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This week the Italian carrier strike group centered on the aircraft carrier ITS Cavour and the frigate ITS Alpino is pulling into Tokyo Bay. The carrier strike group is taking to Japan a 13-strong air wing of AV-8B Harrier II jets and cutting-edge F-35B aircraft fresh from some 180 flying hours and 110 missions at the Pitch Black exercise, including air-to-ground attack and suppression of enemy air defense actions. On its way to the archipelago, the group conducted also its first multi-large deck event in the region with the U.S. Navy’s Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group.

New planning guidance from the Marine Corps’ top officer puts a premium on modernizing the service’s command-and-control capabilities to create more lethal “kill webs” for the joint force.
The directive from Commandant Gen. Eric Smith, provided to reporters ahead of its official release, highlights the key roles that Marine expeditionary units would be expected to fill in potential future fights against China in the Indo-Pacific.

The Defense Information Systems Agency is looking to include more cloud service providers and possibly introduce new contracting mechanisms into the next iteration of the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC), according to the agency’s leader.

This is Chapter 4 in the Grief Memoir. Catch up with previous chapters here.
A few weeks after leaving my parents at the holidays, I was talking to them, just a regular catch-up, when my dad casually mentioned that mom had fallen multiple times. She was having trouble walking. She’d stand up and immediately fall. It’d been going on for days. They’d gone to the ER as one time they were worried she’d hit her head. 
I remember being on Zoom with my group caregiving session that evening and mentioning how nonchalant my parents were about this.

Three years ago on Aug. 20, 2021, Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole Gee posted a photo of herself holding an Afghan baby to her Instagram account, captioning the picture, “I love my job.” The photo was taken during the final days of the Afghanistan withdrawal. 
Six days later, an ISIS-K suicide bomber detonated a suicide vest at the Abbey Gate of the Hamid Karzai International Airport. The attack resulted in the death of Gee, 12 other service members, and over 100 Afghans.

At 39, Michael Powell has realized his dream of enlisting in the Army after the service initially turned him away 20 years ago, an Army news story says.
“I want to be an infantryman,” said Powell, who is currently attending basic training at Fort Moore, Georgia. “I want to travel the world and continue to accomplish the goals I set out for myself at a young age.”
Since the Army’s maximum enlistment age is 38, Powell was granted an exception to policy to join. He was also approved to enlist even though he has some tattoos that do not comply with the Army’s guidance.

Seamus Malekafzali, an American freelance journalist based in Beirut, Lebanon opened Tinder one afternoon looking for a date. He was met with F-16s and a fatal warning from the U.S. military.
Malekafzali told Task & Purpose that he opened the dating app and the ad, accompanied with the U.S. Central Command logo was waiting for him as a swipe option where other love interests would usually be. He posted photos of the ad on X.
The ad, written in Arabic, read: “Do not take arms against the US or its partners,” and “U.S.

The Army awarded drone maker AeroVironment a new indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract worth up to $990 million for multiple variants of the company’s Switchblade loitering munitions.
On Tuesday evening, the Defense Department announced that the Army awarded a deal to the company for an “organic, stand-off capability” for dismounted infantry units to destroy tanks, light armored vehicles, hardened targets and enemy personnel. However, it didn’t identify which specific system the service was buying.

As part of the Air Force’s sweeping changes to be better organized to fight a sophisticated China threat, the service is splitting up its intelligence and cyber directorate on the Air Staff at the Pentagon.
Like the Navy, the Air Force years ago chose to integrate its intelligence function — known as the 2 — and its communications and network function, known as the 6, into the A2/6, led by a three-star general. It also added cyber to that portfolio, resulting in an official title of deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations.

A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep on a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it. *** After nearly 11 months of war in Gaza, negotiations towards a ceasefire deal have so far failed. Despite optimism expressed by U.S. officials,  negotiators have been unable to forge an Israeli-Hamas agreement in mediation talks that began in Doha, Qatar, earlier this month, and fighting continues in Gaza.