Wright, referring to Iran’s current stock of nuclear material, told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “They are weeks — a small number of weeks — away to enrich that to weapons-grade uranium." But the energy secretary added that a months-long weaponization process would still be required beyond that point.

Iranian nuclear activity steadily increased in the years since President Donald Trump abrogated the Obama-era accord in his first term. Nuclear analysts contend this decision removed key guardrails and freed the regime to enrich uranium at higher levels, expand production, and develop more advanced centrifuges.

Tehran is estimated to have amassed approximately 12 tons of uranium at varying degrees of purity.

Uranium is generally said to be of “weapons-grade” when it is enriched to 90% purity or higher. At present, Iran is believed to have come close to this threshold but not reached it.

The Islamic Republic’s leadership has long insisted it does not intend to develop a nuclear weapon and instead wants to keep enhancing its fissile technology for peaceful purposes. These protestations are widely dismissed by the nation’s many adversaries, including the U.S.

Wright, in an exchange with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said that roughly a ton of Iran’s 60% uranium is “only weeks away” from weapons-grade level, with the remaining 11 tons of 20% material just a few weeks behind.

“Unenriched uranium, it’s a long process to get it to weapons-grade,” he explained. “But when you’re at 60%, although the numbers don’t sound that way, you’re way more than 90% of the way there for the enrichment necessary for weapons-grade uranium. Very close. Twenty percent uranium, which they also have a lot of, is far along as well.”

Wright concluded: “It’s very concerning.”

Pentagon seeks additional funding as cost of Iran war tops $29 billion

Much of the material is believed to be entombed within fortified tunnels near the Isfahan nuclear facility, which survived last June’s Operation Midnight Hammer. The U.S.-led raid involved more than 125 U.S. military aircraft, including seven B-2 stealth bombers that dropped 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators on deeply buried targets.

Trump repeatedly claimed the relatively brief air campaign “obliterated” the sites, but intelligence assessments concluded that while Midnight Hammer severely set back Iran’s capabilities, it did not destroy them.

The Trump administration has since invoked Iran’s purportedly imminent nuclear threat as the premise for the military action that began at the end of February, dubbed Operation Epic Fury.

Matthew Bunn, professor of the practice of energy, national security, and foreign policy at Harvard University, told Military Times that Iran still retains enough highly enriched uranium to proceed swiftly toward making more than a dozen nuclear bombs.

“They could move fairly quickly to build nuclear weapons should they choose to do so,” he said. “The reason they haven’t done so, in part, is because they feared exactly what happened: if their facilities were detected, they would get blasted before they could finish.”

Senior Trump administration officials have publicly weighed deploying forces deep inside Iran to seize the Iranian stockpiles by force.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in March, “People are going to have to go and get it.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters the following month, “They will either give it to us, or we’ll take it out.” The president, on Sunday, said that Iran’s nuclear enrichment site was under close surveillance by the Space Force – and that “we’ll get at that at some point, whenever we want.”

Bunn argued against such a high-risk military operation, warning it could result in significant American casualties. He insisted that it wouldn’t “solve the problem” and diplomacy is the only viable long-term solution.

“You just can’t bomb knowledge away,” he said, pointing to the thousands of scientists and engineers working within Iran’s nuclear apparatus. “If I’m the Iranians, I take my knowledge that I now have of advanced centrifuges and how to make them and how to operate them, and my other deep underground facilities, and start enriching some more uranium and set up my facilities using that material.”

Absent a durable agreement and rigorous monitoring, Bunn said, nothing would prevent the Iranians from picking up where they left off.

White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales, in a statement to Military Times, asserted, “The Iranian regime knows their current reality is not sustainable. President Trump holds all the cards and keeps all options on the table as negotiators work to make a deal.”

Aircraft from the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group’s Carrier Air Wing 8 arrived at their home naval air stations after deploying to U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command and U.S. Southern Command area of responsibilities over a 322-day stretch.

“The officers and sailors of Carrier Air Wing 8 have served their nation with distinction,” Rear Adm. Rich Brophy, the commander of Naval Air Force Atlantic, said.

“Throughout their record-breaking deployment, these aviators successfully conducted worldwide operations, embodying the highest ideals of resilience, courage and selfless service to the nation,” he said.

The carrier strike group deployed in support of Operation Epic Fury in the Middle East and participated in combat operations for Operation Southern Spear and Operation Absolute Resolve in the Caribbean Sea.

