Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin shared the assessment Wednesday morning while traveling in Rome, becoming the first member of the Biden administration to do so.

The White House later offered more details, saying that around 3,000 North Korean troops sailed to the Russian port of Vladivostok earlier in October and are now training across three military sites in the east.

“What exactly they’re doing will have to be seen,” Austin told a group of traveling press.

South Korean defense and intelligence officials have reported for weeks that Pyongyang intended to send troops to Russia, the latest step in a burgeoning partnership that began after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The Biden administration avoided commenting on the assessment until Wednesday as the government separately confirmed the intelligence.

As Austin’s comment showed, the most immediate theme from American officials was uncertainty. Neither the Pentagon nor the White House said it knew why the soldiers were in Russia, what North Korea was getting in return or whether they would fight in Ukraine.

If that last concern proves true, White House spokesperson John Kirby said, they would be “fair game” for the Ukrainian military.

Russia has suffered huge casualties in recent months while making steady gains in Ukraine’s east, losing more than 1,000 troops a day and surpassing 600,000 total casualties since 2022, American officials have said.

“This is certainly a highly concerning probability: After completing training, these soldiers could travel to western Russia and then engage in combat against the Ukrainian military,” Kirby said, noting that the U.S. has briefed the Ukrainian government on its intelligence.

Austin traveled unannounced to Kyiv earlier this week in his fourth and likely last trip to Ukraine as secretary. While there, he spoke with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and unveiled another $400 million package of military aid, the second such tranche within a week.

North Korea and Russia have had a distant relationship dating back to the end of the Cold War, but have moved closer in the last two years. The two countries’ leaders have met together, including in a rare trip by Kim Jong Un outside his country to visit Vladimir Putin.

U.S. officials cast the news as a sign of “desperation” from Russia, particularly if North Korean troops joined the fight. The description has become familiar for the Biden administration, which didn’t anticipate how the war in Ukraine would realign American adversaries such as Iran, which alongside North Korea has also sent weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine.

North Korea has shipped over 16,500 containers of munitions and related material to Russia since last fall, U.S. and European officials have said.

“This is an indication that [Putin] may be even in more trouble than most people realize. But, again, he went tin cupping early on to get additional weapons and materials from the DPRK and then from Iran. And now he’s making a move to get more people,” Austin said, using the initialism for North Korea’s government.

The Pentagon announced on Tuesday its Office of Strategic Capital approved 13 private funds to participate in the first installment of its Small Business Investment Company Critical Technology Initiative, or SBICCT. Established last fall, the effort aims to draw private capital funding to companies advancing technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, space and advanced materials that could have significant implications for national security.

Along with the funds’ expected private capital investments, the funding the Small Business Administration is making available through the SBICCT loans could bring the total investment amount to approximately $2.8 billion. The program has additional proposals in the pipeline that could increase that to more than $4 billion.

Over the last 20 years, the Pentagon has seen a drop in private capital investment into the technology areas it deems critical. Many of those areas are hardware intensive and require significant funding to generate a meaningful return for investors. Jason Rathje, who leads the Office of Strategic Capital, told reporters the SBICCT Initiative is specifically targeting that challenge.

“The ‘so-what’ of this program is it allows us to incentivize the capital markets to start investing more into our critical technology areas because it changes the return profile,” he said.

By partnering with the Small Business Administration, the Defense Department wants to take advantage of the organization’s track record of directing venture capital funding toward projects that have significant economic impact.

“This first group of SBICCT Initiative funds represents a consequential milestone in demonstrating the power of public-private partnerships to build enduring advantage by growing and modernizing our supply chains, strengthening our economic and national security, and benefiting the development and commercialization of critical technologies that are key drivers of our U.S. industrial base,” Heidi Shyu, under secretary of defense for research and engineering, said in a statement.

The Office of Strategic Capital was established in 2022 to drive private sector capital toward defense technologies. Tuesday’s announcement follows the Pentagon’s establishment last month of a $1 billion fund to provide direct loans to companies that make in-demand defense component technologies. The effort aims to help companies fund the construction of equipment needed to scale production across 31 technology areas it has deemed critical to U.S. national security.

“In our 2024 investment strategy, we talked about how we needed to build different strategies for different parts of the capital market and different parts of our critical technology space,” Rathje said. “What we have been able to do over the last year is really accomplish the programs, the financial products that OSC is offering.”

Lending tools like these are new to the Pentagon, but federal agencies like the Energy and Commerce departments have a long history of using credit programs to support key industries. OSC projects its SBICCT Initiative will continue to grow. More than 100 funds have expressed interest in the effort, and the Pentagon will now accept applications on a quarterly basis.

Editor’s note: This story was updated on Oct. 23 to correct information provided by the Pentagon about the total investment amount.

The assistance includes artillery and other munitions, armored vehicles and anti-tank weapons like the shoulder-launched Javelin system.

Austin announced the aid in a meeting with Zelenskyy, who last week outlined a proposal to end the war.

This “victory plan,” as Zelenskyy calls it, would require enduring Western support, particularly NATO membership and the long-term commitment of security aid. The U.S. has so far resisted issuing an immediate invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance, along with another top priority for Kyiv: the permission to fire Western weapons deep into Russian territory.

In a social media post after the meeting with Austin, Zelenskyy said that the two discussed air defense and “the expansion of long-range weapon use against Russian military targets.” In a $425 million package announced last week, the White House committed to sending “hundreds” of vital air defense interceptors in the coming months.

Despite such support, Zelenskyy’s proposal is a sign of how Ukraine views the state of the war. The Ukrainian president still publicly calls for regaining all territory lost to Russia, going back to the 2014 seizure of Crimea. But as Moscow’s forces steadily advance in eastern Ukraine and reclaim territory lost in Russia’s Kursk province, the future of the war looks increasingly bleak for Kyiv.

In an October briefing, senior Pentagon officials said Russia’s casualties were accelerating in the east and had reached 600,000 throughout the war.

Austin’s trip to Kyiv marks his fourth visit to Ukraine and likely his last as secretary of defense. Aiding Ukraine’s defense has been a signature achievement during his tenure. The U.S. has sent Ukraine over $61 billion in security aid in the last two and a half years, and Austin has helped coordinate the assistance of other countries through a monthly forum held in Ramstein, Germany.

As senior members of the House Armed Services Committee, we are concerned that unless we recalibrate our approach to defense technology acquisition, we will continue on the slow, costly and unsustainable path that threatens our national defense and the rules-based international order.

Over the last 10 years, through numerous National Defense Authorization Acts, Congress has passed a variety of authorities to help streamline research and development and acquisition. These include more flexible other transaction authorities, mid-tier acquisition authorities, the Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies program and protections for commercial technology to help better attract nontraditional companies to the defense sector.

Similarly, DOD has taken some steps of its own. The efforts of the late Defense Secretary Ash Carter, continued and expanded by leaders in subsequent administrations on a bipartisan basis, led to the creation of the Defense Innovation Unit, the Strategic Capabilities Office and the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office. Current efforts — such as Replicator and the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve — show promise in accelerating acquisition and development for certain capabilities.

These legislative and policy efforts intended to streamline, enhance and wring efficiencies from the acquisition system have left a dizzying array of authorities available to program managers and procurement officials. However, rather than fully utilizing these authorities, DOD still largely follows a slow and costly acquisition process hamstrung by a focus on the process and rigid requirements rather than fielding a capability and achieving results.

Furthermore, officials are more reliably punished for failures than rewarded for creativity and adaptability. Worse yet, they are incentivized to make decisions that may look good during their tenure but create unacceptable risks, cost growth or program management problems for successors. Cultural risk aversion drives a dangerous and costly tendency — one that too often results in cutting-edge technology becoming stale and outdated by the time it is put into play, if not earlier.

We also need to change how DOD interacts with Congress. Bold ideas require early collaboration which does not fit into the model where nothing can be disclosed or discussed with Congress until the president’s budget is released. Surprising Congress with new ideas historically has not benefited any part of the government. No one should be surprised when those ideas go unsupported.

Even when empowered offices overcome these structural disincentives, the efforts tend to be narrowly scoped. Large programs of record for complex systems or large services contracts are built around onerous requirements or meaningless metrics rather than problem-solving ideas or desired outcomes. Narrow technical requirements need to change to broad capability requirements.

The fiscal 2024 NDAA tasks DOD with modernizing the requirements process by avoiding prescriptive language, focusing on mission outcomes and assessed threats, enabling a more iterative and collaborative approach with the services and maximizing the use of commercial products. We expect to be briefed on an interim implementation report in the coming weeks. Getting this right is an absolute imperative.

We are likewise concerned that our research and development proving grounds are dangerously overtaxed. Years of chronic underinvestment have created unacceptable delays in test schedules. Rigorous exercise and experimentation, vital to transitioning technologies into capabilities, are hamstrung by the lack of facilities needed to develop disruptive technologies.

