Its government also said that it was implementing remote learning for school students for safety reasons.

Iran’s state television network said military officials had confirmed they attacked the UAE in response to the “U.S. military’s adventurism.”

Earlier, Iran said it had fired on a U.S. warship approaching the strait, forcing it to turn around. An initial Iranian report had said a U.S. warship was struck, but the U.S. denied this and Iranian officials later described the fire as warning shots.

Reuters could not independently verify the full situation in the strait on Monday as the warring sides issued contradictory statements.

Iran’s unified command has told commercial ships and oil tankers that they needed to coordinate with its armed forces.

“We warn that any foreign armed forces, especially the aggressive U.S. Army, will be attacked if they intend to approach and enter the Strait of Hormuz,” it said.

The U.S. and Israel suspended their bombing of Iran four weeks ago, and U.S. and Iranian officials held one round of face-to-face peace talks. But attempts to set up further meetings have failed.

Iranian state media said on Sunday that the U.S. had conveyed its response to a 14-point Iranian proposal via Pakistan, and Iran was reviewing it. Neither side gave details.

The Iranian proposal would postpone discussion of Iran’s nuclear energy and research programs until after an agreement to end the war and resolve the standoff over shipping. Trump said over the weekend he was still studying it but would probably reject it.

The latest U.S. intelligence shows limited damage to Iran’s nuclear program, which Iran says is a purely peaceful civilian nuclear program, since the war began, officials told Reuters.

Iran’s nuclear facilities were bombed by the U.S. and Israel in attacks last year. Trump wants to remove Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium to prevent Iran from processing it further to the point where it could make a nuclear weapon.

As of May 1, Toti is performing the duties of the under secretary of the Navy after Hung Cao took on the role of acting secretary following John Phelan’s ousting in late April.

“He has my full trust and authority to drive change, increase efficiency, and accelerate decisions—so we can deliver warfighting capability, support our sailors and Marines forward, and defend our nation every day,” Cao said in a statement posted Friday across several social media accounts.

Toti’s 26-year Navy career includes “tours as commander of Fleet Antisubmarine Warfare Command Norfolk, as commodore of Submarine Squadron 3, and as commanding officer of the nuclear fast attack submarine USS Indianapolis (SSN-697),” according to his biography.

Back on shore, Toti served for almost a decade at the Pentagon, including tours as special assistant to the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, as Navy representative to the Joint Requirements Oversight Council and as deputy director of the Navy War Plans Cell, Deep Blue.

In addition to his decades-long military and subsequent contracting roles in Washington, D.C., Toti, the last captain of a nuclear attack submarine USS Indianapolis, helped lead the charge to exonerate Charles McVay, captain of the World War II heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis, which has the unpleasant distinction of being known as the worst naval disaster in U.S. history.

Toti told Military Times in a previous interview that he “saw an injustice and I committed myself to correcting it.”

Using a torpedo fire control computer prior his submarine’s decommissioning, Toti programmed torpedo and intercept courses to demonstrate “that failure to zigzag didn’t hazard the ship.”

“So, what I did was run how to do this manually, as many runs of the Indianapolis’ course, with as many zigs as possible against Hashimoto’s firing solution,” he said. “I just did run after run. I stopped counting after 90 of these, and in every case, at least one of Hashimoto’s torpedoes hit.

“These Navy JAG officers kept arguing that if that single torpedo didn’t sink the ship, Hashimoto would have gone home. I said, ‘You don’t understand the way this works. That first torpedo blew the bow off the ship. They were going to get sunk regardless.’ That’s what the data proves. They couldn’t do that in 1945 but we can do it now.”

U.S. Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command, declined to comment on whether he thought a ceasefire begun on April 8 remained in effect. But he acknowledged ongoing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps efforts to “interfere” with President Donald Trump’s operation to open the critical waterway to commercial traffic.

“The IRGC has launched multiple cruise missiles, drones, and small boats at ships we are protecting. We have defeated each and every one of those threats through the clinical application of defensive munitions,” he said.

Cooper said he “strongly advised” Iranian forces to remain well clear of U.S. military assets as it launches the operation, which he said involved 15,000 U.S. troops, U.S. Navy destroyers, over 100 land- and sea-based aircraft and undersea assets.

