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During the Cold War, there weren’t a lot of things the U.S. military wasn’t willing to nuke in the name of science.
The Air Force once considered a nuclear-powered bomber that would drop nukes on the Soviet Union forever. NASA once tested the effects of a nuclear blast on beer. Before we sent men to the moon, we actually considered nuking it first.
Related: This is America’s latest nuclear bomb
The Atomic Age was essentially a kid with a new toy, the U.S. military just playing around to see what its new toys could do.

The Army reduced the frequency of mandatory cybersecurity training to once every five years, according to a policy that went into effect late last month, axing an annual requirement and making individual commanders responsible for preparing their personnel for digital defense.
The move followed a Sept. 30 memo by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directing the military to reduce the time personnel spend on cybersecurity training, with the aim of “enabling our warfighters to focus on their core mission of fighting and winning our Nation’s wars without distraction.

The Army grounded two flight crews from the 101st Airborne who hovered over and buzzed past the home of singer Kid Rock on a weekend training flight, and has launched a formal investigation into the flight. But the singer told a local news station that he doubts the crews will get in much trouble.
“I think they’re going to be alright,” he told WKRN. “My buddy is the commander in chief,”
The singer is a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, and has been a regular White House guest.

The USS Gerald R. Ford’s already long deployment will be “record-breaking” and “probably go into the 11th month of deployed operations,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said on Tuesday. 
“For those that are not in the Navy, that’s an extraordinary thing to even think about something of that kind of deployment length,” Caudle said while speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, D.C. “So my hat’s off to the Ford.

Iran’s weapons launches and arms cache continue to diminish as Operation Epic Fury enters its second month, according to Pentagon leaders who supplied updates on the large-scale military campaign that involves at least 50,000 U.S. troops so far.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said forces continue to focus on the fortification of installations, assets and personnel with a mix of air-and-missile defense capabilities, including electronic warfare options, amid this U.S.-led, Israel-coordinated operation against Iran.

The Air Force has reactivated a squadron in Nevada that flies the MQ-9 Reaper, the unmanned, heavily armed drone that is entering its third decade of flying. 
The 42nd Attack Squadron at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, was the first unit in the Air Force to fly the Reaper, beginning in 2006, clocking over 180,000 combat hours over Afghanistan across 13 years before going “dormant” in 2020.
But with its reactivation, the 42nd ‘s drones will have a capability they previously did not.

It’s hard to discuss the inner workings of government that impacts virtually every federal employee without eventually confronting the systems agencies use to initiate, change, or document employee transactions. Whether it’s for Personnel Action Requests (PARs) at civilian agencies or similar HR requests at defense and intelligence agencies, the documentation these systems support are the connective tissue of the federal workforce. Every hire, promotion, reassignment, pay change, detail, and separation flows through this process.

The Defense Department is moving forward with an autonomous drone swarm initiative that aims to give the U.S. military new tools for locating and destroying targets on the battlefield.
The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office recently issued a solicitation for the Swarm Forge effort, which is one of the “pace-setting” projects that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called for in a memo released in January outlining the department’s artificial intelligence strategy.

Parts of the Middle East — especially around the Persian Gulf — rely on desalinated water. Worst-case scenarios for war in the region have often included attacks on desalination facilities, and the war with Iran that began on Feb. 28 has raised the potential for such a scenario. So far, there have been reports that a U.S. strike on Qeshm Island damaged an Iranian desalination plant and that an Iranian drone had hit a desalination plant in Bahrain. On March 30, an attack damaged a building at a power and desalination site in Kuwait.