I sat down for a short time last week with Under Secretary Of War For Research And Engineering Emil Michael.
BIO: Mr. Emil Michael serves as the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (USW(R&E)) and Chief Technology Officer for the Department of War(DoW), spearheading the Department’s efforts to ensure U.S. military technological superiority and keep the DoW at the forefront of innovation.

Half a year after it was in the eastern Mediterranean Sea helping to shoot down Iranian ballistic missiles, the guided-missile destroyer the USS Thomas Hudner is at sea once again, this time in the Caribbean.
The destroyer arrived in the region earlier this week, becoming the latest warship to arrive in the last four months, as the U.S. Navy continues to maintain a large armada in the sea. The arrival, first reported by USNI News, brings the number of surface warships to 12, according to that outlet’s fleet tracker.

What is it about government officials and their shoddy email practices? Several members of the Trump Administration were discovered to have used personal or unclassified email accounts for classified emails. Using a private server as Secretary of State might have cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 presidential election. And then: shoddy email practices led to the convictions in the Iran-Contra Affair decades prior.
Email hasn’t really been around as a communication tool for very long, but it seems to land a lot of America’s top politicians in hot water on a regular basis.

On Oct. 5, 1986, a cargo plane running a covert resupply mission to the Nicaraguan Contras was shot down by Sandinista forces. The lone survivor, Vietnam veteran Eugene Hasenfus, promptly told the world he’d been working on a CIA-linked airlift, exposing the secret effort to support the Contras despite a Congressional ban on funding the right-wing rebel group.

Image by Swadim

The Pentagon wants allies in Europe to take over the bulk of defense responsibilities on the Continent no later than 2027, according to a new report that could carry significant implications for how American troops are deployed.
Defense Department officials told their Western counterparts in Washington this week about the new deadline, Reuters reported Friday, citing five unidentified sources.
U.S.

We at Task & Purpose care deeply about issues affecting active-duty military and veterans. We also love a good tank name. “ASVAB Waiver,” “Divine Intervention” and “Bye Felicia” are just a few that light up our day. And now we can add “Executioners Finest” to the list. 
The M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank is assigned to the 1st Cavalry Regiment, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division. It was recently photographed taking part in 1st Armored Division’s Iron Heroes Competition at the Dona Ana Range complex in New Mexico last month. The Army photo by Sgt.

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Lawson, NatInterest
The Trump administration has rightly reoriented U.S. foreign policy toward domestic renewal, more balanced alliances, and hemispheric protection.

The White House, The White House
Introduction – What Is American Strategy?

Dan Grazier, Responsible Statecraft
The cancellation of the Constellation-class program shows that the military’s shipbuilding problem is Washington, not China

Kris Osborn, National Security Journal
The Navy’s secretive F/A-XX isn’t a luxury add-on to the F-35C but a necessary leap for Pacific warfighting.

Joseph Trevithick, The WarZone
The Navy hopes to have the first Medium Landing Ship built by 2029 and avoid chronic issues that have plagued its recent shipbuilding efforts.

GLOVES UP…FIGHT🥊
6 Regiment RLC🆚3 M

U.S. Marine Corps pilots and deck crews from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit have conducted new fighter jet deck landing qualifications on the Wasp class amphibious assault ship USS Boxer, as the warship prepares for intensive operations in the Western Pacific. The Boxer’s flight deck team carried concurrent safety checks, recovery drills, and readiness assessments, simulating the pace of forward-deployed operations.

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The British Royal Navy plans to integrate the DragonFire high-energy laser weapons on its Type 45 destroyers by 2027, which would make the service the first in Europe with a shipborne laser weapon in active service. British defence leaders have revealed that early trials have shown the new weapons system can track and burn through small targets at tactically relevant ranges, and that work on integration is expected to accelerate once shipboard power and cooling modifications are finalised.

Historian Bradley Hart gave a groundbreaking, introductory talk at the National World War II Museum conference in New Orleans, November 21-22, 2025 on German Nazi Consul Baron Edgar von Spiegel (1937-41).
Why was it groundbreaking? Searching on youtube, it may be the first talk specifically focused on a Nazi German consul in the US, which raises key and uncomfortable questions, on why it took so long. When you dive into c. 1930s newspapers and other documentation focused on a consul, all of these American names, sometimes including company names, associated with the consul come forward.

The F-35A fifth generation fighter is making progress in testing towards being able to integrate the European Meteor beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile, with multiple ground-based integration tests having recently been conducted in the United States.

During World War II, the United States government entered into one of the most secretive and unexpected alliances in American history. Faced with the threat of Axis sabotage along the East Coast and desperate to secure the nation’s most critical shipping lanes, the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) initiated Operation Underworld, a clandestine partnership with leading figures of Italian and Jewish organized crime.

CO of a company, 506th Motorised Rifle Regiment, Tsentr Group of Forces, Dmitry Mishin, told about Krasnoarmeysk encirclement.
➡️ 00:00 – preparations for the operation;
➡️ 00:20 – the first house which the servicemen took hold of;
➡️ 00:49 – assault detachments relied on the fog, and 47 men entered the town; 
➡️ 01:36 – exploit of the success.
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The new National Security Strategy is out, and it’s a shock to the system. It is not just the latest public articulation of principles, ambitions, and priorities around which the United States organizes its foreign policy. Instead, it reads like a manifesto for a radically different American project. It is narrower, more partisan, more inwardly focused, and more personalized than any of its predecessors. Below are ten takeaways that matter for how the United States sees its role and place in the world.  First, the strategy is overtly about this president and not the United States as such.

Marines will once again be judged by how they look in an official photograph when they are up for key career opportunities, according to a policy released this week, partially reversing a 2020 rule aimed at removing unintended bias that photos can add to selection boards.
Unchanged is the rule that photographs will not appear in files used by promotion boards, service officials emphasized. 
The partial policy reversal will take effect April 1, according to a MARADMIN notice released Thursday.