“The U.S. commanders who are on the scene have all the authorities necessary to defend their units and to defend commercial shipping,” he said.

Asked if the U.S. military was escorting ships, Cooper said there were no traditional escorts but rather a larger, multi-layered defensive arrangement that included ships, helicopters, aircraft and electronic warfare to defend against Iranian threats.

“If you’re escorting a ship, you’re playing kind of one on one. I think we have a much better defensive arrangement in this process,” he said. “We have a much broader defensive package than you would have ever if you were just escorting.”

Cooper said a U.S. blockade of Iran, which prevents ships from going to Iran or departing Iranian territory, also remained in effect and was exceeding expectations.

Boeing’s VC-25B Bridge aircraft is currently being painted in the red, white and blue livery that President Donald Trump initially sought after during his first term in 2018, according to a Friday Air Force release.

Plans to replace the current Air Force One aging planes with two new VC-25B aircrafts have been in effect for about a decade, but a lack of properly cleared workers and supply chain issues caused the plans that were originally scheduled for a 2024 delivery to be delayed.

Now, the aircrafts are expected to be delivered in 2028.

“With the Boeing VC-25B deliveries delayed past its initial 2024 target and VC-25A heavy maintenance cycles extending, an interim capability became an absolute imperative,” the release says.

Although Trump has voiced his dissatisfaction many times with Boeing’s delays, the defense company has expressed their determination to complete the transformation of 747-8 aircraft into VC-25Bs.

In the meantime, Trump will use the luxury jet that was donated by Qatar in May 2025.

The decision to use this aircraft raised national security concerns along with worries over the amount of time and money it would require to renovate the aircraft to be appropriate for presidential use.

In June 2025, the Air Force said it would cost roughly $400 million to modify the aircraft, far less than the $1 billion aviation experts and lawmakers previously speculated.

To make the plane suitable for a president, the plane’s defense would have to be reinforced with countermeasures, encrypted communications and other necessities installed.

The release did not specify what type of capabilities the Air Force installed. Aviation experts conjectured in the past that updating the aircraft to fit those capabilities would last into the 2030s.

“To meet the VC-25B Bridge accelerated timeline, the Air Force leveraged unique industry partnerships and a creative acquisition strategy, utilizing multiple 747-8 airframes from around the globe to support both the final aircraft and the training pipeline,” the statement reads.

L3Harris Technologies, a defense contractor company, was selected to modify the aircraft in collaboration with Boeing, who provided engineering data to support the required updates, according to the release.

This collaboration “catapulted” the operational readiness ahead of the initial schedule, the release noted, with the Air Force creating an at-scale mockup of the aircraft’s interior to allow for White House staff to complete early commissioning activities.

“This platform provides the Air Force with invaluable lead time to mature our training pipelines, synchronize our supply chains and solidify sustainment frameworks,” Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink said in the release.

“We are building the ecosystem necessary to ensure this fleet remains mission-ready for the next 30 to 40 years,” Meink concluded.

Currently, Trump is using the VC-25A, a version of the Boeing 747 that has been in service as the primary Air Force One aircraft since 1990.

Even though the VC-25B is on track to be delivered to the Presidential Airlift Group by this summer, it is unclear when the president is slated to begin flying in it.

Trump had threatened a drawdown in forces earlier this week after sparring with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said on Monday the Iranians were humiliating the U.S. in talks to end the two-month-old war and that he did not see what exit strategy Washington was pursuing.

A senior Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said recent German rhetoric had been “inappropriate and unhelpful.”

“The president is rightly reacting to these counterproductive remarks,” the official said.

The Pentagon said the withdrawal was expected to be completed over the next six to 12 months. Germany is home to some 35,000 active-duty U.S. military personnel, more than anywhere else in Europe.

The official said the drawdown would bring U.S. troop levels in Europe back to roughly pre-2022 levels, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered a buildup by then-President Joe Biden.

The official also cast the decision in terms of the Trump administration’s push for Europe to become the main security provider on the continent. But it is nonetheless another potent reminder of Trump’s willingness to respond to perceived disloyalty by allies.

