The annual defense authorization bill released Saturday would require Defense Department officials to provide annual updates to lawmakers with details on approvals and deployments of lethal autonomous weapon systems by the U.S. military.
Last year, the Pentagon updated DOD Directive 3000.09, “Autonomy in Weapon Systems,” which provides guidance for officials who will be responsible for overseeing the design, development, acquisition, testing, fielding and employment of these types of capabilities — and created a new working group to facilitate senior-level reviews of the technology.
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U.S. Air Force planes, including multiple B-52s, F-15s and A-10s carried out a series of strikes targeting a large ISIS gathering in central Syria in the early morning of Sunday, Dec. 8. U.S. Central Command announced that the bombers and fighter jets struck more than 75 targets in the Syrian desert, going after known ISIS fighters and camps.
American forces dropped roughly 140 munitions on the targets, said a senior U.S. administration official, speaking on background to reporters on Sunday.
While pictures out of Syria show people celebrating the removal of Assad, we’ll provide our readers with some key points about the factions, possible strategic consequences, and a few words of caution.
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Major Factions:
1. SIG/SNA: The Syrian Interim Government (Political Wing) and the Syrian National Army (Military Wing) represent Turkish interests in Syria. They are armed, funded, and commanded by the Turkish Armed Forces. The SNA controls territory in the north of Idlib on the border with Turkey and a zone inside of Rojava.
A potential pilot program to allow beards in the Air Force and Space Force may be on its way to a hearing in front of Congress.
Lawmakers want the Secretary of the Air Force to brief them on the program, including how beards would affect discipline, morale and unity in the ranks and what effect beards would have on using air-tight equipment like gas masks. Lawmakers put language requiring the update in a joint explanatory statement from the Senate and House Armed Services Committees which finalized policies in the National Defense Authorization Act of fiscal year 2025.
The final text of the conference-negotiated fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act would leave it to the head of the Pentagon to determine whether the department should create a new center of excellence focused on AI-enabled weapon systems.
An amendment to a Senate version of the annual defense authorization bill put forth a few months ago would have required the DOD to establish such an organization, but the version of the NDAA hammered out by members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and released Saturday night does not.
US Secretary of State for Defense, Lloyd J. Austin, warns Trump against retreating from an “interwoven world” ahead of government handover.
The US DoD has disclosed the provision of an additional security assistance package valued at $988m for Ukraine under the USAI.
BAE Systems has finalised contracts totalling approximately $2.5bn with Sweden and Denmark for the procurement of new CV90 combat vehicles.
YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — At a troop engagement with hundreds of sailors on the recently docked USS George Washington in Japan on Monday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin emphasized the gravity of their fresh deployment, and how the technological capabilities they are bringing to bear there mark major tenets in the U.S. military’s plan to deter Chinese aggression around the Indo-Pacific region in the near term.
Gary Anderson, RealClearDefense