Finally, Congress itself is part of the problem. Parochialism, overly restrictive and inflexible appropriations, risk aversion and an unfortunate habit of killing messengers — to say nothing of the corrosive and wasteful use of continuing resolutions — create dangerous barriers to agility and innovation. The final report of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform Commission lays out many of these issues in more detail.

We cannot legislate cultural change, nor can the Defense Department implement it by policy. But we can adjust the incentives, behaviors and signals that drive cultural change over time and our ability to do so is unparalleled.

We have the most innovative economy in the world. We have the best universities, capital markets and entrepreneurial spirit. It is our duty to make sure the government can access that unmatched advantage in an effective way to give our military what it needs to meet our national security needs.

U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, D-Ala., is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee; Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., is ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee; Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., is chairman of the Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation; and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., is ranking member of the Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation.

Ukraine had struck a military warehouse, igniting bombs and missiles in what Pentagon officials later said was Russia’s largest loss of Russian ammunition during the war — hundreds of thousands of rounds destroyed.

Almost as important, though, was how Ukraine conducted the strike.

Toropets is more than 300 miles from the Ukrainian border, outside the range of western weapons Kyiv wants permission to fire deep into Russia. Instead, Ukraine used drones it built alone.

Two and a half years into the war, the strike demonstrated a growing confidence in Ukraine’s own ability to design and build drones, perhaps the war’s defining weapon so far. Officials in Kyiv have said they can build weapons that are more precise and resilient than those sent by the West — an argument some American military officials dismissed in private as late as this summer, when speaking with Defense News.

Now even the Pentagon is bullish.

“The Ukrainian-made drones are doing very well,” a senior U.S. military official told reporters last week, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive assessment.

This success is forcing American firms to adapt. When Russia invaded in early 2022, U.S. drone companies sent Ukraine systems by the thousands, both to support its self-defense and to test their gear. Many firms have continued sending them, and even set up shop inside the country.

A more self-reliant Ukraine may change those relationships. American companies are finding different demands for their equipment, and in some case less demand at all. If that’s the case, American companies may struggle to refine their equipment, applying lessons from a conflict many officials say is showing the future of warfare.

“We remain in constant connectivity with the units that are using the systems that we’re providing,” said Chris Brose, chief strategy officer at Anduril, of Ukrainian soldiers. “They are our toughest critics.”

Graduation

Drones have been crucial for surveillance, targeting and strikes on the battlefield throughout the war in Ukraine. In response, its president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has become more intent on bringing them into the military.

In early October, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine can build up to 4 million drones each year and has contracts to build 1.5 million in 2024.

Many of these are small, first-person-view, or FPV, drones — not that different than what people can buy in the commercial market, said Sam Bendett, an expert at the Center for Naval Analyses who studies the use of drones in the Ukraine war.

Still, he said, Ukraine is also developing more high-end equipment that can take on more daring missions, as shown by the strike on Russia’s ammunition depot.

This spring, Ukraine started attacking oil fields deep into Russia in an attempt to pinch a key source of revenue for the Kremlin. While Kyiv was using its own drones to do so, the targets were civilian, rather than military, and had less intense jamming around them to stop incoming attacks.

American officials now say Ukraine has graduated past that level.

“There certainly are capability enhancements that have happened very rapidly,” the senior military official said. “Also, they are getting more sophisticated in their tactics, techniques and procedures.”

With that success, though, Ukraine needs fewer drones built by foreign partners. And American companies are noticing.

“They’re probably going to do a better job of meeting their own requirements than nations are going to be able to do for them,” Brose said of the small drones Ukraine is building in high volumes.

Instead, Brose argued that firms like Anduril are better placed to help Ukraine with “complementary capabilities” that can help make drones built in the country survive longer. He didn’t specify what those weapons could be but argued they could help protect drones against Russian jamming — which is only getting more intense as Moscow also invests in drones and electronic warfare.

‘Open market’

This is not to say that Ukraine no longer wants or needs American-made drones.

Skydio, a California-based company on contract with the Army, says it has sent more than 1,000 drones to Ukraine in the last two years. The company has since hired a small team of engineers and other employees in the country to adjust its own equipment on a timeline closer to front line needs.

Earlier this year Ukraine requested a further 8,000 of Skydio’s top-tier drone, the X10D, though the company is still trying to get enough money from other countries to send them.

Mark Valentine, an executive at Skydio, said that his firm has noticed Ukraine needing less Western support on smaller and larger drones — ranging from commercial-style weapons to precise munitions.

That said, “the microelectronics and some of the AI capabilities that we’ve been able to integrate on a drone have not necessarily been reproduced at scale in Ukraine,” Valentine said. “I still think that is a sweet spot.”

This fall, U.S. President Joe Biden approved a $2.4 billion package of long-term aid for Ukraine, including what a senior defense official called a “significant investment in Ukraine’s drone capability.” The aid will eventually help provide thousands of aerial drones and smaller components to build more inside Ukraine.

The assistance reflects a new posture for the Pentagon and U.S. defense firms — moving from only sending Ukrainians their drones to helping them design and build them.

“Ukrainian drone companies in many different domains are going to be a global, legitimate player,” said Wahid Nawabi, head of the drone company Aerovironment, which has sent Ukraine thousands of systems during the war.

Aerovironment, Nawabi said, still has many systems in Ukraine and continues to get data from front-line soldiers using them. Even more, he said, his firm was working to partner with these counterparts to design and build drones together.

Ukrainian operators, he said, demand the best, and if home-grown firms are providing that, perhaps American ones can join them.

“It’s an open market for competition,” Nawabi said.

President Joe Biden spoke Wednesday morning with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy before the White House announced the latest round of aid to help Kyiv in its ongoing war against Russia’s invasion.

The two leaders discussed the state of the war and a “victory plan” Zelenskyy has touted to end the conflict, according to a readout of the call.

The Ukrainian president publicly discussed that plan for the first time in a speech before the country’s parliament Wednesday. Arguing that his framework could halt the war by the end of 2025, Zelenskyy described five main points — chief among them membership in NATO and long-term military support from the West.

This week’s package includes many of those weapons Ukraine needs most, though it solely involves equipment America has sent in the past. The White House’s authority to send more assistance was set to expire at the end of September, forcing the president to designate the aid toward the existing list of approved systems.

The White House pledged that within months the U.S. would send “hundreds” of air defense interceptors and “dozens” of smaller air defense systems, both of which have become as valuable as they are scarce two-and-a-half years into the war. Russia has consistently overwhelmed Ukraine’s air defenses with cheap drones and ballistic missiles in attacks on military and civilian targets.

Kyiv is bracing for more such strikes heading into the winter as Ukraine struggles with a damaged power grid.

A Pentagon release specified that the air defense ammunition would include interceptors for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS. The package also features artillery and “thousands” of armored vehicles, according to the White House.

Biden had intended to host an October summit of leaders from countries supporting Ukraine’s self-defense but cancelled to help coordinate the response to Hurricane Milton. The White House said that meeting will now occur virtually in November.

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin flew to Brussels Wednesday for meetings with his NATO counterparts. Austin will later attend a summit of defense ministers from the G7, a group of developed countries, where support for Ukraine will be on the docket.

Since the summer, Moscow has continued to take territory in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donetsk, including a steady advance toward Pokrovsk, a city at the center of multiple roads that help move people and equipment.

As Russia moves closer to the city, and hits thicker defensive lines, its costs have mounted. This September was its deadliest month during the entire war, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters on a call Wednesday.

“Russian losses, again both killed and wounded in action, in just the first year of the war exceeded the total of all Soviet losses in any conflict since World War 2 combined,” the official said.

Despite western predictions to the contrary, Russia has still been able to sustain an all-out fight two and a half years on. That’s been true despite scores of military equipment lost or damaged, chunks of the government budget redirected toward defense and a smaller mobilization of troops.

This last category is strategically important, given how politically unpopular it would be for the Kremlin to force a larger draft, the official said. So far Russia has been able to recruit more soldiers mostly through higher pensions and pay. The growing losses along the front may challenge that approach.

That said, the rising body count doesn’t augur a victory for Ukraine, which is also taking huge losses. A senior U.S. military official, joining on the call, said the Pentagon expects Russia will continue making “incremental gains” along the front, using its advantage in numbers to cut through the otherwise firm defenses.

“It’s kind of the Russian way of war where they continue to throw mass into the into the problem, and I think we’ll continue to see high losses,” the military official said.

South Korea’s defense minister also warned this week that North Korea will likely send troops to fight alongside Russia — adding to a bevy of military equipment Pyongyang has also donated.

The U.S. defense official wouldn’t comment on multiple questions about whether that will occur.

In addition to the casualties incurred, Russia has seen 32 vessels in its Black Sea naval fleet damaged or destroyed, along with two-thirds of its pre-war stock of tanks, the defense official said. These losses have forced the Kremlin to dredge through warehouses of Soviet-era military equipment to retrofit and then deploy.