Reuters exclusively reported last week an internal Pentagon email that outlined options to punish NATO allies that Washington believes failed to ​support U.S. operations in the war with Iran, including suspending Spain from NATO and reviewing the U.S. position on Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands.

GERMAN TIES FRAY

Trump has singled out Germany even as he has chastised other NATO allies for not sending their navies to help open the Strait of Hormuz during the conflict.

The waterway, a chokepoint for global oil shipments, has remained virtually shut, causing market turmoil and unprecedented disruption in energy supplies.

Merz has said Germans and Europeans were not consulted before the U.S. and Israel started attacking Iran on Feb. 28, and that he had conveyed his skepticism about the conflict directly to Trump afterwards.

“The president has been very clear about his frustrations about our allies’ rhetoric and failure to provide support for U.S. operations that benefit them,” the senior Pentagon official said.

Trump has long wanted to reduce the U.S. troop presence in Germany. He pushed for a reduction at the end of his first term, but that cut was never enacted. Trump lost the election and Biden reversed the plan.

Trump’s Wednesday announcement that he was reviewing U.S. troop levels in Germany surprised German military officials who spoke to Reuters, citing what they called constructive meetings at the Pentagon earlier in the day.

They argue that Germany has done more than other allies to support the U.S. war in Iran, including allowing the use of bases and giving permission for overflights. Germany is also home to a huge military hospital in Landstuhl.

As part of Trump’s withdrawal decision, a brigade combat team now in Germany will be pulled out of the country and a long-range fires battalion that the Biden administration had planned to begin deploying to Germany later this year will no longer deploy, the official said.

The benefits of U.S. troops here include deterring adversaries, combat training with allies on European terrain and absorbing lessons from nearby Ukraine, they told Reuters and a small group of other media visiting the U.S. Army’s only combat training center outside the U.S., located in Hohenfels, southern Germany.

The handful of officers who spoke either did not comment on President Trump’s remarks, or declined to.

Spokespeople for the U.S. Army did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on how a troop reduction would impact activities in the country.

Germany is the U.S. military’s largest footprint in Europe, with some 35,000 active-duty military personnel, and serves as a key training hub.

That includes the Hohenfels facility, which spans some 163-square kilometers of forest. The area hosts large-scale combat training for U.S. troops as well as other NATO and partner nations.

On Thursday, a U.S. armored unit was a week into a grueling 10-day long exercise, which included evading an opposing force and its arsenal of surveillance and attack drones.

The brigade is at the end of a nine-month deployment in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe as part of a U.S. Army-led initiative to support NATO while building readiness and enhancing bonds between ally and partner militaries.

Their presence in Europe shows potential adversaries that in the event of a conflict “that they’re going to face the most ready, trained, lethal fighting force, and not just the United States, but the United States and its NATO allies,” said the brigade’s commander, Col. Michael Ziegelhofer.

“The fact that we’re out here represents, you know, really our country’s support for NATO and our allies,” he said.

‘FIGHT TOGETHER’

Training with other nations is “incredibly important,” said Ziegelhofer, standing on the edge of a small mock town. “If a crisis were to take place over here, we’d be in the fight together, so training like this helps us to build the interoperability, not just with the equipment that we have, but between the people and the systems and the processes in our unit.”

The brigade has also been learning about drones during their deployment in Europe, added Ziegelhofer.

“We worked all the way from learning how to fly them to getting pretty sophisticated in understanding the systems and processes,” he said, “both in using them ourselves and how to counter the enemy’s use of those since we’ve been over here.”

LESSONS FROM UKRAINE

The evolution of drones and electronic warfare are among the lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war being incorporated into training, said Lt. Col. Michael Cryer, commander of the opposition forces permanently assigned to Hohenfels training area, known as the “warrior” battalion.

“It’s been a cat-and-mouse game, as you’ve seen in Ukraine,” he said. “Where one side develops this capability, another side develops a countermeasure.”

One of the biggest challenges, according to the officer, is maintaining options for offensive maneuvers while being constantly surveilled by aerial drones.

