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For the first time, the Pentagon disclosed that the number of Soldiers in Syria doubled right before Assad was overthrown and Syria collapsed into chaos.
Pentagon Press Secretary Major General Pat Ryder opened his December 19th press conference by stating, “I learned today that, in fact, there are approximately 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria.”
He provided little information concerning where they came from and their purpose but did confirm they were there for missions supporting America’s undeclared war against ISIS.

The Air Force and Navy will begin to let their V-22 Osprey fleets fly once more in the coming weeks after key parts of their engines are individually checked on each aircraft. The two grounded their tiltrotor planes Dec. 6 after a mechanical mishap with an Air Force Osprey in New Mexico. 
Naval Air Systems Command, or NAVAIR, issued a bulletin Thursday clearing the service’s CV-22s back into the air after inspections. An Air Force Special Operations Command spokesperson told Task & Purpose its fleet would do the same.

The Chief of the Air Staff thanked members of t

General Sir Roly Walker, the head of the Britis

The First Sea Lord has thanked Royal Navy perso

The head of the UK Armed Forces has thanked per

The post Newsmax Contributor Brig Gen Holt and Armed Forces Press Editor LTC Gaub Blast The Biden Administration For Lying About Drones During Interview On Newsmax appeared first on Armed Forces Press.

This video describes the military situation in

David McKeown has been chosen as the Defense Department Chief Information Office’s inaugural special assistant for cybersecurity innovation, according to a Friday announcement.
As part of the new role, McKeown will stand up and lead the CIO’s Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, which will focus on tackling long-range and complex innovation challenges for cybersecurity modernization. He will be responsible for a range of programs and operations that will ensure the Pentagon is prepared to meet emerging cybersecurity threats, the DOD CIO noted in a statement posted on LinkedIn.

Welcome to Mid-Afternoon Map, our exclusive members-only newsletter that provides a cartographic perspective on current events, geopolitics, and history from the Caucasus to the Carolinas. Subscribers can look forward to interesting takes on good maps and bad maps, beautiful maps and ugly ones — and bizarre maps whenever possible. *** If you ever paused to wonder which airline had the most extravagantly illustrated, whimsical-yet-elegant advertising posters in the middle part of the 20th century, you probably paused for exactly two seconds before guessing Air France.

Bats use echolocation to find food and places to rest. Add in an incendiary device glued to their chest, and you now have a firestorm that can wreak havoc on any enemy. Or so Pennsylvania dental surgeon Dr. Lytle S. Adams thought during World War II. 
The problem is that you don’t know where they will go once released. Add to it that it’s generally a bad idea to mix explosives, adhesives, and wildlife.
On Dec. 7, 1941, Adams made a fateful trip to the Carlsbad Caverns National Park during a vacation to New Mexico. He was awed by the hundreds of thousands of bats that nested in the caves.

Welcome back to the Rundown! The Senate voted on Wednesday to send the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, to President Joe Biden. If signed into law, the NDAA would give junior enlisted service members a 14.5% pay raise effective April 1, 2025.
Quick reminder: The NDAA is a defense policy bill, not a budget. Congress still has not passed a spending bill for this fiscal year, which began nearly three months ago.

A small number of British trainers have been in Ukraine for some time, while the vast bulk of Ukrainian soldiers undergo training in the UK.

QinetiQ, a company that delivers test, trials, training, and evaluation services for UK MoD, has placed an order with Celestia STS.

The US DIU chose Viasat to provide networking capabilities for Replicator, focusing on command and control connectivity for uncrewed systems.

Pressure || Military Motivation
✓ instagram:

Jihoon Yu, RealClearDefense

J. Sayeh & B.B. Taleblu & S.

EAT
The United States is actively developing non-nuclear offensive capabilities based on several maneuverable hypersonic weapon systems.

Dan Grazier, RespState
When they’ve resorted to arguing ‘it’s a job creator,’ you know there isn’t much military use.

Anthony Capaccio, BNN Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) — Lockheed Martin Corp. is on track to meet its goal of delivering at least 100 F-35 jets to the U.S.

Many military members do not seek mental health services because they don’t think getting that care will remain private — and that concern is not unwarranted, according to a new report.
Fear of their treatment becoming known to coworkers creates “clear disincentives to mental health care for military members,” according to a new report from the RAND Corporation. Confusion over when and how their medical information — including mental health diagnoses — can be handed over to their chain of command is common, with both troops and leaders.

Despite almost three years of brutal fighting a

Despite a planned spend of £1.3bn, the Challenger 3 MBTs will only be full operational for a decade before being retired.

This video describes the military situation in

Kerry Anderson talks with Gokul Sahni, author of “The Main Drivers of Soviet Foreign Policy Towards India, 1955–1991,” published in Volume 8, Issue 1 of the Texas National Security Review. They discuss the historical evolution of Soviet-India relations and what lessons it might provide for current geopolitics. Image: Photo Division, Government of India
The post Soviet-India Relations: Cold War Contest and Cooperation appeared first on War on the Rocks.