This week, U.S. President Joe Biden had planned to host a forum of world leaders supporting Ukraine in Ramstein, Germany — where the Pentagon often gathers a similar group of defense officials. The plans were canceled due to preparations for Hurricane Milton, set to make landfall in Tampa Wednesday. The White House has not yet announced a makeup date.

The Pentagon confirmed the delay in a briefing Tuesday, saying the Israeli Defense Ministry shared the news without offering a reason or an alternative date.

“Secretary [of Defense Lloyd] Austin looks forward to seeing him soon,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said, later noting that Gallant first sought the visit.

Axios reported that Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, has been told by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to visit until the White House schedules a call with U.S. President Joe Biden.

Austin and Gallant last spoke Sunday on the eve of Oct. 7, the anniversary of Hamas’ attack into Israel that killed 1,200 people and took hundreds more as hostages.

“The two leaders talk frequently by phone, so this in-person visit provides the opportunity to continue their ongoing discussions in more depth,” Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Monday.

Singh said the delay wasn’t a sign of strife between Austin and Gallant.

“There’s nothing that can’t be discussed over the phone that can be discussed in person,” she said.

The most urgent issue in the region is how Jerusalem will now respond to an attack from Iran last week, which lobbed almost 200 ballistic missiles into central and southern Israel. American destroyers fired around a dozen missiles to help intercept incoming fires during the barrage, which American officials called “failed and ineffective.”

The U.S. has since been speaking with Israel about how to respond, though the Pentagon won’t say what those discussions look like or what targets it’s recommending. Biden said last week he would not support an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Such a strike could augur the kind of larger regional conflict that America is already struggling to contain, as Israel expands its incursion into southern Lebanon, where it’s fighting the Iran-backed militia group Hezbollah.

The Pentagon has publicly urged parties in the region to stop escalating, though it’s not clear whether Israel will now listen. It didn’t tell the U.S. ahead of time about an attack on Hezbollah’s pagers, which injured thousands, nor about a strike on Beirut that killed the group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

“It’s obvious that they haven’t taken every bit of advice that I’ve provided,” Austin told a group of traveling reporters, including Defense News, last week. “But I recognize that they’re going to do things their way.”

The Defense Innovation Unit released a solicitation this week for one-way, uncrewed aerial systems that can fly at ranges of 50 to 300 kilometers in low-bandwidth, GPS-denied environments.

“Recent conflicts have highlighted the asymmetric impact low-cost, one-way unmanned aerial systems have on the modern battlefield,” DIU said in the notice. “The Department of Defense must be able to employ low-cost precision effects at extended ranges.”

DIU plans to hold a live flyoff demonstration as soon as December to evaluate the proposed systems.

Small, one-way attack drones have featured heavily in recent conflicts — from Ukraine to the Middle East. Since last fall, the Iran-backed Houthi militia group has targeted commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea, using aerial vehicles, uncrewed surface vessels and cruise missiles. Last week, the group launched what the Pentagon termed a “complex attack” on U.S. ships in the region.

On Monday, Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the Pentagon would focus the next round of its Replicator effort — a process for quickly fielding high-need technology at scale — on countering drone threats like these. But the department also recognizes the impact these systems can have and wants to stock up on its own supply.

“Reliable, affordable, and adaptable long-range UAS platforms that allow for employment at scale will maximize operational flexibility for the joint force,” DIU said.

A DIU spokesperson told Defense News that while the drones the department wants could perform attack missions, it’s also interested in systems that can fly electronic warfare, ISR and communications relay payloads.

According to the solicitation, the vehicles should also be hard to detect and track, have several pathways for two-way communications and be equipped with mission planning software. Critically, the department wants modular systems that can integrate new hardware or software in a matter of hours.

“Proprietary interfaces, message formatting or hardware that require vendor-specific licensing are not permitted,” DIU said.

The notice doesn’t detail how many systems the department might buy and it doesn’t set a cost target. The spokesperson said that omission was intentional because DIU’s selections won’t be based on the cost of a particular drone, but on the cost of the effect the platform achieves.

“The best way to think of what we’re targeting is a cost per effect,” the spokesperson said. “If we launch one $1M platform or ten $100k platforms and generate the same effect, then the cost per effect is the same and that’s what we want to focus on.”

Pentagon spokesman Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder declined to say what kind of ordnance was used by the warships Cole and Bulkeley, or whether their intercept were successful, but he said the operations took place while both ships were in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Iran’s direct and widespread missile attack on Israel Tuesday was the second of the year, and once again threatened to spark all-out war in the Middle East, a grim future that the United States has worked to stave off since the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

The sky lit up over central and southern Israel Tuesday evening as ballistic missiles collided with air defense interceptors. Both the Pentagon and the Israel Defense Forces said they were still assessing the attack, but that Iran had launched around 200 missiles and there had been no recorded casualties.

“Initial reports indicate that Israel was able to intercept the majority of incoming missiles and that there was minimal damage on the ground,” Ryder said.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called Iran’s response “failed and ineffective,” but warned that it was also a “significant escalation.”

What will the surge of US forces to the Middle East cost the military?

“This [result] was first and foremost the result of the professionalism of the IDF, but in no small part, because of the skilled work of the U.S. military and meticulous joint planning in anticipation of the attack,” Sullivan said.

Iran’s attack comes a week after Israel assassinated the leader of Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia group that Tehran has armed for years. The strike in Beirut, followed by operations Israel launched across the border, have escalated a burgeoning conflict in Lebanon.

The U.S. has already surged forces to the Middle East to help defend Israel and its own forces. It continued to do so this week, sending three fighter squadrons, including F-15s, F-16s and A-10s. This almost doubles the number of fighters in U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East.

Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also ordered the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to remain in the region as a bulwark against a wider war. Another carrier, the Harry S. Truman, is heading to U.S. European Command.

These posture changes will add “a few thousand” U.S. forces to CENTCOM, according to the Pentagon, adding to the 40,000 already there — 6,000 more than normal.

The U.S. insists the surge in forces has helped avert an a wider war in the region, an assessment Ryder repeated from the podium Tuesday, despite the recent attacks.

“We’ve been working very hard from the beginning to prevent a wider regional conflict.,” he said. “Certainly, the type of aggressive action that we saw by Iran today makes that more challenging.”

American forces, meanwhile, are under an elevated threat from Iran-backed proxies in the region.

Last week, the Houthis, a militia group in Yemen, launched what the Pentagon called a “complex attack” with aerial drones and cruise missiles on U.S. ships in the Red Sea, though officials said no ships were struck and no sailors were injured.

Iran’s attack Tuesday included around two times as many ballistic missiles than a similar barrage this April, which largely featured aerial drones that are much easier to intercept, Ryder said. No U.S. forces were targeted in the attack Tuesday, he continued.

Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart to discuss the attack and the “severe consequences” that would follow for Iran. Ryder wouldn’t elaborate on what those consequences will be, nor whether the U.S. would assist Israel in a direct strike on Iranian territory.

Nearly $1 billion has been set aside for the Defense Department to award direct loans ranging from $10 million to $150 million.

The Defense Department hopes the effort will help companies fund the construction and equipment needed to scale production across 31 technology categories deemed critical to U.S. national security. That includes areas like space launch, microelectronics fabrication, edge computing and quantum sensing.

“DOD now has proven financial tools to enable millions of dollars of investment in national security priorities at limited cost to the department and the taxpayer,” Defense Department Office of Strategic Capital, or OSC, Director Jason Rathje said in a statement.

The effort is geared toward businesses who need flexible financing options in order to attract additional investment and “unlock growth opportunities,” OSC said in a LinkedIn post Monday.

Pentagon’s strategic capital office finalizing investment framework

For a company to receive an OSC loan, it must meet certain eligibility requirements established by DOD and the Office of Management and Budget to make sure projects are economically viable, low-risk for the government and mature enough to quickly enter the commercial market.

The office will accept initial applications between January 2 and February 3. Following review, OSC will notify firms if their projects were selected to move to the next phase of the application process.

OSC set up shop in December 2022 to help the Pentagon steer private capital toward the technologies and supply chains that are most important to DOD and broader U.S. economic security. The office is distinct from other department initiatives in that it focuses on investments in components rather than capabilities, and on lending funds rather than spending them.

Congress gave OSC lending authority as part of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which was signed into law in December. OSC released its inaugural investment strategy in March, creating a framework for the lending program that it expects to refresh on a regular basis as threats change and technology advances. The document outlined 12 initial priority areas, including biotechnology, quantum science, microelectronics, space-enabled services and sensor hardware.

The office’s strategy is to partner with other government agencies to offer cost-effective tools that incentivize private capital firms to invest in the technology DOD needs.

“As used by OSC in collaboration with federal partners, these financial tools will enable capital providers to invest in critical technologies that would otherwise be less attractive because the cost of capital is too high, the timelines for repayment or liquidity are too long, or the technical challenges are too risky for a nascent commercial market alone,” OSC said in its strategy.