Beyond elevating efforts to expand U.S. influence and prowess in the Western Hemisphere, the new National Security Strategy makes it clear that deterring a conflict with China over Taiwan — via military might and existing partnerships — marks a near-term priority for the second Trump administration.
The White House unveiled its 33-page plan late Thursday, ahead of releasing the forthcoming National Defense Strategy and other foreign policy papers that are collectively expected to guide the federal government and its investments during the rest of President Donald Trump’s term.

Scale your business with ease with Odoo!

In a major shake-up of how the Army divides up the world, the service announced Friday the activation of the Western Hemisphere Command, shuffling three commands under a single four-star general.
Gen. Joseph Ryan will be the first commander of the Army Western Hemisphere Command, which the Army is referring to as USAWHC. Ryan will take over from his role as the Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans, and Training at the Pentagon. 
USAWHC will be tasked with the defense of U.S.

Service members and veterans who earned the Medal of Honor for their actions will see a sizable increase in their special pensions. Their special annual pension will more than quadruple under a new law. 
After the Monetary Enhancement for Distinguished Active Legends (or MEDAL) Act was signed into effect this week, recipients will see their Medal of Honor pensions increase from a base of $1,406.73 to $5,625 per month. Annually, their honorarium will go from roughly $18,000 to $67,500. 
The new law applies to living Medal of Honor recipients. It also creates a new monthly rate of $1,406.

After months of fighting, Russia has claimed vi

It almost sounds like a Tom Clancy novel: a few hundred pro-Assad fighters, including Russian Wagner Group mercenaries, charge an American position in the Syrian desert. American troops respond with artillery, drones, F-22s, Apaches, an AC-130 gunship, and a few other surprise guests. By sunrise, their attack force is shattered.
But this wasn’t fiction. It was February 2018, near the Syrian town of Khasham, where the U.S. military went toe-to-toe with Russian-linked fighters on a scale not seen in decades. This time, the “little green men” weren’t acknowledged soldiers in uniform.

Air Force veteran Chris Jachimiec was on his first deployment to Kuwait in 2000 when he found out his mother had passed away. He returned to the states and was prescribed an antidepressant.
For nearly two decades, Jachimiec was prescribed Lexapro on and off as he dealt with a number of personal tragedies, losing his grandmother and brother to suicide, and work stress. As those stressors compounded with hurricane response missions and needing to account for airmen after the 2017 mass shooting at a festival in Las Vegas, Jachimiec’s drinking habits also picked up.

General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), a division of General Dynamics, launched its Mission Emerge Center in Springfield, Virginia.

Finnish firms Valmet Automotive and Patria Land have entered into a cooperation agreement for production of armoured vehicles.

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Only Forward | Military Motivation
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The Royal Navy’s first crewless helicopter is

USNI News
Leadership failures, training gaps and malfunctioning equipment drove the preventable loss of three F/A-18 Super Hornets and a collision between carrier USS Harry S….

Naval News
The U.S.

John Venable, A&SF
The United States Air Force is flying less than historic norms and funding for acquisition and readiness is on a path to further hollow out this too small and old force to…

Tim Martin, Breaking Defense
F-35As are a step closer to being able to carry the European Meteor beyond-visual-range, air-to-air missile

Tyler Rogoway & Joseph Trevithick, TWZ
Northrop Grumman says Talon is “cheaper and better” and “significantly different” than what it offered for Increment One.

“The message to Putin is we see you”🗣️
Spe

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U.S. ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack has indicated that the Eastern European country may return to the F-35 fifth generation fighter program within four to six months, noting that the remaining dispute between the two countries over Turkey’s procurement of the Russian S-400 long range air defence system is expected to soon be resolved. Barrack noted that Turkey has taken important steps to resolving the “operability” issue because its S-400 systems are not being used, but noted that retaining the system continued to create difficulties for the United States.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s recent White House visit has crystallized a fundamental shift in U.S.-Saudi relations: Washington no longer has the leverage to demand Saudi normalization with Israel.After the Biden administration distanced itself from Riyadh following the 2018 Jamal Khashoggi killing, Washington has now recalibrated. This was driven not by diplomacy or values alignment but by structural pressures, including the political blowback that Washington has faced for its military and diplomatic support for Israel’s Gaza campaign, which strained U.S.

The first images of China’s new semi-submersible unmanned missile carrying trimaran warship has surfaced on local social media, showing a profile view of the vessel in the water in what appears to be the Huangpu shipyard in Guangzhou. The warship program is being developed with a particularly high degree of secrecy, with prior images showing much of its structure concealed under tarpaulins. From what is visible of the design, it appears to have been intended to be capable high speeds, with an ability to submerge to confuse radar tracking and evade missile attacks.

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Following the arrival of Russian President Vladimir Putin in India for his first state visit since the outbreak of full scale war in Ukraine, it has been confirmed that talks will proceed for a number of major defence deals. These include further modernisation of the Su-30MKI fighter that forms the backbone of the Indian combat fleet, and the development of unspecified new types of air launched missiles.

During Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India from December 4, representatives of both countries are expected to discuss plans to upgrade the Indian fleet of Su-30MKI ‘4+ generation’ fighter aircraft, and possibly to further expand production. Entering service from 2002, the Su-30MKI is by far the most widely produced variant of the Su-30, and the most produced post-Soviet Russian fighter type, with over 270 having been procured by the Indian Defence Ministry.

The Defense Department needs to conduct a holistic review of the various organizations conducting space-based operations — as well as their assigned missions — to ensure there are no overlapping efforts and provide more clarity on responsibilities, according to a new report set to be released next week.