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During the deployment, the air wing conducted more than 11,500 flight operations, the Navy said.

Carrier Air Wing 8 includes Strike Fighter Squadron 31, 37, 87, 213, Electronic Attack Squadron 142, Airborne Command & Control Squadron 124, Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 40, Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 70 and Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 9.

Pilots flew F/A-18E and F/A-18F Super Hornets, as well as E/A-18G Growlers, E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes, C-2A Greyhounds, MH-60R Seahawks and MH-60S Knighthawks.

USS Gerald R. Ford broke the record for longest post-Vietnam War deployment on April 15, when it surpassed the USS Abraham Lincoln’s 2020 deployment of 295 days.

The USS Nimitz was at sea for a record 341 days in 2020 and 2021, but spent a portion of that deployment stationed ashore as it faced quarantine periods to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Factoring in those isolation periods, the carrier was forward-deployed in support of American security interests for only 263 days, according to USNI News.

The USS Midway holds the record for longest carrier deployment, spending 332 days at sea during the Vietnam War.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle warned members of Congress at a budget hearing for the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense about the service’s impending budget crunch, amid the current rate of operations in the Middle East.

“I will have to start making decisions to change training, operations, certification events, those type of things we do to generate our force, in the July timeframe and their current expenditure,” Caudle said.

That money would have to come from a supplemental funding request, which the Trump administration has not yet submitted to Congress.

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The Iran war has cost the U.S. approximately $29 billion so far, according to the Pentagon’s acting comptroller, Jules Hurst III, who spoke Tuesday at a Capitol Hill hearing.

The price was $25 billion two weeks ago, he said, but had increased due to “updated repair and replacement of equipment costs” and the “general operational costs” of maintaining military presence in the Middle East.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the U.S. has significantly depleted its stockpile of munitions during the Iran war, including Tomahawk missiles, Army Tactical Missile Systems, SM-3 interceptors, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems, or THAADs, and Patriot missiles.

The fiscal 2027 Defense Department budget request is $1.5 trillion. Of that, $377.5 billion is allotted for the U.S. Navy, representing a 23% increase from the year before.

U.S. and Iran are currently in the midst of a ceasefire that began in early April.

Though the suspension of hostilities was tested last week when the countries exchanged fire, the Trump administration said it is working to reach an agreement with Iran that would end the war.

President Donald Trump, however, cast Tehran’s most recent peace proposal as “garbage” and Iran warned of a “lesson-teaching response” if the U.S. resumed military operations.

The contract, first announced mid-February, will bring the total amount of cutters being manufactured to 11 to meet President Donald Trump’s executive orders to expand the icebreaker fleet, Military Times previously reported.

Davie Defense, the U.S. arm of the UK-owned maritime group Inocea is set to construct three of the ships at the company’s Gulf Copper facilities in Galveston and Port Arthur, Texas. The other two will be built at the company’s affiliate shipyard in Helsinki, Finland.

During an April 28 House subcommittee hearing on the Coast Guard’s fiscal 2027 budget, Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., questioned the use of Finland’s shipyard in building the latest cutters and whether it was a contradiction to the April 2025 Shipbuilding and Harbor Infrastructure for Prosperity and Security (SHIPS) for America Act aimed at revitalizing U.S. maritime industry.

Adm. Kevin E. Lunday, commandant of the Coast Guard, responded that the contract was well within the signed 2024 ICE Pact — a trilateral agreement between the United States, Canada and Finland to combine collective knowledge, resources and expertise to produce Arctic and polar icebreakers, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

“We needed to begin by leveraging the overseas capability and proven shipbuilding in Finland so we could onshore more work back into the U.S. and rebuild our defense industrial base, and that’s exactly what we’re doing, sir,” Lunday noted.

The first cutter is set to be delivered to the Guard in 2028, with the contract running through February 2035.

“Finalizing this contract represents decisive action to guarantee American security in the Arctic,” Lunday said in a statement. “The Arctic Security Cutters will deliver the essential capability to uphold U.S. sovereignty against adversaries’ aggressive economic and military actions in the Arctic. These cutters will ensure the Coast Guard’s ability to control, secure, and defend our northern border and maritime approaches.”

The announcement comes as the service eyes far-flung frozen Arctic and Antarctic missions as result of the region’s increasing geopolitical importance.