JERUSALEM — Iran is preparing to “imminently” launch a ballistic missile attack on Israel, according to a senior U.S. administration official, who warned Tuesday of “severe consequences” should it take place.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence, said the U.S. is actively supporting Israeli defensive preparations. This comes after the Israeli military on Tuesday warned people to evacuate nearly two dozen Lebanese border communities hours after announcing what it said were limited ground operations against Hezbollah.

White House officials did not immediately offer any evidence backing its intelligence finding. The official added that the administration was confident in the determination.

U.S. ships and aircraft are already positioned in the region to assist Israel in the event of an attack from Iran. There are three U.S. Navy destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea, an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Oman and fighter jets arrayed throughout the region. All have the abilities to shoot down incoming missiles.

What will the surge of US forces to the Middle East cost the military?

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the carrier Abraham Lincoln to remain in the region over the weekend, and the Pentagon announced that additional Air Force fighter jet squadrons were heading to the Middle East on Monday.

Iran’s state media has not suggested any attack is imminent. Iranian officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

Iran already launched an unprecedented direct attack on Israel in April, but few of the Iranian projectiles reached their targets. Many were shot down by a U.S.-led coalition, while others apparently failed at launch or crashed while in flight. Even those that reached Israel appeared to miss their marks, experts and an AP analysis in September showed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Tuesday statement that Israel is facing “large challenges” as it fights an Iranian axis. In the videotaped statement, he urges the public to listen to public safety guidelines from the army’s Home Front Command. He made no direct mention of a missile threat.

Hezbollah denied Israeli troops had entered Lebanon, but hours later the Israeli army announced it had also carried out dozens of ground raids into southern Lebanon going back nearly a year. Israel released video footage purporting to show its soldiers operating in homes and tunnels where Hezbollah kept weapons.

A ‘few thousand’ more US troops are headed to the Middle East

If true, it would be another humiliating blow for Iran-backed Hezbollah, the most powerful armed group in the Middle East. Hezbollah has been reeling from weeks of targeted strikes that killed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and several of his top commanders.

Israel advised people to evacuate to the north of the Awali River, some 60 kilometers (36 miles) from the border and much farther than the Litani River, which marks the northern edge of a U.N.-declared zone that was intended to serve as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah after their 2006 war.

“You must immediately head north of the Awali River to save yourselves, and leave your houses immediately,” said the statement posted by the Israeli military on the platform X. The warning applied to communities south of the Litani.

The border region has largely emptied out over the past year as the two sides have traded fire. But the scope of the evacuation warning raised questions as to how deep Israel plans to send its forces into Lebanon as it presses ahead with a rapidly escalating campaign against Hezbollah.

Anticipating more rocket attacks from Hezbollah, the Israeli army announced new restrictions on public gatherings and closed beaches in northern and central Israel. The military also said it was calling up thousands more reserve soldiers to serve on the northern border.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced “counter small uncrewed aerial systems,” or C-SUAS, as the Replicator 2 focus area in a memo last week to senior Pentagon leaders. His decision follows a monthslong review that considered what capability gaps could be best addressed through the rapid fielding initiative.

“Replicator 2 will tackle the warfighter priority of countering the threat posed by small uncrewed aerial systems to our most critical installations and force concentrations,” he said in the memo, which was released publicly on Monday. “My expectation is that Replicator 2 will field meaningfully improved C-sUAS protection to critical assets within 24 months of Congress approving funding.”

Championed by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, Replicator’s goal is to create a new pathway for the Pentagon to buy and scale high-need capabilities on faster timelines.

The first test of that pathway, Replicator 1, centers on delivering thousands of low-cost drones by next summer. The department plans to spend a total of $1 billion on the effort in fiscal years 2024 and 2025, with funds drawn from various sources including prior-year appropriations, a reprogramming request, a national security supplemental approved in August, and the Pentagon’s yet-to-be approved FY25 budget proposal.

As DOD leaders began deliberating this summer on what to pursue in Replicator 2, they focused on capabilities that would address a near-term operational imperative and would benefit from senior leader backing, Hicks told Defense News in June. According to Austin’s memo, the need to protect against growing threats posed by enemy drones fits the bill.

Hostile drones pose a major challenge to the U.S. and its allies and have featured heavily in conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Since last fall, Iran-backed groups have used drones, uncrewed surface vessels and anti-ship ballistic vehicles to launch dozens of attacks on U.S., allied and commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea. The incidents have disrupted global trade in key waterways and killed three merchant sailors.

According to a June 13 report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, 65 countries and 29 major energy and shipping companies have been affected or have had to alter their routes in response to these aggressions.

DOD officials have said the department is taking a layered approach to defending against enemy drones, meaning the U.S. will pursue a range of capabilities to disable these systems, from electronic warfare to kinetic weapons. The military services have a number of ongoing programs to develop these systems.

Led by the Defense Innovation Unit, Replicator 2 will leverage those existing efforts to help the services field counter-UAS capabilities more quickly and in larger numbers. According to Austin, DIU will work closely with the military services, the Counter Uncrewed Systems Warfighter Senior Integration Group and Pentagon acquisition chief Bill LaPlante, who serves as DOD’s C-sUAS principal staff assistant.

“I am confident the Replicator initiative will complement and advance the significant C-sUAS work already underway in the DOD,” Austin said. “The expectation is that Replicator 2 will assist with overcoming challenges we face in the areas of production capacity, technology innovation, authorities, policies, open system architecture and system integration, and force structure.”

The American and Iraqi governments announced Friday a phasing down of Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve, a U.S.-led military operation to counter the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Previewed for months after U.S. President Joe Biden met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani in April, the decision will close the task force by 2026. The U.S., which has 2,500 troops in Iraq, will then negotiate directly with the government in Baghdad on its military presence inside the country.

Since the war started in Gaza last October, American military personnel around the Middle East have been increasingly under threat. Militia groups sponsored by Iran have targeted U.S. ships and bases, including a strike that killed three troops just across the Syrian border in Jordan this January. The attacks, along with America’s support for Israel, have continued to shift America’s military footprint in the region.

There are now 40,000 U.S. personnel in Central Command, 6,000 higher than normal.

In a call previewing the announcement with reporters, a senior U.S. administration and defense official wouldn’t comment on how many troops would remain in Iraq or where they would operate — other than to say there would not be a full withdrawal.

What will the surge of US forces to the Middle East cost the military?

“It’s time to do that transition. But that doesn’t mean every detail has been worked out,” the defense official said.

The task force itself will end in two phases. The first will arrive next September, when the coalition’s military mission inside Iraq will close. Because ISIS remains a threat nearby, the officials said, Iraq will allow the coalition to keep using its territory for missions across the border into Syria at least until September 2026.

Launched in 2014, when the Islamic State seized swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, the task force includes more than 30 countries and eventually secured 42,000 square miles once controlled by ISIS, the defense official said. The terrorist group lost its ability to hold territory in Iraq in 2017, and in Syria two years later.

Ending the international mission now, the official continued, reflects two changes: a weakened ISIS and an empowered Iraqi military. The coalition has given local security forces more than $4 billion in military equipment and trained around 225,000 personnel.

America has also supported the Iraqi military directly. This week, the U.S. State Department approved a $65 million foreign military sale to Iraq for ship repair and maintenance.

“During these past years, we’ve seen very significant improvement in the Iraqi Security Force’s capability,” the defense official said.

In late August, U.S. and Iraqi forces conducted an operation in western Iraq that killed 14 ISIS operatives, including four leaders, as announced by CENTCOM. Seven American personnel were injured in the raid.

The package will empty out the administration’s chest of remaining aid to Kyiv, in part out of necessity.

The $5.5 billion left in authority to ship American stocks to Ukraine was otherwise set to expire with the fiscal year at the end of the month. And Donald Trump, who may yet win the presidency in November, has said his goal is to end the war, without committing to an outcome.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is visiting the White House Thursday after addressing the United Nations this week. U.S. President Joe Biden pledged he would host an October “leader-level” summit of countries that gather each month to coordinate aid for Kyiv.

By approving the leftover $5.5 billion, the Biden administration will be able to continue its support, which Congress didn’t extend in a short-term funding bill passed this week. But the authority will only apply to equipment sent in previous rounds of aid and locks Ukraine into its current weapons diet.

To wit, the White House also said it would be sending the Joint Standoff Weapon, an air-to-ground missile.

A further $2.4 billion in long-term aid will follow through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a second tool to provide Ukraine with longer-term security aid. That package will include aerial drones, munitions, industrial support and air defense, the White House said.

This last category has long been a prize for Ukraine, whose cities have been under attack from Russian bombs throughout the war. The package of aid will also include a refurbished Patriot battery, America’s most advanced air defense system and one Zelenskyy has sought in higher numbers.

