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Czech-born composer Julius Fucik was known for his love of military marches. Also known as the “Bohemian Sousa,” Fucik was raised in formal conservatory study, serious instrumental training, and the day-to-day rigor of military band life, which is basically musical boot camp with better hats. Not many Americans are going to be familiar with him (unless “late 19th-century Austro-Hungarian waltz composers” started trending on TikTok recently), but every one of them would instantly recognize at least one of his works.
And that work is “Entry of the Gladiators.

President Donald Trump nominated a Marine general with special operations experience to lead U.S. Southern Command, the Pentagon announced Friday, about a week after the organization’s former commander retired amid the administration’s controversial boat strikes.
Lt. Gen. Francis Donovan currently serves as the vice commander for U.S. Special Operations Command. His nomination was referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, but the congressional notice did not specify for which position.

The Space Development Agency (SDA) has given four companies contracts worth a combined $3.5 billion for a future tranche of its space-based missile warning and tracking architecture.
The agency announced Friday that teams led by Lockheed Martin, Rocket Lab, Northrop Grumman and L3Harris will each build and deliver 18 satellites for the Tranche 3 tracking layer of SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). The batch of 72 vehicles are expected to launch in fiscal 2029, according to SDA.

Some members of the Defense Department’s civilian workforce may soon receive sizable monetary awards under an edict from Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth.
In a Dec. 15 memo to DOD leadership, combatant commanders, and defense agency and field activity directors, Hegseth ordered officials to reward high performers.

Operation Underworld is usually remembered as a secret pact between the Navy and the Mafia to secure America’s wartime docks, but its influence reached far beyond New York Harbor. At the center of this unlikely alliance stood Charles “Lucky” Luciano, an imprisoned crime boss whose power stretched from Sicilian villages to Manhattan boardrooms.

All Marines in combat arms fields will soon have to meet the same standards on their Physical Fitness Test, or PFT, regardless of their gender, under a service-wide policy announced Thursday. The new rules bring Marine PT standards in line with guidelines laid out by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a Sept. 30 mandate that all combat arms troops across the military should be held to gender-neutral fitness standards.

The Navy launched a one-way attack drone from a ship in the Middle East for the first time on Tuesday, according to the service.
The USS Santa Barbara, a littoral combat ship, launched a Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System, or LUCAS off its flight deck while afloat in the Arabian Gulf, marking its first launch from a ship at sea.
Earlier this month, U.S.

As Congress began hashing out the annual defense bill, military families began to celebrate a major policy win they believed they had secured after years of fighting. The measure included new rules that would have granted Tricare coverage to women pursuing in vitro fertilization, or IVF, to become pregnant.
Then reports came out that the language in the law requiring the coverage for IVF and intrauterine insemination, or IUI, was cut.

America’s launch vehicles are critical to strategic competition with China and Russia. Their ability to send large payloads to space, from communications satellites to mission supplies, is central to America’s commercial and national security space activities.Launch vehicles typically deliver payloads to two main orbits — Low Earth Orbit, where many satellites operate, and Geostationary Transfer Orbit, a stepping stone for higher orbits.

Coast Guard Adm. Kevin Lunday — whose nomination for commandant was temporarily held up by lawmakers amid a political controversy about policies related to hate symbols — was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday night to lead the sea service.
Lunday had been serving as acting commandant since January after Adm. Linda Fagan was fired from her post. He was formally nominated by President Donald Trump in October to hold the role on a more permanent basis.
Notably, his previous leadership roles in the sea service gave him a strong background in cyber.