The Coast Guard is currently operating with a lone heavy polar icebreaker, the USCGC Polar Star, and two medium polar icebreakers, the USCGC Healy and the USCGC Storis — which just returned to homeport on Monday after a 36-day deployment to the Arctic. The Storis is the first icebreaker to join the fleet in more than two decades.

According to DHS, the Coast Guard is utilizing the $25 billion provided by the fiscal 2025 budget reconciliation and has already ordered over $13 billion in new fleet assets and capabilities.

With increasing Russian and Chinese naval incursions, DHS is ramping up is facilities and its fleet to facilitate a greater maritime presence in the North. The agency announced last May that it had approved the construction of the service’s first polar security cutter in nearly 50 years, as well as invested $323 million in renovations for its Seattle-based icebreaker facilities and upgrades to shore facilities at Juneau, Alaska.

The five cutters to be delivered by Davie Defense will represent a new class of Arctic icebreakers “designed to conduct U.S. Coast Guard missions in the world’s most challenging maritime environments,” according to the release. “The ASC program will provide the Coast Guard with a modern icebreaking fleet to assure national security, maritime safety and Arctic access.”

The problem is especially acute for unmanned systems, they said, as technology is evolving far faster than the ability of U.S. Special Operations Command to modify its drones.

“The biggest challenge that that we face, at least within the majority of our formations, is the inability of the operator at the edge to have the authority to tinker,” Lt. Gen. Lawrence Ferguson, chief of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, told the Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on Tuesday.

“Specifically, I’m thinking of unmanned systems, mainly unmanned aerial systems. We are bound right now to the actual vendor of that system that has the proprietary capability. And so what we are looking for is an ability for our people at the edge to have the right to repair.”

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Ferguson was joined by the heads of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps special operations commands, who told the committee of similar issues.

To add a small, long-range cruise missile to an aerial platform, “I want to be able to iterate quickly on the software,” Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, chief of Air Force Special Operations Command, told the subcommittee.

“Often working with the large vendors, there’s proprietary information to get into the mission computers we hit. We hit walls that small vendors that are trying to move fast and give us those capabilities, sometimes get outmuscled by the bigger vendors and they can’t break through.”

Despite prodding by Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., the special operations commanders did not name any of those big manufacturers.

As with civilians resentful over an inability to fix everything from cell phones to farm tractors without having to go through the manufacturer, right to repair has become a controversial issue for the U.S. military. Nonetheless, right-to-repair provisions were stripped from the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.

This may be particularly galling to the U.S. special operations community, which often uses specialized and cutting-edge equipment — and which can be the first to test that equipment in combat.

The proprietary agreements make it difficult to keep up with adversaries, the leaders said.

For example, drug cartels, or militant groups like Al-Shabaab in Somalia, can easily acquire and modify small drones, said Maj. Gen. Peter Huntley, chief of Marine Forces Special Operations Command.

“I can buy them right now,” Huntley testified. “I can put them in the hands of our operators. But the ability to kind of adapt them, and make them a real military capability at some form of scale, is very challenging right now.”

US-European relations create complications

The subcommittee also heard about the strain that that the war on Iran and other operations have placed upon the SOCOM community.

“AFSOC executed the two largest presidentially directed deployments in our 36-year history, while also maintaining a persistent operational tempo across five other geographic commands,” Conley said.

Fractures in the relationship between the U.S. and Europe over the Iran war — and the refusal of nations such as Spain to allow American forces to use host-country bases — has also complicated SOCOM’s work.

“I think maybe we’ve taken that for granted to some degree over the years, that the bases are always going to be open for our use,” Conley said in response to questions from Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich.

“We’ve been able to adapt and we’ve been able to get the missions complete. But not having the assured access that we’re used to with mainly European countries as we transit transatlantic towards CENTCOM, has been something we’ve had to work hard to make happen.”

“The things that affect Mike’s [Conley’s] formations as far as access basing and overflight, those do affect us because we’re usually along for the ride,” echoed Ferguson.

However, Ferguson added that “generational” ties between U.S. special operations forces and American allies have helped ensure a smooth relationship.

“I’ve not seen any impact as far as allies being hesitant to work with us,” Ferguson added.