The White House also said it was telling the Pentagon to expand its training for Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets. The Ukrainian air force has started using these fourth-generation fighters since receiving its first batch over the summer — a gradual approach U.S. defense officials call “crawl, walk, run.”

Ukrainian officials have argued the West’s pipeline for training — split between America and Europe — is too narrow and should include more pilots. That said, Ukraine lost one of the jets already in a late-August incident still under investigation. Zelenskyy sacked the head of Ukraine’s air force soon after.

MDA director Lt. Gen. Heath Collins revealed earlier this summer that the agency would soon choose between Raytheon and Northrop who were competing to design the Glide Phase Interceptor, or GPI.

Lockheed Martin was one of three original companies picked to work on design concepts for GPI in November 2021 but by June 2022, MDA had chosen to proceed with only Northrop and Raytheon.

MDA made the decision in favor of Northrop together with the Japanese government, which is signed on to co-develop the capability.

The company’s win comes after it recently lost another big MDA competition to develop the Next-Generation Interceptor that will replace interceptors that make up the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System. That system is designed to defend the continental U.S. from intercontinental ballistic missile threats from North Korea and Iran. Lockheed Martin was chosen earlier this year in another early downselect.

The decision to move to just a single vendor prior to reaching preliminary design review is out of the ordinary, but Collins told Defense News last month that MDA, like the rest of the Defense Department, had “to make really tough prioritization and resource-informed decisions. ... We were no exception, so we had to take a look at how we balance and make decisions on the capability we bring.”

MDA will “have to assess the risk of that design, any corrective actions ... or mitigation activities we want to take,” Collins said, discussing next steps after MDA chooses a single vendor. “And then we would re-baseline the program based on that with an updated, independent cost estimate.”

Northrop Grumman said in a statement that during the next phase of GPI development, it will continue to refine its preliminary design intended to fire from the U.S. Navy’s Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense destroyers and Aegis Ashore using the standard Vertical Launch System.

The company will move quickly by using digital engineering. It plans to demonstrate system performance in hypersonic environments before the preliminary design review and complete flight experiments early, according to the statement.

“Today’s decision represents a turning point for hypersonic glide phase defense,” Collins, the MDA director, said in the statement.

While the U.S. has some capability to track and counter hypersonic threats regionally in the terminal phase, the ability to defeat hypersonic missile threats during the glide phase of flight is difficult because of the nature of a hypersonic missile’s ability to maneuver in unpredictable ways at high speeds.

But while GPI is a necessary capability, fielding is not planned until the 2035 timeframe. Tom Karako, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted that “something else is going to be needed in the meantime — a future terminal interceptor of some kind.”

Congress wants MDA to move more quickly. Lawmakers mandated in the FY24 National Defense Authorization Act that the agency reach full operational capability by the end of 2032 and provide no fewer than 12 GPIs for tests by the end of 2029.

Just before the defense secretary visited Subic Bay, Philippines, the former site of a massive U.S. Navy base, Israel killed the political leader of Hamas, who was visiting Iran.

Austin’s July visit was meant to show his focus on Asia, the region America says is its top priority. Instead, he ended the trip distracted by the Middle East, spending hours containing the crisis on a flight back to Washington.

“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that we keep things from turning into a broader conflict,” Austin told reporters that day.

The U.S. military has spent much of the past year backing up that sentiment.

Since Oct. 7, when Hamas’ attack on Israel provoked all-out war in Gaza, the Pentagon has been on call. When the region has approached a wider war, the Defense Department surged forces there to calm it down. But after a year, some in Congress and the Pentagon are growing concerned about how to sustain that pace, and what it will cost the military in the long term.

Call it the U.S. Central Command squeeze. The Pentagon insists its surge has helped stop the Middle East from falling into chaos. But the longer the region borders on conflict, the more the U.S. tests its endurance for crises later on, most notably, a future conflict with China.

The pressure on the military increased even further this week. After their most intense attacks in almost 20 years, Israel and the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah are close to a larger war. On Monday, Austin yet again ordered more troops to the region, joining 40,000 other American personnel there, 6,000 more than normal. Another aircraft carrier may soon follow.

“We’re caught in this kind of never-ending quagmire of having to divert resources, and we’re burning [out] on the back end,” a senior congressional aide said.

This story is based on interviews with analysts, current and former defense officials and congressional staffers, many of whom were allowed to speak anonymously either because they weren’t permitted to talk to the press or because they were discussing sensitive topics.

Their message was that America’s military wouldn’t exhaust itself anytime soon, but that a year of unplanned deployments and spent missiles come with a cost. Even more, they said, the longer the crisis continues, the more the Pentagon will have to manage tradeoffs between the urgent needs of the Middle East and the rising challenges of the Indo-Pacific.

Merging

The way American military leaders in the Middle East describe it, they woke up to an entirely new world on Oct. 7.

For the last several years, the narrative around U.S. forces in the region had been one of decreased focus, with adversaries in the Europe and the Pacific taking priority.

That changed when Hamas fighters stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 and taking hundreds more hostage. For the short-term, at least, the U.S. was refocused on the Middle East.

“We didn’t know what this was the start of,” an American military official told Defense News. “We immediately started to go to worst-case planning.”

Within weeks of Oct. 7, in support of Israel, the U.S. sent two carrier strike groups, the Gerald R. Ford and the Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and Middle East. It doubled the number of Air Force fighter squadrons in CENTCOM. And to defend its forces already in the region, the Pentagon rushed valuable air defense batteries nearby.

“Our advice to those who might seek to exploit the situation or amplify the conflict is simple, don’t,” a senior U.S. defense official warned in an October press briefing.

This phrase, which became a cliché among senior members of the U.S. government, was still a clear statement of mission. America was sprinting to defend Israel and its own forces in the region.

That became harder the longer the war lasted. Oct. 7 brought direct attacks between Hamas and Israel, but it also upset a delicate balance among other groups.

Soon after the attack, Israel and Hezbollah — which has a formidable force, armed with over 130,000 rockets — started trading fire in a cycle of escalating skirmishes.

Militant groups armed by Iran started attacking Israeli and American forces, especially the 3,500 or so stationed between Iraq and Syria, with three soldiers dying in one such attack in January.

Meanwhile, the Houthis, a terrorist group in Yemen, started firing on commercial ships in the Red Sea, a vital economic waterway where 15% of global trade flowed before last fall.

The Navy’s running sea fight with the Houthis is the longest and most kinetic since World War II, according to service leaders.

“There’s flavors of all those activities in the past and previous rounds that I’ve been involved in, but I don’t recall a period when so many of them have merged,” said another senior U.S. defense official, describing the different attacks.

‘Bear the burden’

As the threats rose, so too did the demand on America’s military. By December, the U.S. began Operation Prosperity Guardian, a multinational mission to protect shipping in the Red Sea. It devoted an aircraft carrier and destroyers to the task.

In April, when Iran lobbed hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, the U.S. and its partners helped intercept nearly all of them.

America’s national defense strategy accepts that its military can’t be everywhere in the numbers it would want. Instead, the plan is to have a movable force. Put more practically: the U.S. argues it can rush to contain crises like the Middle East after Oct. 7 while still deterring a conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific.

“That’s what we were saying before Oct. 7 and we just demonstrated it,” said Dana Stroul, a top Pentagon Middle East official until early this year. “It’s been a proof of concept.”

But the plan requires these emergencies to eventually end. Despite months of intense diplomacy in the region, the administration is now showing less confidence in its proposed ceasefire deal. And now Israel — the country America has spent the last year defending — may itself be opening a new front in the war against Hezbollah.

“You can’t employ diplomacy without the backbone of military capability,” said retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, who led CENTCOM until 2022. “Military capability without diplomatic messaging is not a good way to approach the problem either.”

“You need both but you have to be willing to bear the burden,” he continued.

For some in Congress especially, the concern is that the Middle East is a distraction from the Indo-Pacific.

Pentagon leaders say they calculate the risk in pulling assets from one region to another, and that the choice to move forces away from Asia is a sign that they consider the region stable enough to do so.

Not everyone in the region is convinced.

“I have relayed messages that it is better to invest in deterrence where there is no overt conflict, rather than intervene in a conflict where there is one already,” the Philippines Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an August interview. He wouldn’t specify who in the U.S. those messages have reached.

‘We had mission and purpose:’ A chat with the CO of the USS Eisenhower

Cost and benefit

The benefit, in the Defense Department’s eyes, of such a large response in the Middle East over the last year is to contain a crisis that threatened to engulf the entire region.

The periodic surges haven’t accomplished everything the U.S. has wanted. The Navy regularly intercepts Houthi drones and missiles, but the attacks by the Iran-backed group continue, and most shipping companies have chosen to reroute rather than risk becoming a target. Nor is it certain that the militia group will stop even if there is a ceasefire — something Pentagon officials say they still don’t know.

As the recent fire between Israel and Hezbollah has shown, the U.S. is also stuck responding to the rise and fall in the regional conflict, what Pentagon leaders often liken to riding a roller coaster.

