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On September 4 the Venezuelan Air Force deployed a pair of F-16 fighters near the U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke Class destroyer USS Jason Dunham in the Caribbean Sea, as an intended show of force amid high tensions between the two countries. This occurred after the U.S. Navy deployed a a flotilla of warships for operations off the coast of Venezuela, including at least three destroyers and a nuclear attack submarine. Washington also renewed efforts to oust the administration of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, including by placing a bounty on his head.

The Ukrainian Air Force has begun to operate MiG-29 fighters procured from Azerbaijan, as the Central Asian state has retired the ageing Soviet-built aircraft from service. The emergence of footage showing the fighters in Ukrainain service closely follows a rise in tensions between Azerbaijan and Russia, as the former has aligned itself increasingly closely with Turkey and other NATO members in support of the Ukrainian war effort.

The most decisive infrastructure of the twenty-first century isn’t an aircraft carrier floating in the Pacific or buried in a missile silo. It hums quietly inside the walls of a data center.These sprawling facilities now anchor military power, economic clout, and geopolitical leverage. But they were never designed for an era defined by great-power competition, cyber sabotage, and the relentless demands of AI. Their enormous energy footprint and physical vulnerability leave them both indispensable and exposed.Data centers are no longer just commercial utilities. They are strategic assets.

China’s increasingly powerful military has bracketed Taiwan with exercises. Its air and naval forces launch daily incursions, and Beijing has erased the unofficial maritime border between them. Yet, many Americans are baffled by a Taiwanese public that is seemingly oblivious, resigned, or apathetic to these threats.Taiwan’s former cultural minister lamented the absence of a “will to fight” crucial to the island’s defense.

As Pete Hegseth, whose current job title is Secretary of Defense, wrapped up a day trip to Fort Benning on Thursday, he turned to a group of reporters who had joined him and said: “Thank you for traveling with the War Department.”
It was a wink-and-a-nod acknowledgement of one of the Pentagon’s most poorly kept recent secrets, that Hegseth and President Donald Trump would like to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War.
Within an hour of Hegseth’s hint, Trump announced that he was formally launching an effort to rebrand the agency.

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The British Ministry of Defence has confirmed plans to begin withdrawing Eurofighter combat jets from service, as well as figures for planned scrapping o the aircraft. Defence Minister Maria Eagle confirmed that the first Eurofighters procured, the Tranche 1 aircraft, would be retired by 2027, followed by the retirement of both Tranche 2 and Tranche 3 aircraft by 2040. She added that the British Armed Forces fielded no Tranche 3A aircraft.

The Pentagon didn’t pop into existence fully formed; it evolved—sometimes gracefully, often grudgingly—out of a much leaner system that began with the Department of War in 1789.
In the early days of the American republic, that one civilian-led office oversaw the Army and, for a while, most naval affairs as well. As the young fleet’s needs outgrew the War Department’s ability to control it, Congress established a separate Department of the Navy in 1798 and assigned the ships to their own department.
The State, War, and Navy Building in 1917.

War Department, Washington, D.C.1865-1900Public Domain

Names matter. Leadership matters. Culture matters.
No where else do these things matter more than in the U.S. armed forces.
Fox News is reporting the Department of Defense is going to be brought back to its old title – The Department of War.
As a former military officer, I am very concerned the culture of the American military has degraded to one of careerism, rather than implementing the war policy of the Commander-in-Chief; in other words, to kill people and break things.
Strength leads to peace.

Every F-35 delivered to the U.S. military last year by Lockheed Martin was behind schedule by an average of seven months, a government watchdog found, but contractors kept millions in “incentive fees” designed to speed up the delivery.
To catch up, the aerospace giant now says it will “reduce the scope” of capabilities in new planes. 
The latest round of jets will now “cost $6 billion more and completion is at least 5 years later than original estimates,” a report by the Government Accountability Office found. “In 2024, Lockheed delivered 110 aircraft.

Secretary of the Navy John Phelan has ordered a major reorganization focused on better managing the sea service’s acquisition of uncrewed platforms, according to a new memo.
The directive, dated Sept. 3, was posted online by the non-profit AUVSI. Sources confirmed the memo’s authenticity to DefenseScoop.
“The Department of the Navy (DON) is steadfast in its commitment to modernizing naval capabilities and maintaining technical superiority to meet the strategic demands of great power competition.