Acquisition costs would total just over $1 trillion, said the CBO, a nonpartisan federal agency that provides budgetary analyses for Congress. The estimate is significantly more than the $185 billion the Trump administration set aside for the project in its proposed fiscal 2027 defense budget.

That gap is due, at least in part, to the fact that there are no publicly available plans from the White House nor the Pentagon about what the system will look like, “making it impossible to estimate the long-term cost of the GDA system being contemplated by DoD,” per the report.

“DoD’s stated cost appears to cover a shorter time frame than CBO’s analysis and may reflect a different scope of activities and budget categories,” the report continues. “Even so, that stated cost is far lower than CBO’s estimate for a notional NMD [national missile defense] architecture consistent with the ‘Iron Dome’ executive order.

“That difference suggests either that GDA’s objective architecture is more limited than CBO’s notional NMD system or that DoD expects significant funding from other accounts to contribute to GDA (or both).”

The CBO based its estimate on a four-tiered defense system: a space-based layer, upper- and lower-level surface interceptor layers and multiple spread out surface interceptors, which would provide protection for all of the continental U.S. plus Alaska and Hawaii.

This proposed system would be able to defend against multiple missiles fired simultaneously and would protect against threats from hypersonics, ballistics and cruise missiles.

But the system could not successfully engage with a large-scale attack from a peer or near-peer adversary like Russia or China, according to the report.

As the cost estimate is based on the desired capabilities laid out in a January 2025 executive order, it doesn’t include funding for research and development of future technologies, nor does it take into account ground forces or a communication system necessary to make the proposed system work.

The report also notes that the project may face delays due to the need to replenish the nation’s stockpile of THAAD and Patriot interceptor missiles, as well as radar systems, a great number of which have been deployed in the war on Iran.

Other potential roadblocks include Pentagon funding constraints, plus the training necessary to deploy the system, the CBO said.

Some lawmakers have already expressed their concern over the proposed cost.

“The president’s so-called ‘Golden Dome’ is nothing more than a massive giveaway to defense contractors paid for entirely by working Americans,” Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who requested the CBO estimate, said in a statement. “It will do little to advance American national security.”

Such are the art features wrapping three recently installed arcade games — also available to play online — at the District of Columbia War Memorial in the nation’s capital, the latest protest by the anonymous group Secret Handshake, which previously made headlines in September after installing a statue on the National Mall depicting President Donald Trump holding hands and skipping with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The new installation’s game, officially called “Operation Epic Furious: Strait To Hell,” was developed as a response to the administration’s repeated use of video game footage to highlight military successes in Iran, the group told WUSA9.

One such post featured video from strikes in Iran interspersed with game footage from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

The post, shared on March 6 by the White House’s official account, came just five days after six U.S. soldiers were killed by an Iranian drone strike at Kuwait’s Port of Shuaiba.

Similar posts include one featuring airstrikes alongside footage from Nintendo Wii, and another depicting a bowling alley-style “STRIKE” animation alongside war footage.

“The game features furious tweet battles against Iranian schoolgirls, low-flow shower heads, and other threats to American freedom like DEI and The Pope,” the group said in a statement to the local CBS affiliate. “And just to save you time, the only way you can lose is by trying to hold Melania’s hand. But it’s The Middle East, so you also can’t win either.”

Photos were shared across social media Tuesday of National Guard members deployed to Washington, D.C., checking out the games at the memorial, which is adjacent to the National Mall.

NEW: The National Guard has been spotted playing the arcade games put up on the National Mall by Secret Handshake making fun of Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and the war in Iran. pic.twitter.com/asLspugm7B

— Aaron Parnas (@AaronParnas) May 12, 2026

Next to the arcade-style games installed at the memorial is a plaque that states, “The Trump administration knows that the best way to sell combat is by making it a video game, that’s why they’ve been pumping out the ‘sickest’ Iran War video game hype reels,” according to WUSA9.

“But why stop at clips when you could go full throttle Introducing Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell, a high-octane, flag-waving, boots-on-the-ground simulator where freedom isn’t debated, it’s deployed. No briefings, no hesitation; just pure pixelated patriotism. Strap in and play hard, because this game may never end.”

Jules Hurst III, the Defense Department’s acting comptroller, said the increase from $25 billion just two weeks ago reflects “updated repair and replacement of equipment costs,” along with the “general operational costs” of sustaining forces in the theater.

Hurst emphasized that the projection does not include expenditures for repairing damaged military installations in the region.