“It is nearly impossible to hide,” Cryer said. “Across the Army, we haven’t totally come to grips with that.”

U.S. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith told audience members at Modern Day Marine in Washington on Thursday that the demand for ARG-MEUs has exceeded the 3.0 presence he previously called for.

“I won’t say how many of the ARG-MEUs our combat commanders asked for, but it is well north of three,” he said. “Like double that.”

Calls for ARG-MEUs are coming from the U.S. military’s Southern Command, European Command, U.S. Central Command and U.S. Africa Command.

A 3.0 presence indicates a three-ship ARG-MEU deployed at all times: one out of the East Coast, one out of the West Coast and the 31st MEU delivering periodic deployments out of Okinawa, Japan.

Currently, the 22nd MEU is participating in Operation Southern Spear and the 31st MEU is in the Middle East in support of Operation Epic Fury.

The 11th MEU is reportedly en route toward the Middle East to support Operation Epic Fury, but as of this week was conducting routine patrols around the southern Philippines.

Smith labeled ARG-MEUs the most flexible tool in the Defense Department inventory, providing humanitarian assistance, non-combatant evacuation operations and key strike capabilities.

The ARG-MEUs in recent years have been more relevant than ever before, Smith added, but sustaining the pace proved difficult. This struggle emphasized the Marine Corps’ and Navy’s need to return to a permanent 3.0 ARG-MEU presence.

“This is our number one priority and it remains my personal north star as a commandant,” Smith said.

US Marine Corps, Navy join forces to combat insufficient amphibious fleet size

The Navy’s current inventory of amphibious ships, however, is not enough to address this goal, according to Smith.

The Navy holds an inventory of 32 amphibious warfare ships, but half of the fleet is in poor condition and poorly maintained, according to a 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

A defense official told Military Times in August 2025 that the readiness rate of amphibious ships had dropped to 41% despite the Marine Corps previously stating that the amphibious readiness rate needed to remain at 80% or higher to complete missions.

To remedy the ongoing issue, the Marine Corps is focusing on optimizing maintenance schedules, investing in service life extensions and procuring new ships.

Expeditionary Warfare Director Brig. Gen. Lee Meyer told reporters Tuesday at the Modern Day Marine exposition that the Navy recently completed a study on Wasp-class amphibious assault ships, which led to the service life extension of the USS Wasp.

Meyer said the Navy and Marine Corps would also study other amphibious assault ships to see if they could extend their lifespan, with the services expecting a completed study of amphibious dock landing ships in the next several days.

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps recently partnered to launch the Amphibious Force Readiness Board, which will seek to tackle the best pathway forward to maintain, modernize and build the service’s amphibious fleet to prioritize availability.

The board wasn’t a study group, according to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, who spoke at Modern Day Marine Thursday. It was a platform to produce action, he said.

“Far too long amphibious readiness has absorbed the cumulative effects of aging systems, deferred maintenance, supply chain, friction, workforce shortages and high operational tempo,” said Caudle. “So, we are attacking the problem directly.”

Hegseth argued that the pause in hostilities freezes the ticking clock that would otherwise require the president either to get agreement from lawmakers or to end military operations after 60 days.

“We are in a ceasefire right now, which [in] our understanding means the 60-day clock pauses, or stops,” Hegseth told Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Kaine, who was Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, strongly disputed Hegseth’s interpretation.

“I do not believe the statute would support that,” Kaine said, adding that he has “serious constitutional concerns and we don’t want to layer those with additional statutory concerns.”

The 60-day threshold is delineated in the War Powers Resolution of 1973. The most relevant part of that law makes no mention of a ceasefire, stating instead that a president needs to inform Congress within 48 hours of hostilities commencing. After such a report, the law states that “within sixty calendar days” the president must “terminate any use of United States Armed Forces” unless Congress consents to an extension.

Friday marks 60 days since the Trump administration notified Congress that it had launched strikes on Iran. The law gives the president the option to ask for a 30-day extension, though it is unclear whether Trump intends to do so.

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the White House’s position, told Military Times that for the purposes of the War Powers Resolution, the conflict that began on Feb. 28 is now considered “terminated.”

