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President Donald Trump came back into office in 2025, after promising to bring an end to Russia and Ukraine’s war, possibly as soon as his first day in office. Weeks later, the president and Vice President JD Vance dressed down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, implying to him that he couldn’t win the war and should accept peace. Trump had even mocked Zelensky for wearing casual clothes to the meeting.

In the year and a half since then, as with most things, Trump has gone back and forth between differing public positions.

During World War II, two regiments of Marines played a legendary game of American football on Guadalcanal while training for the upcoming invasion of Okinawa. For many, it would be the last game they ever played.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is expected to convene a high-profile meeting of military personnel for a “State of the Force” address this week. Will it show the U.S. armed forces as healthy? The answer may depend on how the audience responds, regardless of what Hegseth says. How the audience handles what could be one of the higher-visibility made-for-media events of the defense secretary’s tenure could tell us a lot about how the U.S. military has adjusted to President Donald Trump’s second term.

Russia’s long-range drone campaign against Ukraine has generally depended on relatively slow, propeller-driven Shahed-type attack drones. Their low cost and long range make them useful for mass attacks, yet slow speeds allow Ukrainian defenses time to detect and intercept them. Now, however, Russia is sending jet-powered Shaheds deep into western Ukraine. For example, early on September 29, Ukrainian authorities reported a jet-powered UAV approaching Ternopil, far from the front lines. The Ukrainian Air Force tracked the drone moving south of Horodok in Khmelnytskyi region toward Ternopil.

Russian forces have begun using an Iranian Misagh-2 man-portable surface-to-air missile systems to intercept Ukrainian unmanned aircraft, according to Ukrainian reporting and imagery. The system is reported by Ukrainian sources to be in use in the Rostov region. The Misagh-2 uses a passive infrared seeker and is designed as a fire-and-forget weapon. Once launched, the missile can track the infrared signature of its target without requiring continued guidance from the operator, allowing the firing team to immediately leave its position.

General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) has been awarded a $510m task order by the US Army Communications Electronics Command (CECOM) to deliver worldwide logistics, sustainment, and maintenance services.

Four and a Half Years On, Russians Still Support the War with Ukraine: It’s hard to know what Russians truly think of their country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The “special military operation” launched in February 2022 was expected to last no more than three days. Instead, it has surpassed the duration of the First World War.

Why the Ukraine War?

Russian Artillery Creative Commons Image

MSTA Russian Artillery Creative Commons Image

Hundreds of thousands of Russians have been killed, and many more wounded.

The USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. returned home this week after a 10-month deployment that included defending Navy assets against ballistic missiles as part of Iran war operations.
The USS Petersen left Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, on Dec. 1, 2025, and arrived back at its home port on Monday after 300 days at sea, officials announced in a release. The ship originally set sail in the South China Sea as part of ongoing “presence operations” to deter Chinese military actions in the region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin this week ordered another expansion of Russia’s armed forces, seeking to add 15,500 troops to bring the total to  2.44 million personnel, including 1.55 million active, CNBC reported, citing a Telegram post with the official government decree.

The report said that this is the fourth time that Putin has ordered such an increase since the start of 2026, after treating such increases much more sparingly in the earlier years of the war.

Putin in 2021. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Putin in 2023. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Eight Reactors, One Hull, and a $1.4 Billion Bill: Why Scrapping the USS Enterprise Costs So Much – The USS Enterprise, CVN-65, was the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Launched in 1958, it was the eighth vessel in the US Navy to bear the name Enterprise. Like her World War II predecessor, her crew nicknamed her “The Big E.”

The vessel had a long, distinguished career in modern U.S. Navy history, including the blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis; aerial combat and bombardment missions during the Vietnam War; the evacuation of the U.S.