“We have a lot of unknowns there,” he said. “We don’t know what our future posture is going to be. We don’t know how we construct those bases, and we don’t know what part our allies or partners could pay into our MILCON costs.”

The tenuous month-long ceasefire in the Middle East hangs in the balance after President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed Tehran’s latest proposal to end the war as “garbage.” Hours later, the Speaker of Iran’s parliament warned that the country stands ready to “deliver a lesson-teaching response” to any act of aggression.

Despite a declared truce, the two sides have continued to exchange limited fire near the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Republic recently launched missiles, drones and small boats at U.S. warships transiting the sea, prompting American strikes on Iranian military sites in response.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday suggested that the situation remains fluid.

“As you know, for the most part, ceasefire means fire is ceasing,” Hegseth said. “We have a plan to escalate, if necessary. We have a plan to retrograde, if necessary.”

Asked about the status of Project Freedom — a one-day campaign in which U.S. warships and aircraft briefly guided commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz — the defense secretary described it as “paused” and added, “It’s an option we could always recommence, should the commander in chief want us to.”

Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also sought to dispel concerns that Operation Epic Fury had triggered significant munitions shortages within the U.S. military.

“I take issue with the characterization that munitions are depleted in a public forum — that’s not true,” Hegseth claimed. “Ultimately, we have all the munitions needed to execute what we need to execute and we are going to ensure that we supercharge that going into the future.”

Caine said, “We have sufficient munitions for what we’re tasked to do right now. That’s what I hear from the [Unified Combatant Commands],” noting, “We’re always going to want more munitions.”

Hegseth, Caine and Hurst appeared on Capitol Hill to advance a two-pronged appeal encompassing the annual budget and additional funding for the ongoing war in Iran. A substantial portion of the request, they indicated, would be directed toward replenishing depleted weapons stockpiles.

Joel Rufus French, a marketing company owner and beneficial owner of eight durable medical equipment companies, sold patient information and fake doctors’ orders for medically unnecessary orthotic braces, according to a May 8 Department of Justice release.

“Fueled by lies, bribes, and overseas telemarketers, this corrupt scheme preyed on senior citizens and disabled veterans to flood the country with unnecessary medical devices — and then billed the taxpayer for it,” Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald said in the release.

French collaborated with overseas telemarketing call centers that pressured elderly Americans into sharing their personal and health insurance information and to accepting orthotic braces they did not need or want, the release states.

He then paid sham telemedicine companies illegally to acquire signed doctors’ orders from doctors and nurse practitioners who never examined — or sometimes never spoke to — the patients, according to the statement.

Following that, French sold the doctors’ orders to marketers and medical supply companies, who then submitted Medicare claims.

The former football player also defrauded Medicare and the VA’s Civilian Health and Medical Program, a health care program offered by the department for spouses or children of veterans who meet certain service-related disability requirements, the release states.

French defrauded the programs by billing them for orthotic braces through the DME supply companies that he owned and managed, the statement says.

He hid his association with the companies from Medicare through false documents and straw owners, meaning someone who appears to be the legitimate owner when the true owner can’t legally or wishes to remain anonymous.

“The defendant orchestrated a brazen, yearslong scheme that preyed on elderly patients and the families of disabled and deceased veterans to steal millions from Medicare and CHAMPVA,” Acting Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Scott J. Lampert of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General said in the release.

“By hiding behind overseas call centers, sham telemedicine companies, and straw‑owned DME suppliers, he exploited some of the most vulnerable people these programs were created to protect,” he continued.

French, a resident of Armory, Mississippi, also laundered around $225,000 in cash from a Mississippi bank. The statement says he drove to Orlando, Florida, with over $10,000 of that cash to pay accomplices who sold him beneficiaries’ personal and insurance information.

On top of the 196 months in prison, he is also required to pay over $110 million in restitution and to forfeit roughly $17 million that the government seized from bank accounts and other assets, per the release.

The release says that French is convicted of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud; conspiracy to commit money laundering; and conspiracy to offer, pay, solicit and receive kickbacks.

French was a unamimous All-American in 1998 while playing for the Ole Miss Rebels. He went undrafted in the 1999 NFL Draft but signed with the Seattle Seahawks until he was released from the team in 2001 after sitting the previous season out due to an injury.

He later signed with the Green Bay Packers but was waived before the 2002 season.

