Author: Michael

With the war against Iran in its second week, the U.S. military’s focus now includes destroying factories that build one-way attack drones and preventing the Iranian military from using sea mines, said Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“U.S [Central Command] continues today to hunt and strike mine-laying vessels in mine storage facilities,” Caine said during a Tuesday Pentagon news conference. “This work will continue.”
Caine did not specify exactly how many vessels, storage facilities, or sea mines have been destroyed so far.

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The Senate on Tuesday voted to confirm Army Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd as commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the NSA, ending nearly a year of leadership uncertainty at the agencies and putting a new chief at the helm amid an ongoing war with Iran.
Rudd, who previously served as deputy commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and worked in the special operations community, was nominated in December by President Donald Trump for the dual-hat role of Cybercom and NSA boss, despite having a limited cyber background.
In April 2025, the Trump administration fired Air Force Gen.

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The Defense Department on Tuesday unveiled a new “Agent Designer” tool that will run on its GenAI.mil platform.
The tool is being integrated with Google Gemini capabilities, according to the announcement.
In a message posted on social media, the Pentagon CTO’s office said that 3 million employees at the department — including those without coding experience — can use the technology to create their own “custom AI assistants to automate tasks and streamline complex workflows” for a variety of mission areas.

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Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.American coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war.

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