The Pentagon’s arsenal and defense industrial base is built on materials that China can turn off like a light switch. Growing uncertainty in critical mineral markets and the open weaponization of supply chains by China has prompted a paradigm shift in how the Pentagon addresses these issues.In July 2025, the Department of Defense and MP Materials structured a package comprising equity in the company, a 10-year price floor for certain rare earth elements, long-term magnet offtake, and project financing.
Author: Michael
The military’s AI strategy is starting to resemble a bad dating app: lots of swipes, few lasting matches. The Trump administration’s new AI Action Plan offers potential to take things to the next level. It calls for deeper investments by the U.S. Department of Defense in algorithmic warfare. The plan calls for turning senior military colleges into hubs for AI research where students learn and apply core AI skills. This approach complements calls in the Army Transformation Initiative to integrate AI agents into next-generation command and control.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy and the Russian Navy have for the first time conducted a joint patrol in the Pacific, at a time of increasingly close defence cooperation between the two neighbours. This follows the first ever deployment of Chinese submarines to Russia for joint exercises in late July. The Russian Navy Pacific Fleet reported regarding the operation: “The joint patrol was launched in early August, after the Russian-Chinese drills Maritime Interaction 2025 had concluded in the Sea of Japan.
The rapid expansion of defence ties between North Korea and Russia since the outbreak of full scale hostilities in Ukraine in early 2022 has fuelled growing speculation that the Korean People’s Army Air Force could soon begin to receive new Russian combat aircraft, with multiple indicators of an interest in such procurements having been made as relations have strengthened.
The Air Force has kicked off the much-anticipated live flight testing phase for its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, the service announced Wednesday.
General Atomics recently began flight testing of its CCA Increment 1 prototype, dubbed the YFQ-42A, at an unnamed location in California to evaluate the platform’s “airworthiness, flight autonomy and mission system integration,” the Air Force said in a press release. The tests represent a critical milestone for the drone program and pave the way towards a final production decision that’s expected in fiscal 2026.
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The roughly 2,000 National Guardsmen deployed to Washington, D.C. have been tasked with assisting local law enforcement, but the lines separating where the troops’ mission ends and the police officers’ begins could get blurry.
And with discussions of future deployments to Chicago or other cities — likely without permission or invitation of governors — legal issues around the troops could be more complicated in the future.
Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson told reporters on Aug.
In their 2022 article, “Weak States and Loose Arms: Lessons and Warnings, from Afghanistan to Ukraine,” Kerry Chávez and Ori Seed examined the issue of whose hands loose weapons and military stockpiles fall into once conflicts conclude. Three years later, we asked them to revisit their analysis in light of the conflict in Afghanistan coming to a close and the ongoing war in Ukraine.Image: U.S. NavyIn your 2022 article, “Weak States and Loose Arms: Lessons and Warnings, from Afghanistan to Ukraine,” you warned about the dangers of the spillover of weapons used in armed conflicts.