The confirmation of potential outsourcing comes after President Donald Trump reportedly rejected previous Navy Secretary John Phelan’s suggestion to build Trump-class battleships abroad to meet the president’s desired delivery of 2028.

“Building and maintaining ships in America is central to the president’s vision and strengthens the nation’s industrial base,” the budget document said. “While American shipbuilding remains the priority, the Navy will evaluate overseas options and whether allied and partner shipbuilding can supplement domestic production if U.S. industry cannot meet required timelines.”

Phelan told reporters at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space symposium in April that the Navy was going to study the possibility of building warships outside the U.S.

He cited labor shortages in the U.S. as a catalyst for the potential move.

He was fired one day later, with the Trump administration citing a needed change in leadership.

But over the coming days, reports surfaced that a brewing fissure between Trump and Phelan came to a head after Trump bristled at Phelan’s idea to build Navy battleships abroad, a sentiment that flew in the face of Trump’s previous promise to build his namesake ship class in the U.S.

Phelan’s comments at SAS undercut the Trump administration’s messaging about revitalizing the American maritime industrial base by investing in U.S. shipyards, according to Hunter Stires, maritime strategist for previous Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro.

The fiscal 2027 shipbuilding plan, meanwhile, raises the possibility of turning overseas to build auxiliary ships, or ships that can provide fuel and ammunition to U.S. Navy combatant ships.

Specifically, the Navy would like to invest $450 million in obtaining one consolidated cargo replenishment at sea, or CONSOL, tanker in fiscal 2027. CONSOL references a commercial tanker chartered by Military Sealift Command that refuels a U.S. Navy ship while underway.

The Navy also aims to spend $2.3 billion over the next five years to purchase five tankers for fuel support, built “potentially” and “initially” at overseas shipyards.

The sea service is asking Congress for approval to build two auxiliary ships and the “flexibility for fabrication of some combatant modules overseas,” the shipbuilding plan says.

The budget also negates another of Phelan’s previous comments regarding the fiscal 2027 Defense Department budget request. The Navy announced that Golden Fleet-era battleships will be nuclear powered, despite Phelan saying at the Sea-Air-Space exposition that the presence of nuclear power aboard the future vessels was “unlikely.”

Overall, the service aims to increase its number of ships dramatically, according to the plan.

There are currently over 290 battle force ships, though the number, according to Navy requirements by law, is 355, the document stated. The service intends to have 395 vessels in fiscal 2027 and 450 vessels by the end of fiscal 2031.

The shipbuilding plan emphasizes three primary points the service views as key to asserting maritime supremacy: ending backlogs by rewarding industry partners that prioritize speed; making good on the Golden Fleet promise by building a high-low mix of advanced combatants, cost-effective ships and unmanned systems; and reinvigorating the maritime industrial base by creating jobs and attracting private investment.

The Navy plans to address the latter issue by increasing reliance on distributed shipbuilding sites, or sites away from a main shipbuilding yard.

Currently, only 10% of shipbuilding is taking place at distributed sites. The service wants to increase that number to 50% to increase flexibility, reduce reliance on legacy shipyards and accelerate delivery.

President Donald Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion fiscal 2027 defense budget calls for a $65.8 billion investment in shipbuilding, including funding for 34 manned ships and five unmanned platforms.

Exercise Balikatan, which wrapped up Friday, is the largest annual military exercise between the United States and the Philippines and is designed to improve combined readiness and maritime defense capabilities, while showcasing the countries’ commitment to a “free and open” Indo-Pacific.

The Joint Task Force Maritime Strike, or MARSTRIKE, is a two-day critical live-fire event of the Philippines exercise that took place on Wednesday and Thursday.

The drill brought together sensors, missile systems, aircraft and naval assets from the four countries to coordinate long-range fires against maritime targets.

“The MARSTRIKE demonstrated the strength of our combined and joint force by integrating sensors and shooters across multiple domains to achieve a shared tactical objective,” U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Thomas Savage, commanding general of the U.S. joint task force-forward, said in the release.

On the first day of the exercise, forces sank the decommissioned Philippine Navy vessel BRP Quezon with a Japan Ground Self-Defense Force Type-88 surface-to-ship missile, while the U.S. Army used High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems to conduct strikes, the statement read.