This video describes the military situation in

You might not think of military planners as the authors of fairy tales, but unfortunately many of us are. As a planner at U.S. Cyber Command (and assorted other headquarters in warmer climates), I have worked on a variety of planning teams building cyber plans and orders. Unfortunately, most of those planning efforts were divorced from the real-world capabilities of friendly forces, agnostic towards the actual vulnerabilities of enemy forces, and premised on fundamental misunderstandings of the cyber domain.

This video describes the military situation in

U.S. troops, including those deployed to combat zones, would miss their next paycheck if Congress fails to pass a temporary spending bill that continues to fund the government beyond Friday, Task & Purpose has confirmed.
Lawmakers have until midnight on Friday to pass a temporary spending bill or else the government will shut down. Talks on how to keep the government funded collapsed on Wednesday, and House Republicans are racing to come up with a backup plan in time.
“Without an appropriation or a [continuing resolution], U.S.

Dick Van Dyke has lived a storied life and career both in and out of Hollywood, and last week, celebrated his 99th birthday! His career has spanned 9 decades beginning in 1947 with its ups and downs. He started his career on radio, TV and in nightclubs entertaining the masses. He debuted on Broadway in 1959 in the musical The Girls Against the Boys. He has been awarded six Emmys, a Grammy, a Golden Globe and a Tony Award.

The V40 mini-grenade may not look like much, but it was a mainstay for special operations soldiers fighting in the jungle and clearing enemy camps and buildings during the Vietnam War.
It’s use in tight quarters earned it the nickname as the “hooch popper.” Troops also called it a “golf ball grenade,” for its size at just 4.8-ounce, and 4 centimeters across.

For the first time in over 40 years, the Army concurrently ran its keystone Warfighter Exercise with Yama Sakura in Japan, allowing it to test distributed command and control nodes and conduct operations over noncontiguous locations.
“We were able to exercise the Corps and our subordinate divisions to conduct large-scale combat operations in the fictional locations that we had,” Lt. Gen. Matthew McFarlane, commander of I Corps, said in a call with reporters Thursday.

This video describes the military situation in

As the Space Force works to address adversary capabilities that threaten the United States’ military satellites in orbit, outgoing Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall warns that the service needs to develop and field technology at a faster pace.
“The place where I think we should be moving faster is counterspace. We need to protect the joint force from the targeting and sensing that China, in particular, is fielding now,” Kendall said Thursday during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute.

In 2021, Colin Clarke wrote “Killing Terrorist Leaders Is No Silver Bullet,” where he argued that leadership decapitation is not always the most viable way to dismantle a terrorist group. In the wake of continued efforts to decapitate terrorist groups around the world, we invited Colin to reflect back on his article. Read more below: Image: U.S. Air Force (Photo by Tech. Sgt.

“Please don’t look back, more dangerous tim

The Output hosts interview Washington Times National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz on the military advances of the Chinese Communist Party.
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The Royal Australian Air Force has now received

Missile-equipped Boat, PLA, 1967Gary Todd, Public Domain

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has added hundreds of new missiles and 100 more nuclear warheads as part of a military buildup designed for a war with the United States, according to a Pentagon report made public Wednesday.
For the first time, the survey of Chinese military power reveals extensive PLA preparations for sophisticated information warfare operations against the United States, including the use of deepfake online posts and cyber-enabled psychological warfare. Pentagon analysts said the goal is to influence U.S.

ELT Group has formalised a contract with the Qatar Armed Forces to establish a Unified Electronic Warfare (EW) Centre in the Middle East country.

RTX’s Raytheon, in partnership with Ursa Major, has completed a missile flight test using their advanced long-range solid rocket motor.

Sandboxx N.
Not many people know about the small British special operations unit known as the “Long Range Desert Group” (LRDG).

Capaccio, Bloomberg
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has told Democratic senators that he shares their security concerns over Elon Musk’s reported contacts with Russian leaders but added…

Mike Schuler, gCaptain
President-elect Donald Trump has reignited the debate over the Jones Act, sharing a pro-Jones Act article that underscores the century-old law’s significance to…

Patty Nieberg, T&P
A range of health issues in the special operations community caused by low testosterone, dubbed “Operator Syndrome,” has drawn congressional attention.

TWZ
The Navy has awarded a nearly $3.5B contract to Northrop Grumman to lead the work on crafting its next ‘Doomsday planes.

Most people might find the International Space Station’s crew quarters to be a little cramped, but not Marine Lt. Col. Jasmin Moghbeli, a NASA astronaut who returned in March from six months in space.
Each astronaut aboard the space station has his or her own room that is roughly the size of a telephone booth, said NASA spokeswoman Sandra Jones. All the astronauts also share a single toilet.
But when Moghbeli recounted her mission aboard the space station to members of her former unit earlier this month she described her accommodations in the most Marine Corps way possible.

Who will be the best showjumper in the UK Armed