Author Archives: Crawford Thompson

President Donald Trump said his administration is preparing to approve a defense budget “in the vicinity” of $1 trillion, calling it the largest in U.S. history and necessary to ensure military strength amid rising global threats.

“We are very cost conscious but the military is something that we have to build and we have to be strong because you have a lot of bad forces out there now,” Trump said Monday during a meeting at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “It will be the biggest one we’ve ever done for the military,” he added.

U.S. defense spending is undergoing a major transformation under the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Launched in early 2025, DOGE aims to cut federal expenditures while improving military efficiency. With a goal of reducing excessive military spending, these reforms impact everything from contract structures to procurement policies.

PARIS—Two weeks after Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron descended 20 stories beneath Paris to send a message to Moscow.

He entered France’s nuclear bunker deep under his regal presidential palace to lead an exercise dubbed Poker. Officials had chosen that night, in March 2022, for its clear skies. They wanted to respond to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who days earlier had made a thinly veiled threat to the West by putting his country’s nuclear forces on high alert.

Defense Department leaders announced shipyards, depots and medical treatment facilities will be exempted from a department-wide hiring freeze because of their critical role in military readiness, in response to a growing outcry over the planned workforce reforms.

The issue of shipyard workers has become a rallying point for numerous advocates and lawmakers in recent days, especially after President Donald Trump vowed in his address to Congress earlier this month to establish a new office of shipbuilding within the White House in order to protect the industry.

The Republican leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees have sent the Pentagon detailed plans for how they think it should spend fiscal 2025 funding, following the passage of a six-month stopgap spending bill that largely freezes funding at prior-year levels.

The 181-page document, obtained by Defense News, includes the standard funding tables attached to lawmakers’ annual defense spending legislation, which call for cuts to major service-led efforts like the Air Force’s drone wingmen program, Army missile procurement and the Space Force’s missile warning and tracking satellite architecture.

The Pentagon has awarded the long-awaited contract for the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance future fighter jet, known as NGAD, to Boeing, President Donald Trump announced Friday.

The sixth-generation fighter, which will replace the F-22 Raptor, will be designated the F-47, Trump said. It will have “state-of-the-art stealth technologies [making it] virtually unseeable,” and will fly alongside multiple autonomous drone wingmen, known as collaborative combat aircraft.

Last month roughly 10,000 NATO troops carried out drills just miles from Ukraine’s border to test a new quick-reaction force created after Russia’s large-scale invasion of its neighbor. The show of military muscle was unusual for who was absent: the U.S.

Now people in and around the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are wondering whether Europeans could handle more than just an exercise on their own. America’s commitment to NATO security guarantees is suddenly in doubt, even after the U.S. reinstated military support for Ukraine this week after Kyiv accepted a cease-fire and Moscow signaled it is in no hurry to end hostilities. American diplomatic outreach to Russia and the Trump administration’s frostiness toward Europe raise worries.

WASHINGTON — The Space Force’s primary acquisition command is reviewing a number of its high-dollar legacy programs to consider whether there are now alternative commercial options for achieving the missions — starting with a new satellite constellation for keeping tabs on the heavens, according to a senior Space Systems Command (SSC) official.

Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, military deputy at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, told the Washington Space Business Roundtable today that he signed off last week on an “acquisition decision memorandum (ADM)” instructing a team to undertake an analysis of commercial options for obtaining new space situational awareness capabilities to monitor geosynchronous orbit (GEO).

Further, he said that more ADMs are in the works, “hopefully” as soon as next week, on programs ranging from satellite communications to ground systems.

WASHINGTON — With the Pentagon increasingly likely to be locked into a yearlong continuing resolution for the first time ever, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee said today that Congress may need to beef up the amount of funding it is pursuing for defense through a parallel process known as budget reconciliation.

The House on Tuesday passed a stopgap spending bill expiring on Sept. 30 that would provide $892.5 billion for defense in fiscal 2025 — slightly higher than FY24 levels but below the $895 billion permitted by the Fiscal Responsibility Act. And while that gap may not seem huge by Pentagon standards, SASC Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss. is seizing on it to make the case that even more money needs to be added during the reconciliation process.

WASHINGTON — Pentagon officials are launching forward with plans to expand the use of the Software Acquisition Pathway (SWP) and throw additional work towards the Defense Innovation Unit, now that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has officially issued new guidance.

“Right now, the way the Pentagon buys software is slow, outdated and filled with bureaucracy. Meanwhile, our adversaries are moving fast” one defense official told reporters today on a phone call. “This memo is the beginning to fix that [by] cutting red tape, working more with private industry, getting cutting edge software into the hands of our warfighters quickly before the enemy can adapt.”

Breaking Defense first reported on the draft memo late last month and the version with Hegseth’s signature, dated March 6, is nearly identical.