The official pointed to the ceasefire brokered on April 7, emphasizing that there has been no exchange of fire between U.S. and Iranian forces since it took hold.

Washington and Tehran are now locked in a high-stakes stalemate. Trump has responded to the Islamic Republic’s effective seizure of the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint through which a fifth of the world’s oil typically flows — by ordering a blockade on all vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports.

After the president suggested the blockade could persist for months, the global oil price hit a wartime high on Thursday, with Brent crude briefly topping $126 a barrel.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that Trump has been “transparent with the Hill since before Operation Epic Fury began, and administration officials provided over 30 bipartisan briefings for members of Congress to keep them apprised of military updates.”

Kelly added: “The president’s preference is always diplomacy, and Iran wants to make a deal.”

Hegseth’s remarks came during his second consecutive day on Capitol Hill, where he testified under oath that, eight weeks into the war with Iran, America’s top adversary is not any foreign nation — but instead the “reckless naysayers and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans.”

The Pentagon chief repeatedly cast those members of Congress as undercutting the U.S. military’s performance in Iran, while criticizing them for their failure to acknowledge the achievements of Operation Epic Fury.

“President Trump has had the courage, unlike other presidents, to ensure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon and that their nuclear blackmail never succeeds,” Hegseth said in his opening statement.

He blasted “defeatists from the cheap seats who, two months in, seek to undermine the incredible efforts that have been undertaken, and the historic nature of taking on a 47-year threat with the courage no other president has had, to great success and great opportunity for preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon.”

The hearing quickly devolved into confrontation when a protester interrupted the proceedings, shouting, “Pete Hegseth, you’re a war criminal,” before being swiftly escorted out by Capitol Police Officers.

Attention then shifted to Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, who accused Hegseth of overstating the U.S. military’s accomplishments.

“The problem with your statements, Mr. Secretary, is they are dangerously exaggerated,” Reed said. “Iran’s hardline regime remains in place. It still retains stockpiles of enriched uranium, and its nuclear program remains viable.”

Reed asserted that the Islamic Republic is far from depleted. Iran retains, he said, enough combat effectiveness to sustain a protracted impasse; an arsenal of missiles and drones that constitutes a more serious threat than the secretary has publicly conceded; and a demonstrated ability to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz when it chooses.

“I am concerned that you have been telling the president what he wants to hear, instead of what he needs to hear,” Reed continued. “Our military has performed heroically, but military force without a sound strategy is a path to long-term defeat.”

The service’s fiscal 2027 budget request includes $996.5 million in procurement funding to begin production of Increment 1 Collaborative Combat Aircraft, plus $150 million in advance procurement for FY28.

Combined with roughly $1.37 billion in continued research and development, up from $827 million in FY26, the total program request reaches roughly $2.37 billion, according to Pentagon comptroller documents released April 3.

The CCA procurement line stands out as the single largest new addition to the Air Force’s $30.64 billion aircraft procurement account, the clearest sign yet that the program is moving from the test range into the operational fleet.

Unlike traditional remotely piloted drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper, Collaborative Combat Aircraft are jet-powered, semi-autonomous systems designed to operate alongside crewed fighters such as the F-35, F-22 and future F-47. The pilot in the manned jet serves as mission commander, while the CCAs, the “loyal wingmen,” use onboard autonomy for navigation, maneuvering, sensor fusion and weapons employment.

Increment 1 CCA will focus primarily on air-to-air and strike missions, with electronic warfare and ISR variants planned for later increments. The Air Force has previously signaled interest in acquiring 100–150 aircraft in Increment 1 as part of a longer-term goal of hundreds to low thousands across multiple increments.

The CCA program was developed to address a core operational problem. Crewed fighters alone cannot generate sufficient combat mass against a peer adversary like China. CCAs are designed to be affordable enough to lose, capable enough to fight and numerous enough to matter, accepting risks that would otherwise fall to crewed fighters.

The Air Force’s notional plan calls for each manned fighter to command two CCAs, though testing and simulation suggest one pilot can effectively manage three to five, potentially more.

