The Pentagon

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Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira pleads guilty under a deal that calls for at least 11 years in prison

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira pleaded guilty on Monday to leaking highly classified military documents about the war in Ukraine and other national security secrets under a deal with prosecutors that calls for him to serve at least 11 years in prison.

https://apnews.com/article/jack-teixeira-pentagon-leak-suspect-guilty-plea-7fc285d8386447f995a1c0edd3d1d024?

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Pentagon will give Ukraine $300 million in weapons even as it lacks funds to replenish US stockpile

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon will rush about $300 million in weapons to Ukraine after finding some cost savings in its contracts, even though the military remains deeply overdrawn and needs at least $10 billion to replenish all the weapons it has pulled from its stocks to help Kyiv in its desperate fight against Russia, the White House announced Tuesday.

https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-supplemental-war-russia-congress-4aa3731543757156858c2211773a5621?

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Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic

The U.S. military launched a clandestine program amid the COVID crisis to discredit China’s Sinovac inoculation – payback for Beijing’s efforts to blame Washington for the pandemic. One target: the Filipino public. Health experts say the gambit was indefensible and put innocent lives at risk.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/?

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Cheap and Lethal: The Pentagon’s Plan for the Next Drone War

Worried about a potential war with China, the Pentagon is turning to a new class of weapons to fight the numerically superior People’s Liberation Army: drones, lots and lots of drones.

https://theintercept.com/2024/06/17/pentagon-ai-kamikaze-cheap-drones-replicator/?

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Book Review: Former Pentagon insider says U.S. unwilling to release all its UFO info

A procession of books in recent years have explored the UFO phenomenon but few perhaps with the authority Luis Elizondo brings as a Defense Department insider, laboring for decades to learn who the visitors are, where they are from and what they want. Read More.

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More extremists in the US have a military background. Data shows that's especially dangerous Alarms went off at the Pentagon about the problem of extremism in the military as the participation of veterans and active military members in the Jan. 6 insurrection came to light. It’s an issue that has come to the attention of the military and Congress before. And something the government continues to struggle to address. AP’s exclusive access to data tracking extremism in the U.S. sheds new light on the risks posed to the country by extremists who have served in the military. Read more.

Key points: According to data, there were more than 480 people with a military background accused of ideologically driven, extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, including the more than 230 arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection. While the pace at which the overall population has been radicalizing has increased in recent years, people with military backgrounds have been radicalizing at a faster rate.   Extremist plots involving people with military backgrounds were more likely to involve weapons training or firearms than plots that didn't include someone with a military background, according to an AP analysis. This held true whether or not the plots were executed. The participation of active-duty military and veterans gave extremist plots more potential for mass injury or death, according to the data.   The Pentagon did develop at least one way to detect extremist incidents across military branches and among civilian defense contractors. But it isn’t using it. The method was revealed in a research memo published the summer after Jan. 6 that, until now, has not been released publicly. The research was shared among some departments, but it never made it to the Pentagon’s extremism working group. A defense official did not address why the report was not sent to the group.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ The cases of January 6   Hundreds of troops kicked out under ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ get upgraded to honorable discharges   Trump has history sparking outrage for incidents around veterans even as military voters backed him

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Pentagon boosts climate startups

Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios

Climate tech startups are clamoring to do business with the Pentagon, Axios' Alan Neuhauser reports. The Defense Department accelerated its contracting with climate tech firms after Russia invaded Ukraine and as AI's growth has taken hold. And at the same time, startups that were once wary of becoming defense contractors now see it as a critical revenue stream. ? Green innovations that started off with a focus on reducing emissions from transportation, or helping to monitor atmospheric conditions, have turned out to be important national security tools, too. The DOD is America's single biggest energy customer and one of the largest energy consumers in the world. It spent $16.5 billion on energy in fiscal 2023. Cutting that level of fuel consumption doesn't simply save money. It can also help the military services be nimbler and more resilient. ⛽️ Zoom in: Air Company, a startup that began as a vodka distiller, announced a $65 million contract last year to supply the Air Force with jet fuel made from captured CO2. The Pentagon has also turned to climate-tech startups for tools that secure food supply chains, generate power without relying on shaky electric grids, and map oceans and seafloors, as well as advanced battery technology. Go deeper ...

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North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to Russia to fight in Ukraine, Pentagon says

BRUSSELS (AP) — North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to Russia to train and fight in Ukraine within “the next several weeks,” the Pentagon said Monday, in a move that Western leaders say will intensify the almost three-year war and jolt relations in the Indo-Pacific region.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-north-korea-nato-ukraine-war-9b7357344d988ea32d8ca21f6e22dcc5?