“It’s obviously lasted longer than anyone would want,” the second defense official said.

That notwithstanding, there hasn’t yet been a wider war in the Middle East. And while it acknowledges other forces at work, the Pentagon says it’s helped avoid one.

Amid Red Sea clashes, Navy leaders ask: Where are our ship lasers?

“The force posture does matter,” Secretary Austin told reporters this month. “In some cases, Iran can see … many of the capabilities that we have available. In many cases, they can’t.”

That said, the cost of this posture is also becoming clearer.

The first, and perhaps the most important, part of that tally is the military’s ability to meet future needs, known as “readiness” in defense jargon. By sending more forces to the Middle East, the Pentagon is accepting what amounts to a mortgage: higher costs on its forces to avoid an even bigger bill.

There’s no more pressing example of this trade than aircraft carriers.

These ships are the Navy’s most powerful, most visible weapon, and they’re a primary way the U.S. often flexes its military muscle.

That said, carriers need a lot of maintenance, and spend about two-thirds of their life in port undergoing some kind of repair. The Navy calibrates their time at sea and their time for maintenance, allowing for some margin, but not much.

Central Command spent two years without a carrier after America left Afghanistan in 2021. But since Oct. 7, the U.S. has rotated four of them into the Middle East. Most of them have also been deployed longer than their scheduled seven months at sea.

“If we delay a carrier from going back into port and going back into a maintenance period by a month, it causes an even longer period” of disruption, the third defense official said. “It’s not a one-for-one delay.”

Without specifying the impact of these extensions so far, multiple defense officials and congressional aides said the U.S. is already having to manage “tradeoffs” between the needs of the Middle East today and other areas in the future.

Still, in an interview, the head of readiness for the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command, which oversees the East Coast-based fleet, argued that the schedules and ships themselves have proved resilient and aren’t yet showing higher wear.

“Sailing those ships in harm’s way for more months certainly will put stress on that, but I really don’t see that process breaking,” Rear Adm. Paul Lanzilotta said.

Close calls

This February, the Houthis shot a ballistic missile at the Navy destroyer Gravely in the Red Sea, one of many times the militia group targeted American ships in the waterway.

But this one came close. In fact, the ship used a short-range weapon — rather than the typical missile — to intercept the attack. The Houthis came within a nautical mile of success, according to Navy officials.

This is an example of the other two costs involved in the Pentagon’s response. One is to personnel, who are being targeted by militia groups more often and are, in some cases, being deployed longer than planned. The other is the military’s own weapons needed to respond.

The Navy estimates that between Oct. 7 and mid-July, it fired $1.16 billion worth of munitions while on station in the Red Sea.

Many of these are older versions of missiles — such as Tomahawks and Standard Missile 2 interceptors — that wouldn’t be as useful in a fight against China, said a second congressional aide.

Still, as long as the Navy is around the Red Sea, it will need to fire weapons that cost more than what they’re shooting down — an equation known in the military as an “exchange ratio.” That deficit has fallen as the U.S. escorts fewer vessels and experiments more with other ways to stop these attacks, multiple officials and analysts told Defense News. But there’s only so many ways the military can adapt, and it won’t risk losing sailors or ships that cost billions.

“We’ve dodged disaster so far, but that doesn’t really mean it’s mission accomplished,” said a third congressional aide.

In April, Congress passed a $95 billion addition to the Pentagon budget, with $2.44 billion in extra money for Central Command. That funding was designed to last six months, according to the first congressional aide, which would mean it’s almost out today.

The Pentagon comptroller office declined to offer an estimate of how much more the surge in forces is costing and whether the Defense Department was still running a deficit to pay for it.

Multiple staffs in Congress said the bill for the last six months will be about the same number as in April: $2 to $3 billion.

Lawmakers can either pay the bill down in another supplemental or by folding the total into their overall defense spending bill, as the Senate did with $1.75 billion for Central Command. That said, lawmakers will soon start the year on a short-term budget called a continuing resolution, which freezes Pentagon spending at last year’s level.

‘Still in the crisis’

Meanwhile even as funding runs out, the war in Gaza shows no sign of ending.

In August, after Austin returned to Washington from the Philippines, he sent a fighter squadron, a submarine, destroyers and a second aircraft carrier rerouted from the Indo-Pacific this year to CENTCOM. Iran didn’t attack, and Hezbollah’s response to an Israeli strike was limited. After a month and a half of relative calm, one of the two carriers in the region left.

During regular briefings, the Pentagon even started arguing that it had gotten in the “headspace” of Iran.

Then, earlier this month, Israel detonated thousands of devices belonging to Hezbollah and launched airstrikes in Lebanon — prompting the group to vow revenge. The two sides are now exchanging heavy fire across the border. Austin postponed a trip to Israel and Jordan this week, containing yet another flare up.

Between the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and CENTCOM, the U.S. now has at least one submarine, an aircraft carrier, three amphibious warships and nine destroyers, a defense official said. Two of those destroyers are in the Red Sea and were once slated to exit, the official said. After the attacks last week, the official continued, the Pentagon ordered them to stay.

In a call with reporters after Israel and Hezbollah’s latest standoff began, a senior administration official yet again said that the U.S. had helped avert a wider war and that a ceasefire was the best option for all in the region.

In the days after, Israel continued striking Lebanon killing hundreds in attacks that escalated their conflict further.

Another carrier strike group deployed for Europe this week on a previously scheduled deployment. The defense official said the Pentagon is drawing up plans in case it needs to divert into CENTCOM and transit the Red Sea.

“We very much will maintain that deterrent posture, because we are still in crisis,” the senior administration official said.

Officials expect an announcement on Wednesday, as global leaders meet at the U.N. General Assembly, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy uses his appearance there to shore up support and persuade the U.S. to allow his troops to use long-range weapons to strike deeper into Russia. The following day, Zelenskyy meets with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington.

The aid includes air-to-ground bombs, which have cluster munitions and can be fired by Ukraine’s fighter jets, as well as munitions for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, Javelin and other anti-armor systems, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, bridging systems and other vehicles and military equipment, according to officials. The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid has not yet been publicly announced.

Nearly $6B in Ukraine aid at risk if Congress doesn’t act by month-end

The latest package of weapons, provided through presidential drawdown authority, is one of the largest approved recently and will take stocks from Pentagon shelves to deliver the weapons more quickly to Ukraine.

It comes as nearly $6 billion in funding for aid to Ukraine could expire at the end of the month unless Congress acts to extend the Pentagon’s authority to send weapons from its stockpile to Kyiv. Congressional leaders announced they reached an agreement Sunday on a short-term spending bill, but it’s unclear if any language extending the Pentagon authority to send weapons to Ukraine will be added to the temporary measure as negotiations with Congress continue.

Ukrainian and Russian forces are battling in the east, including hand-to-hand combat in the Kharkiv border region where Ukraine has driven Russia out of a huge processing plant in the town of Vovchansk that had been occupied for four months, officials said Tuesday. At the same time, Ukrainian troops continue to hold ground in Russia’s Kursk region after a daring incursion there last month.

The aid announcement comes on the heels of Zelenskyy’s highly guarded visit on Sunday to a Pennsylvania ammunition factory to thank the workers who are producing one of the most critically needed munitions for his country’s fight to fend off Russian ground forces.

Including this latest package, the United States has provided more than $56.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russian forces invaded in February 2022.

Lee reported from the United Nations.

The administration will use its fastest tool available to deliver the aid: directly shipping its own stocks, a process it’s heavily relied on to support Ukraine’s self-defense. This $567 million package has already received the Pentagon’s approval and is now awaiting the president’s signature.

As it stands, it would be almost double a package of $345 million sent last year. The president will likely approve the tranche before the fiscal year expires at the end of the month, said one aide and an official, who like others speaking for this story were not permitted to talk to the press and were granted anonymity.

The new package of aid has not been previously reported.

Taiwan is by far the most delicate issue in America’s relationship with China. Beijing maintains the democratically governed island is part of its rightful territory, and won’t rule out military force to one day unite with it. The U.S., meanwhile, is Taiwan’s oldest and largest supplier of military aid.

The impasse often leads to public displays of frustration. At this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s largest defense summit, China’s Minister of National Defense Adm. Dong Jun warned that supporters of Taiwanese “separatists” would be punished — shortly after China’s military held large drills around the island.

And in a briefing this week, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned U.S. military support, arguing it “sends a wrong message to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”

Still, at a September defense conference hosted in Beijing, which a top Pentagon official for China attended, members of the People’s Liberation Army were gentler. The month before, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also traveled to China, where he met with senior members of the government and helped schedule a long-sought call between America’s top military leader in the region and his Chinese counterpart.

The security assistance will fund training, stockpiles, anti-armor weapons, air defense and multi-domain awareness, according to a U.S. official, who would not be more specific. It will also include drones, which are key to America and Taiwan’s “asymmetric” strategy to defend the island against China’s much larger military.