The FY27 request backs that vision with real procurement dollars for the first time. It commits the service, industry and Congress to treating CCA as a permanent part of the future fleet rather than an experiment.

That shift, however, forces several key decisions the Air Force has not yet made: where the aircraft will be based; who will maintain them; how pilots and maintainers will be trained; and how they will integrate into existing fighter squadrons.

Despite those challenges, the increased R&D funding signals that Increment 1 is only the beginning. Nine vendors are already under contract for Increment 2 prototypes, and service officials have indicated wargaming favors larger numbers of lower-cost CCAs for a Pacific fight.

A final production decision for Increment 1 is expected this summer. General Atomics’s YFQ-42A and Anduril’s YFQ-44A are the lead competitors, with Northrop Grumman’s YFQ-48A in testing for later phases. Budget documents do not specify exact CCA quantities for the FY27 lot, but analysts estimate roughly 30 airframes, depending on final unit costs.

Col. Timothy Helfrich, the program’s portfolio acquisition executive, said during a Defense One panel on March 25 the program is currently tracking below the original $30 million per-unit target.

While beating cost targets is a welcome development, production transitions are seldom without hiccups. Autonomy software, supply chain maturity and integration with manned platforms remain works in progress. Whether to aggressively scale Increment 1 or accelerate Increment 2 could prove a challenging balancing act, and how CCAs will be fielded across active-duty, Guard and Reserve units remains unclear.

Those operational questions will ultimately be shaped in large part by Congress, where approval itself remains another hurdle.

While the CCA procurement request sits squarely in the base budget, offering a cleaner path than items pushed through reconciliation, lawmakers have already requested detailed briefings on mission sets, human-machine interfaces, production scaling and integration plans. Any push for minimum quantity language or additional oversight is likely to appear in the FY27 markup.

While the program waits on Congress, an outside vote of confidence has already arrived. On April 23, the Netherlands became the first ally to commit funding for two Increment 1 CCAs. Under the partnership, the aircraft will remain U.S. property and operate with the Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit at Nellis AFB, with Dutch personnel embedded to help develop concepts of operations.

“The future fight will be fought with allies and partners,” Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said in an April 23 statement. “By aligning our approaches early, we ensure interoperability and shared advantage in the era of human-machine teaming.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will also participate in the briefing, the official said.

The official did not disclose the range of options that will be discussed but said the briefing was expected to be focused on actions needed to compel Iran to negotiate an end to the conflict.

U.S. Central Command and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Hegseth and Caine will be testifying before the Senate at 11 a.m. EST, with questions expected to focus on the conflict launched by the U.S. and Israel on Feb. 28. The White House briefing was expected to take place following that hearing.

Axios reported on Thursday that Central Command had prepared a plan for a “short and powerful” wave of strikes on Iran, likely including infrastructure targets as well as another one for taking over part of the Strait of Hormuz to reopen it to commercial shipping.

Such options, however, have long been part of the U.S. planning and it did not appear that Axios was suggesting any departure from such planning.

The Iran war, which remains unpopular in the U.S., has shaken markets and raised oil prices.

The war has brought traffic close to a standstill through the ​strait, a chokepoint for about 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.

A hearing on the Pentagon’s $1.45 trillion budget request for fiscal 2027 became a hotly contested debate on Iran, with House Armed Services Committee members asking how long the secretary expected the operation to last and Hegseth bristling at those who questioned the administration’s decision to go to war.

Committee members praised the work of the U.S. service members currently deployed to the Middle East, but they also wanted Hegseth to address the ultimate outcome.

Ranking committee member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., asked Hegseth where the war was going. Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., said the military had executed the war with “tactical success” but called the administration’s strategy an example of “incompetence.”

The comments struck a nerve with Hegseth, who argued that President Donald Trump is the only U.S. leader to decide to physically stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

“The biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans,” Hegseth said, addressing Garamendi and others who have opposed the operation.

“Shame on you calling this a quagmire two months in the effort,” Hegseth added.

When the U.S. and Israel launched combat operations in Iran on Feb. 28, Trump said the goals were three-fold: destroy Iran’s missile capability; “annihilate” their navy; and ensure that the country would never have nuclear weapons.

