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The United States Congress has cleared the first ever export of the new AIM-260A Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, under a package that includes $2.61 billion worth of missiles and $550 million in sustainment to equip the Royal Australian Air Force’s F-35A fighter units. With 450 missiles included in the deal, they are being procured for a cost of $5.8 million each, excluding additional sustainment costs, meaning a full internal air-to-air loadout ofsix missiles for an F-35A Block 4 fighter would cost $34.8 million. The AIM-260 is the first new U.S.

In the 1964 black comedy Dr. Strangelove, an emergency war plan called “Plan R” allows an unhinged U.S. Air Force commander, Jack Ripper, to launch a nuclear strike without presidential authorization. Once the president, the joint chiefs, and the Soviet ambassador convene in the war room, the bombers are already airborne. Only Ripper knows the three-letter prefix needed to recall them, until his aide, Lionel Mandrake, reconstructs it from Ripper’s notes.

Editor’s Note: War on the Rocks is running “for” and “against” articles on the war with Iran by legislators with military backgrounds. You can find the other article here.21 years ago, I was a Marine infantryman in Anbar province, western Iraq, carrying so much gear that I could barely feel my legs. My job was to go town to town, search houses, and try to stop insurgents before they stopped us.

Editor’s Note: War on the Rocks is running “for” and “against” articles on the war with Iran by legislators with military backgrounds. You can find the other article here.The view from a C-130 during a combat mission in the Middle East provides clarity that is often lost in the sanitized briefing rooms of Washington. As an Air Force medical crew director, I have looked into the eyes of young servicemembers being medevacked out of theater, and I lived through what decades of strategic inconsistency asks of our warfighters.

L Todd Wood sits down with former US Army Officer Mark Castillon to discuss Covid reinstatement process at the Pentagon.
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This ‘recruitment operation’ didn’t turn out so well for him.
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A Marine previously assigned to Camp Pendleton, California, is accused of stealing at least one Javelin anti-tank missile system and 5.56mm ammunition from the base and selling them in Arizona, court records show.
Cpl. Andrew Paul Amarillas, 23, has been indicted in connection with what prosecutors allege was a nearly four-year-long scheme to steal military equipment, according to court records. At the time of his March 5 arrest, he was training at Quantico, Virginia, ahead of his next assignment to the U.S. embassy in Myanmar.

L Todd Wood sits down with former USAF squadron commander and B-1 crew member Col Rob Maness (USAF, Ret) to discuss the progress in the Iran war.
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Following a successful launch early Monday morning, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency now has three small satellites on orbit that will demonstrate advancements in measuring the Earth’s magnetic field.
NGA sponsored the launch of three CubeSats that are a product of the MagQuest program, designed to create novel and cost-effective approaches to how the agency collects data on the magnetic properties surrounding the Earth. The small satellites were lifted into low-Earth orbit via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission, which took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Soldiers deployed to parts of the Middle East and Africa who are supporting the war with Iran are now authorized to wear combat patches, according to a memo confirmed Monday by the Army.
The new policy allows soldiers “assigned or attached to units supporting military operations” in eligible countries — which were not specified — to wear a Shoulder Sleeve Insignia for Military Operations in Hostile Conditions, or SSI-MOHC, which is widely known in the Army as a combat patch.
The combat patch wear was approved in a March 26 memo signed by Army Chief of Staff Gen.