The ambiguity is typical for aid to Taiwan, which the U.S. rarely discusses in detail due to its sensitivity. Neither the Pentagon nor the National Security Council would comment for this story, except to say that America maintains the right to support Taiwan’s self-defense, per longstanding government policy.

“We have no comment on this matter. Taiwan will continue to enhance defense capabilities and closely work with the United States so as to actively uphold peace, stability and prosperity across the Taiwan Strait and in the Indo-Pacific region,” a spokesperson for Taiwan’s unofficial embassy in Washington said in a statement.

In an effort to hasten support for Taiwan, Congress gave the administration the authority to send Taiwan up to $1 billion in its own stocks each year — a more direct show of support than previous assistance from arms sales. That said, lawmakers didn’t give the Pentagon an actual budget, and the department has been loath to send equipment it can’t replace.

After debating a further package of aid last year — one supported by members of the State Department and White House — Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin paused any further aid to Taiwan without funding.

That money arrived in April, when Congress included $1.9 billion to replenish U.S. stocks sent to countries in the Indo-Pacific. Leaders across the Pentagon have since been planning how to use that funding, most of which will go to Taiwan.

The package now close to approval went through several rounds of revisions, according to multiple officials. The Pentagon initially planned a smaller amount, but in a meeting of different parts of the administration this summer, multiple senior officials said it needed to be far larger — leading to the expanded $567 million figure.

The Pentagon is also now working on a third package of drawdown aid to Taiwan, which the government plans to complete by the end of the administration in January, the U.S. official said.

The April bill featured a further $2 billion in longer-term security aid for the region, $1.4 billion of which went to Taiwan in a separate package approved — though never announced — this summer. The U.S. green-lit the sale of $228 million in repairs and spare parts for military kit this week, adding to the $19 billion in such foreign military sales Taiwan is waiting on for delivery.

A Pentagon watchdog recently published a scathing report on the first round of support last year. It found that shipping issues caused by the American military led to aid arriving in Taiwan later than expected, covered in mold and in some cases expired. Fixing the issues cost the two sides a further $730,000.

“More broadly, the delivery of non-mission-capable items inhibits the [Defense Department’s] ability to achieve established security cooperation goals and may lead to loss of partner confidence in the United States,” the report said.

The first task order under what’s known as the Secure Enclave program was awarded to leading microchip developer Intel Corp. The funding will focus on improving commercial fabrication facilities and builds on work Intel has done through other DOD programs.

The effort is funded through the Biden Administration’s CHIPS and Science Act. Passed in 2022, the measure injects $52 billion into the semiconductor workforce and supports technology and manufacturing advancements needed to establish a more robust domestic microelectronics supply base.

“The Biden-Harris Administration is laser focused on implementing the CHIPS for America programs to bolster national and economic security, including through targeted investments focused on reshoring critical leading edge semiconductor manufacturing production, emerging technology research and development, and current and mature microelectronics,” the White House said in a fact sheet released Monday.

The United States produces just 12% of the global microchip supply – down from around 37% in the 1990s. Today, most of the world’s supply of advanced semiconductors come from Taiwan, and China exports a large portion of its microchips to the United States. These chips power everything from cellphones to cars to the F-35 fighter jet.

The Defense Department received $2 billion in CHIPS Act funding, which it’s using to establish the Microelectronics Commons — a national network of academic institutions, small business firms and research entities working together to push microelectronics technology projects from the laboratory into prototyping and scaled production.

The Secure Enclave project is separate from the Microelectronics Commons and is focused instead on creating an end-to-end production capability that specifically addresses military requirements for advanced semiconductors. DOD will manage the program in partnership with the Commerce Department.

Intel – which has sites in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and Oregon -- has been involved in several Pentagon efforts to address microelectronics supply. In 2020 it was selected to participate in DOD’s State-of-the Art Heterogeneous Integrated Packaging Program, which leveraged the company’s production capabilities.

The department selected Intel to provide commercial foundry services through its Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes-Commercial program. The goal of the effort is to demonstrate the ability to securely leverage state-of-the-art microelectronics technologies without depending on a closed security fabrication facility.

U.S. officials said the Biden administration has asked Congress to include the funding authority in any continuing resolution lawmakers may manage to pass before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 in order to fund the federal government and prevent a shutdown. Officials said they hope to have the authority extended for another year.

They also said the Defense Department is looking into other options if that effort fails.

US to send $125 million in new military aid to Ukraine, officials say

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the funding talks, did not provide details on the options. But they said about $5.8 billion in presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, will expire. Another $100 million in PDA does not expire at the end of the month, the officials said. The PDA allows the Pentagon to take weapons off the shelves and send them quickly to Ukraine.

They said there is a little more than $4 billion available in longer-term funding through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative that will not expire at the end of the month. That money, which expires Sept. 30, 2025, is used to pay for weapons contracts that would not be delivered for a year or more.

Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that as the Defense Department comptroller provides options to senior defense and military service leaders, they will look at ways they can tap the PDA and USAI funding.

He said it could be important to Ukraine as it prepares for the winter fight.

“One of the areas that we could do work with them on … is air defense capabilities and the ability to defend their critical infrastructure,” Brown told reporters traveling with him to meetings in Europe. “It’s very important to Ukraine on how they defend their national infrastructure, but also set their defenses for the winter so they can slow down any type of Russian advance during the winter months.”

Earlier Thursday at the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the press secretary, noted that the PDA gives the Pentagon the ability to spend money from its budget to send military aid to Ukraine. Funding in the $61 billion supplemental bill for Ukraine passed in April can reimburse the department for the weapons it sends.

“Right now, we’re continuing to work with Congress to see about getting those authorities extended to enable us to continue to do drawdown packages,” said Ryder. “In the meantime, you’re going to continue to see drawdown packages. But we’ll have much more to provide on that in the near future."

The U.S. has routinely announced new drawdown packages — often two to three a month.

Failure by lawmakers to act on the PDA funding could once again deliver a serious setback in Ukraine’s battle against Russia, just five months after a bitterly divided Congress finally overcame a long and devastating gridlock and approved new Ukraine funding.

Delays in passing that $61 billion for Ukraine earlier this year triggered dire battlefield conditions as Ukrainian forces ran low on munitions and Russian forces were able to make gains. Officials have blamed the monthslong deadlocked Congress for Russia's ability to take more territory.

Since funding began again, U.S. weapons have flowed into Ukraine, bolstering the forces and aiding Kyiv’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. Ukraine’s forces stormed across the border five weeks ago and put Russian territory under foreign occupation for the first time since World War II.

That work is increasingly important for the U.S., which is racing against China to shape the next iteration of wireless telecommunications, known as 6G. These more advanced networks, expected to materialize in the 2030s, will pave the way for more dependable high-speed, low-latency communication and could support the Pentagon’s technology interests — from robotics and autonomy to virtual reality and advanced sensing.

Staying ahead means not only fostering technology development and industry standards but making sure that policy and regulations are in place to safely use the capability, according to Thomas Rondeau, who leads the Pentagon’s FutureG office. Staking a leadership role in the global competition, he said, could give DOD a level of control over what that future infrastructure looks like.

“If we can define those going into it, then as we export our technologies, we’re also exporting our policies and our regulations, because they’re going to be inherently part of those technology solutions,” Rondeau told Defense News in a recent interview.

The Defense Department started making a concerted investment in 5G about five years ago when then Undersecretary of Research and Engineering Michael Griffin named the technology a top priority for the Pentagon.

In 2020, DOD awarded contracts totaling $600 million to 15 companies to experiment with various 5G applications at five bases around the country. The projects included augmented and virtual reality training, smart warehousing, command and control and spectrum utilization.

The department has since expanded the pilots and pursued other wireless network development projects, including a 5G Challenge series that incentivized companies to move toward more open-access networks.

The result has, so far, been a mixed bag. Most of the pilots didn’t transition into formal programs within the military services, Rondeau said. Several of the failed efforts involved commercial augmented or virtual reality technology that wasn’t mature enough for DOD to justify continued funding.

Among the projects that did transfer, Rondeau highlighted a pilot effort at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington to provide fixed wireless access to the base. The project essentially replaced hundreds of pounds of cables with radio units that broadcast the communications network to the personnel who need it. Today, the system is supporting logistics and maintenance operations at the base.

“This could be a huge benefit for readiness, but also I think it should be very cost-effective way to slim down on everything that you pay for cables,” Rondeau said. “That will be a continued, sustainable project.”

This and other transitioned pilots will likely make their way into a formal budget cycle by fiscal 2027, he added.

DOD also saw some success from the 5G Challenges it staged in 2022 and 2023 to encourage telecommunication companies to transition to an open radio access network, or Open RAN. A RAN is the first entry point a wireless device makes into a network and accounts for about 80% of its cost. Historically, proprietary RANs managed by companies like Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung have dominated the market.