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Pentagon audit says Boeing cleaned up on Air Force parts, including soap dispensers marked up 8,000%

WASHINGTON (AP) — Boeing overcharged the Air Force nearly $1 million for spare parts on C-17 cargo planes, including an 8,000% markup for simple lavatory soap dispensers, according to the Pentagon’s inspector general.

https://apnews.com/article/boeing-defense-audit-soap-dispenser-parts-a811f332067af097f0bcd2effb111d30?

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Pentagon secrets leaker Jack Teixeira sentenced to 15 years in prison by a federal judge

BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge sentenced a Massachusetts Air National Guard member to 15 years in prison Tuesday for leaking classified military documents about the war in Ukraine, actions prosecutors said put the country’s national security at risk, endangered other military members and damaged U.S. relationships with its allies.

https://apnews.com/article/jack-teixeira-pentagon-leak-sentence-e67e18f310101b2f1c894ca1b550a3eb?

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UFO sightings

The Pentagon has received hundreds of reports of new UFO sightings, including "several particularly interesting cases," according to the director of the office that investigates these reports — but reiterated it found no evidence of alien activity. The Pentagon, working with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and other government agencies, has received a total of 1,652 reports to date, according to a newly released annual report, including 757 new reports between May 2023 and June 2024. The growing number of new sightings represents an expanding effort by the US government to catalog, track and investigate what are officially called unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, especially since a number of the sightings are near military bases and national security facilities.

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New Pentagon report on UFOs includes hundreds of new incidents but no evidence of aliens

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon’s latest report on UFOs has revealed hundreds of new reports of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena but no indications suggesting an extraterrestrial origin.

https://apnews.com/article/ufos-extraterrestrials-aliens-pentagon-congress-5638be273b753253713a478546849e46?

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? Defense-tech disruptors join forces

Anduril founder Palmer Luckey with an autonomous Ghost drone in 2023. Photo: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images Palantir and Anduril, the massive defense-tech companies, "are in talks with about a dozen competitors to form a consortium that will jointly bid for U.S. government work," the Financial Times reports. Why it matters: The group wants to disrupt legacy defense contractors — think Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing — who hold a huge slice of the Pentagon's $850 billion budget. Elon Musk's SpaceX and OpenAI are among the companies linked to the consortium, the FT found. "We are working together to provide a new generation of defense contractors," said one person involved in developing the group. The consortium could be announced as early as January. Keep reading (gift link).

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Pentagon chief loses bid to reject 9/11 plea deals

WASHINGTON (AP) — A military appeals court has ruled against Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s effort to throw out the plea deals reached for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other defendants in the 9/11 attacks, a U.S. official said.

https://apnews.com/article/sept-11-plea-deals-guantanamo-austin-279abd0342a84dc2694941c07f51c6bb?

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Pentagon cuts

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the US military to prepare plans to make drastic budget cuts over the next five years, with an exception for border security, according to a new memo obtained by CNN. The proposed cuts to the Pentagon's approximately $850 billion budget would amount to tens of billions of dollars in the first year — the largest reduction in the Defense Department budget since 2013. Despite Hegseth's stated focus to "revive the warrior ethos," some defense officials responsible for drafting lists of Pentagon employees to be fired as soon as this week are voicing concerns that the terminations could break the law and harm US military readiness.

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? Pentagon purge

Via Truth Social

President Trump fired Gen. Charles "CQ" Brown, Jr., a four-star fighter pilot who was the second-ever Black general in his role, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff yesterday — part of a Friday night firing flurry at the Defense Department. Why it matters: The decision breaks with a longstanding custom in which Joint Chiefs chairmen remain in place as presidents change. It also "reflects the president's insistence that the military's leadership is too mired in diversity issues, has lost sight of its role as a combat force to defend the country and is out of step with his 'America First' movement," the N.Y. Times reports (gift link). Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has previously criticized Brown's "woke" focus on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the military. Trump nominated Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan "Razin" Caine for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Read the release. Caine is a career F-16 pilot who served on active duty and in the National Guard, and was most recently the CIA's associate director for military affairs. ? Zoom out: Hegseth also fired Admiral Lisa Franchetti and General James Slife as Chief of Naval Operations and Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, respectively, last night. Franchetti is the first woman to serve as the highest-ranking officer of the U.S. Navy. Brown, Franchetti and Slife were all nominated by former President Biden, Axios' Lauren Floyd notes. The Pentagon also announced that it will fire approximately 5,400 probationary workers starting next week and then implement a temporary hiring freeze as part of the Trump administration's overhaul of the federal workforce. "As we take these important steps to reshape the workforce to meet the President's priorities, the Department will treat our workers with dignity and respect as it always does," the release said. ⚖️ What else we're watching: The Supreme Court is holding off on interfering in a lower court decision to block the Trump administration from firing Hampton Dellinger, the head of an independent watchdog agency that investigates federal workers' whistleblower reports, Axios' Rebecca Falconer writes. The Supreme Court decided yesterday to postpone its decision until the lower court's ruling expired on February 26.

