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Newly released photographs leaked by U.S. Armed Forces personnel at facilities in the Middle East have provided a rare look at the extent of damage inflicted on American military facilities in the Middle East by Iranian missile and drone strikes during. The photographs, obtained exclusively by CBS News from serving U.S. military personnel who requested anonymity, show heavily damaged buildings, vehicles and aircraft at American positions in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

U.S. Army physical training formation, Fort Lewis, Washington. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / CC0

Keep the numbers in perspective. Pentagon officials estimated roughly 4,200 affected service members in 2025, a tiny fraction of the force, and treatment costs were small compared with the defense budget. That is not the hill to die on. The stronger question is consistency. The military treats chronic medical limits as readiness issues.

The U.S. Air Force is facing growing difficulties sustaining its aerial refuelling fleet, with its ability to sustain global air operations increasingly constrained by the age of its KC-135 Stratotankers and continuing problems with the newer KC-46A Pegasus. A recent assessment by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the condition and sustainment of the tanker fleet had deteriorated significantly, while the service’s transition from the KC-135 to the KC-46 has failed to proceed quickly enough to prevent a growing capability gap.

Footage released by Chinese state media has provided a rare look at the country’s underground military facilities, which form a vast network designed to protect strategic weapons, command structures, aircraft, ammunition and personnel from air and missile attacks. This subterranean infrastructure has a much broader role and represents an important component of China’s approach to surviving and continuing to fight through a major conflict.

China has for the first time provided a semi-official acknowledgment of its significant investments in expanding its silo-based intercontinental-range ballistic missile arsenal, after work on this was first observed in commercial satellite imagery in 2021. A new CCTV documentary marking the 99th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army features a PLA engineer discussing his work constructing what he describes as “houses for missiles” in remote mountains and deserts.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Manned fighter jets from NATO nations have recently been called upon to shoot down suspected Russian drones flying over allied territory, but the commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe envisions a future in which that type of work could be offloaded to AI-enabled unmanned platforms.
USAFE boss Lt. Gen. Jason Hinds on Tuesday outlined “vignettes” for Collaborative Combat Aircraft employment.

The French Rafale F5 program represents an effort to keep an ageing fourth generation design relevant into the fifth and sixth generation eras, according a recent assessment by leading combat aviation expert Abraham Abrams.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — As policymakers and Pentagon leaders determine the Space Development Agency’s future, its personnel are focused on meeting near-term deadlines to deploy the next generation of U.S. military satellites that detect hypersonic missiles and other emerging weapons threats.
SDA’s Director Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo shared new details about how the agency is operating in this time of uncertainty, during a media roundtable Tuesday on the sidelines of AFA’s annual Air, Space and Cyber Conference.

The U.S. military has “probably used” one-half to two-thirds of its missile defense interceptors in its war with Iran, a congressional report found. The report’s authors warned the diminished stockpile could hamstring U.S. efforts if it had to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion.
The dire warnings about the U.S. munitions were included in a Congressional Budget Office report released Tuesday. The report was produced in response to a request for cost estimates related to combat operations against Iran by Rep. Brendan F. Boyle (D-Pa.

Following an initial flight test earlier this year, the Army inked a more than $1.2 billion contract with Lockheed Martin for its Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) Increment 2 platform, which company officials say is capable of striking a moving ship.
While funding will be ironed out with each order, the military said in a notice Monday that it expects production under the contract to finish by Sept. 13, 2031. The key addition to this version of PrSM is a multi-mode seeker designed to lock-on to “time-sensitive” threats, specifically moving maritime targets, according to the company.