The operation killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and several key leaders, destroyed Iran’s navy and wiped out key military installations. In retaliation, Iran launched missiles and air assaults on U.S. military facilities, killing 13 and damaging U.S. bases across the region, as well as civilian targets in Meddle East countries.

Hegseth noted that the Iranian navy has been destroyed, but Iran continues to have nuclear ambitions despite losing capabilities as a result of Operation Midnight Hammer last summer that Hegseth said “obliterated” facilities.

“You have to stare down this kind of enemy who’s hell bent on getting a nuclear weapon and get them to a point where they’re at the table giving it up,” Hegseth said.

The questions over the war’s future come as a 60-day deadline approaches Thursday under the War Powers Act. The legislation requires the president to seek congressional authorization to continue the operation or withdraw troops.

The law allows Trump to request an extension if the time is needed to safely withdraw U.S. troops.

According to testimony, the Iran war has cost $25 billion to date, with the highest costs coming at the beginning of the conflict as a result of the use of thousands of bombs and missiles.

Iran war has cost $25 billion so far, Pentagon official says

The Defense Department’s $1.45 trillion budget request for fiscal 2027 is 44% higher than the Pentagon’s current budget — the highest in modern history. It would fund an increase in military end-strength of 44,000 service members, provide a 5% to 7% pay raise to troops depending on rank and boost procurement funding by 76%.

“Under the leadership of President Trump our builder-in-chief, we are reversing … systemic decay and putting our defense industrial base back on a war-time footing,” Hegseth said.

During the hearing, lawmakers raised concerns about the firing of former Army Chief of Staff Randy George and the decision to remove general officers from promotion lists, with several praising the former’s 40-years of service and dedication to soldiers.

“Let’s talk about a guy who is a patriot. Someone who everyone on this dais has huge admiration for,” said Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Penn., an Air Force veteran, referring to George.

In his response to Houlahan, Hegseth hinted that he fired George as part of a war on “woke” — Hegseth’s efforts to eliminate diversity or equity initiatives in the services.

“Out of respect for these officers, we never talk about the nature of their removal, but every one of them, including myself, knows that they serve at the pleasure of the president,” Hegseth said.

But, he added, “it’s very difficult to change the culture of a department that has been destroyed by the wrong perspective.”

During testimony, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine remained above the political fray, declining to answer questions he perceived as political.

“My duty is to ensure our civilian leadership has a comprehensive range of military options and the associated risks that to those leaders who make the nation’s hardest decisions and offer my military advice privately,” Caine said.

“My blueprint for this role is Gen. George C. Marshall. His commitment to civilian control of the military and nonpartisan military remains a constant standard, and something I borrow from often,” he added.

Acting comptroller Jules Hurst III, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, said that the bulk of the figure has been devoted to ordnance.

“Approximately, at this day, we are spending about $25 billion on Operation Epic Fury, most of that is in munitions,” Hurst told lawmakers, adding that some of the costs also included operations, maintenance and equipment replacement.

“We will formulate a supplemental [bill] through the White House that will come to Congress once we have a full assessment of the cost of the conflict,” he noted.

Wednesday marked the first time that President Donald Trump’s administration has publicly disclosed the war’s financial toll.

Senior Pentagon officials appeared on Capitol Hill for what had been scheduled as a review of the Department of Defense’s $1.5 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2027, only for the proceedings to be subsumed by the war in Iran, which began with a joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Feb. 28.

Thirteen American service members have been killed in the operation, with 400 others wounded, according to Pentagon data.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a contentious exchange with Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., insisted that the war’s expenditure is justified to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

“The question that I would ask this committee is, ‘What is it worth to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, considering the radical ambitions of that regime?’” Hegseth said.

After eight weeks of fighting, diplomacy between Washington and Tehran has failed to yield a definitive peace deal. Trump, in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, warned that Iran “better get smart soon” as negotiations remain stalled.

“Iran can’t get their act together,” the president wrote. “They don’t know how to sign a nonnuclear deal. They better get smart soon!”

Trump’s message was accompanied by a manipulated image of him clutching a weapon while explosions took place on a mountainous landscape in the background.