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Based on Fear (Illustration by Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic. Sources: Photo12 / Universal Images Group / Getty; J. David Ake / Getty.)

I loved the 1980s, when I was a college student, and I especially loved the music. Lately, I’ve been thinking of a classic ’80s anti-war song by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, a British new-wave band, whose lyrics were an angry ode to the airplane that dropped the first nuclear weapon on Japan: Enola Gay It shouldn’t ever have to end this way Enola Gay It shouldn’t fade in our dreams away The Enola Gay was named for the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. It will not fade away:  The plane and its mission will always have an important place in military history. But people working in the United States Department of Defense might have a harder time finding a reference to it on any military website, because of an archival sweep of newly forbidden materials at the Pentagon. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered a massive review of DOD computer archives in an attempt to “align” the department with President Donald Trump’s directive to eliminate anything on government systems that could be related to DEI. At the Defense Department, this seems to mean scrubbing away any posts or images on military servers that might highlight the contributions of minorities, including gay service members. So far, according to the Associated Press, some 26,000 images have been flagged for deletion, including a photo of the Enola Gay, because … well, gay. Of course, tagging for deletion images such as those of the Enola Gay is likely a mistake made by someone who plugged in gay as a keyword for a global find-and-mark command. The military, like other organizations, loves metrics, and the people in charge of executing the anti-DEI push almost certainly want to be able to show some sort of measurable progress on “eliminating DEI.” But why not just focus on the president’s order to cancel current spending on such programs? As a former DOD employee, I had to sit through some DEI events, and in my view, they were not a great use of government time. I did not need a professor from a local college to come in and explain what cis means. (My first thought during that presentation was: How much are we paying for this?) Hegseth and the Pentagon, however, don’t seem particularly focused on pruning all wasteful spending, because they’re actually spending money and investing hours of federal-worker time to indulge in a kind of gay panic in the DOD archives. This effort is part of a larger memory-holing exercise that includes not only getting rid of references to sexual minorities, but also eradicating racial and ethnic “firsts.” As the AP reported: “The vast majority of the Pentagon purge targets women and minorities, including notable milestones made in the military. And it also removes a large number of posts that mention various commemorative months—such as those for Black and Hispanic people and women.” It’s humorous to think that the Enola Gay got caught in a roundup of ostensibly pro-LGBTQ materials, but the whole business raises the question of the purpose behind deleting tens of thousands of images. There is something fundamentally weird about interpreting an order to get rid of DEI programs as a charge to erase pages of American history. What are the lethal warfighters of the Pentagon so afraid of? The most likely answer is that they’re afraid of Trump, but the larger problem is that the MAGA movement—including its supporters in the military and the Defense Department—is based on fear and insecurity, a sense that American culture is hostile to them and that Trump is the protector of a minority under siege. Many members of this movement believe that the “left,” or whatever remains of it now, is engaged in a war on the traditional family, on masculinity, on American capitalism, on Christmas and Christians. They see DEI as one of the many spiritual and moral pathogens that threaten to infect fine young men and women (especially white ones) and turn them into sexually decadent Marxists. They also seem to believe that the way to stop this is to engage in rewriting history so that impressionable young Americans don’t accidentally encounter positive images of Black or female or gay service members. After all, there’s no telling where that leads. This trepidation reflects a lack of faith in their own children and their fellow citizens, and it is produced in the same bubble of isolation and suspicion that makes parents fearful of letting children move away, especially to go to college. Anxious parents in small towns might not know better, but an immense—and diverse—military organization of 3 million service members and civilians surely does. In the end, however, it doesn’t matter whether anyone in the DOD agrees or disagrees with this silly crusade: Orders are orders. In 1953, when Stalin died, the other members of the Soviet leadership soon closed ranks against the chief of the secret police, Lavrenti Beria, a vicious monster of a man who kept tabs on all of them. They put him on trial, shot him in a Moscow bunker, and did not speak of him in public again. After his execution, subscribers to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia were sent an article on the Bering Strait, with instructions to remove the entry on Beria and replace it with the new entry on the Arctic waterway. Many Soviet citizens did as they were told. Today, no one needs to engage in such complicated methods. If Hegseth’s commissars want to replace the history of the Tuskegee Airmen with an article about the soil and weather in Tuskegee, Alabama, a functionary at the Pentagon can do it with a keystroke, while zapping away references to gays, to minorities, to women—perhaps with the hope that one day, no one will even remember what’s been lost. https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/03/pentagon-dei-panic-images-tagged-deletion/681970/?

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Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira pleads guilty to obstructing justice

Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guard member who caused an international uproar when he leaked highly classified documents about the war in Ukraine, pleaded guilty to military charges of obstructing justice at his court-martial Thursday and called himself a “proud patriot.” Read More.