“They’re driving a world where they control the entire system, the end-to-end system,” Rondeau said. “That causes a lack of insight, a lack of innovation on our side, and it causes challenges with how to apply these types of systems to unique, niche military needs.”

The 5G Challenge offered companies a chance to break open that proprietary model by moving to Open RAN — and according to Rondeau, it was a success. The initial challenge then expanded into a broader forum that addressed issues like energy efficiency and spectrum management. Ultimately, the effort reduced energy usage by around 30%, he said.

Rondeau said that while much of the focus of these initiatives was on 5G, the work has informed the Pentagon’s vision and strategy for 6G, which the department believes should have an open-source foundation.

“That is a direct result of not only my background and push for some of these things, but also the learnings that we got from the networks we’ve deployed, from the 5G Challenge,” he said. “All these things come into play that led us towards an open-source software model being the right model for the military and, we think, for industry.”

One of the FutureG office’s top priorities these days, a direct outgrowth of the 5G Challenge, is called OCUDU, which stands for open centralized unit, distributed unit. The project is focused on implementing a fully open software model for 6G that meets the needs of industry, the research community and DOD.

The office is also exploring how the military could use 6G for sensing and monitoring. Its Integrated Sensing and Communications project, dubbed ISAC, uses wireless signals to collect information about different environments. That capability could be used to monitor drone networks or gather military intelligence.

While ISAC technology could bring a major boost to DOD’s ISR systems, commercialization could make it accessible to adversary nations who might weaponize it against the U.S. That challenge reflects a broader DOD concern around 6G policies and regulation – and drives urgency within Rondeau’s office to ensure the U.S. is the first to shape the foundation of these next-generation networks.

“We’re looking at this as a real opportunity for dramatic growth and interest in new, novel technologies for both commercial industry and defense needs,” he said. “But also, the threat space that it opens up for us is potentially pretty dramatic, so we need to be on top of this.”

The missiles can reach a maximum of 75 miles and allow Russia to maintain its stocks of more valuable, and more menacing, long-range fires, according to Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder.

While Russia hasn’t yet used them, Ryder said dozens of its military personnel have trained inside Iran on the missile system — known as the Fath 360. Ryder wouldn’t specify how many Russia has received, but the U.S. Treasury Department said that Moscow signed a contract late last year for “hundreds” of missiles, with the first such batch now arriving.

“This is a deeply concerning development,” Ryder said during a Tuesday briefing.

Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago, Russia has relied on its partners — in almost all cases other U.S. adversaries — to refill its stocks. Iran has been a particularly avid supplier, shipping one-way attack drones, missiles and other lethal aid to Russia throughout the war.

In return, Russia is sharing other information with Iran, including on nuclear and space technology, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday.

“This is a two-way street,” said Blinken, who is traveling to Kyiv to meet with members of the Ukrainian government.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin gathered a group of countries that regularly meet to support Ukraine’s self-defense. There, as in past meetings, the officials discussed how to supply Kyiv with enough air defense missiles and batteries. Russia has routinely battered Ukrainian military and civilian targets during the war, and in recent weeks launched its two largest salvos to date.

In response, Ukraine has asked repeatedly that the U.S. lift limits on how far inside Russia it can fire its own long-range weapons provided by the U.S. The White House so far has declined to do so, in part out out of concern that looser rules could escalate the war and in part because the long-range ATACMS missiles are scarce.

“I don’t believe one specific capability will be decisive,” Austin said after the meeting last week, arguing also that Russia had already moved almost all of its threatening aircraft out of range.

The firms are part of the Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic’s inaugural cohort, which NATO announced last year. The organization, known as DIANA, chose 44 companies for Phase I, selecting firms whose technology could address needs in both defense and commercial markets.

The companies participated in a competition series last fall that took place across five cities: Tallinn, Estonia; Turin, Italy; Copenhagen, Denmark; Boston; and Seattle. During the events, companies used emerging technology to solve real-world defense challenges.

“To move into Phase II, innovators had to demonstrate progress in their commercial and defense market potential, the technical viability and novelty of their solutions, and their investment readiness,” NATO said in a statement. “Review panels comprised technical, defense and innovation experts.”

The 10 companies that will transition to the next phase of DIANA’s challenge series are:

· Aquark Technologies, a quantum firm based in the United Kingdom

· Astrolight, a laser communications company in Lithuania

· Dolphin Labs, an ocean-observation company in the U.S.

· Ephos, a computing firm based in Italy

· Goldilock, a UK-based privacy firm

· IONATE, a U.K. firm specializing in smart energy platforms

· Lobster Robotics, a mapping company based in the Netherlands

· Phantom Photonics, a Canadian quantum sensing company

· Revobeam, a polish antenna firm

· Secqai, a computing company in the U.K.

The selected firms will receive up to €300,000 ($330,000).

DIANA is jointly funded, which means NATO doesn’t draw from the common fund that allies are required to contribute toward. Instead, member nations choose whether to pay into DIANA. The U.S. Defense Department last year appointed Jeffrey Singleton, U.S. principal member and head of the delegation to the NATO Science and Technology Board, as the U.S. representative to DIANA’s board of directors.

The accelerator has more than 100 affiliated test centers across nearly every country that partners with NATO. That includes 28 “deep-tech” accelerators, two of which are located in North America.

While civilian Defense Department employees like Del Toro are permitted to publicly back political candidates in a personal capacity, the Hatch Act bars federal officials from participating in political activities while serving in their official capacity and in their federal workplace.

The Office of Special Counsel said Thursday that Del Toro breached this policy during several interviews representing the Defense Department to garner backing for Operation Prosperity Guardian, a U.S. and international mission to safeguard shipping vessels in the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb, and Gulf of Aden.

“When speaking in his official capacity on a taxpayer-funded trip, Secretary Del Toro encouraged electoral support for one candidate over another in the upcoming presidential election,” Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger said in a statement Thursday. “By doing so, he crossed a legal line and violated the Hatch Act.”

How the Hatch Act changes after Election Day

“This is especially troubling because Secretary Del Toro has himself acknowledged that military work and partisan politics should not be mixed,” Dellinger said. “As he stated just this past July: ‘It is more important than ever for us to remember that the [Department of the Navy] is an apolitical body… Public trust and confidence depend on this.’”

During an appearance at the Royal United Services Institute on Jan. 25, Del Toro fielded a question regarding concerns the U.S. could adopt a more isolationist approach in the event of a different administration following the 2024 election. In response, Del Toro said that the U.S. and the world “need the mature leadership of President Biden.”

“I’m confident that the American people will step up to the plate come November and support President Biden for a second term as our Commander-in Chief, so that we can continue to work together as free democratic countries respect each other around the globe,” Del Toro said.

Later that day, Del Toro made similar remarks about the world deserving a second term with Biden in the White House in an interview with BBC News Sunday.

Del Toro self-reported his comments on BBC News Sunday on Feb. 1, noting that he aimed to address the significance of strong international alliances and national security issues.

“In retrospect, I believe my response should have been delivered more broadly without reference to specific candidates,” Del Toro wrote.

After opening an inquiry into the incident, the Office of Special Counsel later learned of Del Toro’s remarks at the Royal United Services Institute.

Del Toro’s lawyer defended these statements, pointing out they were not included in prepared remarks, were “fragments of answers” provided in response to questions from foreign press, and that Del Toro had no intent to influence the election. Del Toro’s attorney also said that failing to answer questions from the BBC’s Laura Kuennsberg could have also portrayed a bad image and indicated a lack of support for the current administration.

“Failing to be responsive may well have suggested to her — and the BBC audience — that Secretary Del Toro was not fully supportive of the US President. That could well have proved embarrassing on the international stage to Secretary Del Toro, President Biden, and the Biden Administration,” Del Toro’s attorney, Michael Bromwich, said in a letter to the Office of Special Counsel.

Still, the Office of Special Counsel said that self-reporting the comments on BBC did not “absolve” Del Toro from misconduct and that he did back a second Biden term in the White House.

“Secretary Del Toro’s statements with overt reference to the election conveyed electoral support for one candidate and opposition to another candidate, and thus, constituted political activity,” the Office of Special Counsel said in their report on the matter.

As a result, the Office of Special Counsel referred the matter to the White House for further appropriate action. Penalties for violating the Hatch Act include removal from service, reduction in grade, a reprimand, or a civil penalty up to $1,000.

Pentagon Pentagon Spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters Thursday that the Defense Department is aware of the Office of Special Counsel’s report, and noted that Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks approved a memo this year outlining political engagement processes for military and civilian Defense Department personnel.

Ahead of the presidential election in November, Del Toro released guidance in July instructing commanding officers to review limitations on political activities with their sailors, since the Department of the Navy is an “apolitical body.”

Banned activities for active duty sailors include attending partisan political events as a service member, writing partisan political articles or letters that attempt to sway votes for a candidate or cause, and speaking before a partisan political gathering.