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Pentagon aims to cut up to 60,000 civilian jobs. About a third of those took voluntary resignations

Roughly 50,000 to 60,000 civilian jobs will be cut in the Defense Department, but fewer than 21,000 workers who took a voluntary resignation plan are leaving in the coming months, a senior defense official told reporters Tuesday. Read More.

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Pentagon purge

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s order to remove “diversity” content from all of the Pentagon’s platforms has led to a massive purge of information. Tens of thousands of articles about cancer awareness, the Holocaust, the 9/11 terror attacks, sexual assault and suicide prevention were removed as was content about women, LGBTQ people and people of color — including baseball legend Jackie Robinson, who served in the US military during World War II. The automated process has led to “a high level of irresponsible collateral damage,” one defense official said. Separately, the Pentagon is considering making significant cuts to the top of the US military, according to a briefing document obtained by CNN and a US defense official. The plans under consideration include consolidating combatant commands, possibly eliminating a directorate that oversees development, training and education for the joint force and halting the expansion of US forces in Japan.

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Golden Dome

At a time when the Pentagon is looking to slash its budget, President Trump wants to ensure there’s still funding for one of his top priorities: a Golden Dome. The project, similar to Israel’s Iron Dome, would create a defense system capable of protecting the entire US from long-range missile strikes. While such a system would likely cost billions to construct and maintain, and take years to complete, the White House told military officials that no expense should be spared. In January, Trump issued an executive order that said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had until March 28 to submit a plan for how the military will develop and implement the missile defense shield.

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Pentagon watchdog launches probe of Hegseth Signal messages

The acting Inspector General of the Defense Department will review Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal in a group chat with other key national security officials to discuss military strikes against the Houthis in Yemen last month, the IG’s office announced on Thursday.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/03/politics/hegseth-pentagon-watchdog-signal-probe/index.html?

Signal probe

A Pentagon watchdog has announced plans to launch an investigation of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for discussing a US military attack on Houthis in Yemen with other national security officials in a group chat on Signal — a conversation that inadvertently included a journalist. In a letter to Hegseth, Acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins said that the “evaluation” will seek to determine if the secretary and other Pentagon personnel “complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business.” The probe will also examine if Hegseth followed classification and records retention requirements. Earlier this week, the White House closed its investigation into the security breach and declined to elaborate on what, if any, steps had been taken.

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? Fighter jet of the future

Conceptual rendering of an F-47. Image: U.S. Air Force/DVIDS America's warplanes of the future — the newly unveiled Air Force F-47 and a soon-to-be-named U.S. Navy fighter — look a lot like the past, Axios' Colin Demarest reports. Even in the age of cheap killer drones, the Pentagon is pouring tens of billions of dollars into incredibly high-tech planes built by legacy contractors. ⚡️ The intrigue: Far simpler drones have proven highly effective in Ukraine and elsewhere. But you're not going to replace U.S. airpower with thousands of $500 jury-rigged UAVs. U.S. pilots will be flying manned missions well into the future — partly because of a deeply engrained pilot culture, partly because drone tech is still ripening, and partly because of the dynamism of air combat. "If you talk to all those UAV pilots who used to be bomber pilots and fighter pilots and stuff, they will tell you there's a small percentage of missing the situational awareness of not being there," a retired Air Force lieutenant general told Axios. ? State of play: The Air Force picked Boeing to build its new fighter. The Navy will announce a winner any day now between Boeing and Northrop Grumman. It will be years before either plane actually reaches an airstrip or carrier deck. But once they're delivered, these two aircraft will be the most sophisticated in America's public arsenal for a decade or more.

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Soldiers of color were among liberators

Photo illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios. Photos: Bettmann, Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

U.S. forces liberated Nazi concentration camps 80 years ago this month. Among the liberators were Black, Latino, Asian American and Native American soldiers whose actions today are often forgotten, Axios' Russell Contreras writes. Why it matters: The Pentagon recently purged references to soldiers of color from its websites, per an order by President Trump. But civil rights advocates say the liberators warrant recognition for their service at a time when many returned home to discrimination, segregation and racial violence. More than 1.5 million soldiers of color served during World War II in the European and Pacific theaters. Black and Asian American service members were forced to serve in segregated units. Japanese American soldiers served while their families back home were forced into detention camps. Mexican American and Native American soldiers served with white soldiers but often faced intense discrimination. Soldiers of color "were not only willing to fight, but eager to fight for the liberal democratic ideals of the United States, despite facing oppression of racism and marginalization at home," says Robert Williams of the USC Shoah Foundation. Read on. ps:What is the matter with these people?????????????????

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Pentagon removes Greenland base commander after Vance visit

The Pentagon removed a Greenland base commander on Thursday after she sent an email critical of Vice President JD Vance's comments about Denmark, multiple outlets reported.

https://www.axios.com/2025/04/11/pentagon-fires-greenland-colonel-vance-visit?