“Deploying the Type-88 Surface-to-Ship Missile in this complex MARSTRIKE allowed us to validate our tactical integration with U.S. and Philippine forces,” JGSDF Lt. Col. Ishikawa Daisuke said in the announcement.

Philippine Air Force FA-50PH Fighting Eagles and A-29 Super Tucanos also sank the BRP Rajah Sulayman, another decommissioned Philippine Navy ship used as a target on the second day.

Supporting elements throughout the exercise included assets such as the U.S. Marine Corps’ Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System and Marine Air Defense Integrated System, along with fixed-wing aircraft from participating forces, unmanned aerial systems and the Royal Canadian Navy frigate HMCS Charlottetown.

“The successful execution of the Maritime Strike activity demonstrates the growing level of interoperability between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and our allies,” Philippine Marine Corps Col. Dennis Hernandez, spokesperson for Balikatan 2026, said in the release.

The four-day poll revealed deep concerns about surging gasoline prices, and also suggested many voters are casting blame for their troubles on Trump’s Republican allies who will be defending their congressional majorities in the November midterm elections.

More than two months into a conflict that began February 28 with a U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign, some 66% of poll respondents — including one in three Republicans and almost all Democrats — said Trump has not “clearly explained the goals of U.S. military involvement in Iran.”

The war, which cooled in recent weeks as both sides floated peace proposals, has driven a roughly 50% increase in gasoline prices across the country. Iran shut down a fifth of the global oil trade by effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz — despite efforts by U.S. warships to re-open the waterway for oil tankers.

Household finances take hit

Some 63% of the country say their household’s personal financial situation has taken a hit from recent gas price increases, up from 55% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted March 17-19.

Some 36% of Americans approve of Trump’s performance, up two percentage points since a late April Reuters/Ipsos poll showed his approval rating at 34%, which was the lowest level of Trump’s current term in office.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll had a 3-percentage-point margin of error in either direction based on the number of people surveyed.

Trump’s popularity remains below the 40% approval rate he had just before the war started. He started his term in January 2025 with 47% approval after winning the 2024 presidential election on promises to lower costs for Americans.

Worries about gas prices

Three-quarters of the public — including half of Republicans — think his administration bears at least a fair amount of responsibility for the gas price surge, the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll showed. Asked which political party is more responsible, 65% of poll respondents said Republicans were to blame compared to 27% who said Democrats.

Four out of five Americans said they expect gas prices to rise further.

Republicans are defending narrow majorities in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate in the midterms. Their hopes of keeping control of the House have been bolstered by recent court rulings that could lead to voting district boundaries that are more favorable to Republicans. Republican strategists say the party’s chances would further improve if gasoline prices came down.

But with no agreement in sight between Washington and Tehran, about three in 10 Americans already expect to cut back on summer vacation plans if gas prices hold firm, the poll found. Many expect to cancel their trips or travel shorter distances.

Trump has repeatedly promised gas prices will fall when the war ends, though analysts warn that is unlikely to happen quickly. The public isn’t sure who has the upper hand in the conflict. Only one in three say America has the advantage, while about one in seven say Iran has it, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed. The rest said they weren’t sure or that neither side has an advantage.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online and gathered responses from 1,254 U.S. adults nationwide.

The Trump administration formally declared Operation Epic Fury “terminated” and submitted official notification of its end to Congress on May 1. But the president cautioned that this procedural conclusion didn’t mean a definitive cessation to all military actions.

“No, I didn’t say that,” Trump insisted during an interview with “Full Measure” when asked if combat operations are over. He emphasized that while Iran had been “defeated,” this did not mean that U.S. operations “are done.”

Trump estimated that roughly 70% of America’s targets inside the Islamic Republic had been hit.

“We could go in for two more weeks and do every single target,” he mused. “We have other targets that we could conceivably hit. But even if we didn’t do that, that would just be final touches. Even if we didn’t do that, it would take them many years to rebuild.”

Speaking with reporters at the White House on Monday morning, Trump lambasted the latest Iranian proposal to end the 10-week conflict, calling it a “piece of garbage.” The president added that the month-long ceasefire was “on life support.”

Ahead of the campaign, the Trump administration articulated four principal objectives on Iran: eviscerate its Navy, degrade its ballistic missile capabilities, stop its support for regional proxy groups and get its leadership to forswear nuclear weapons.

Netanyahu, in an interview with “60 Minutes,” conceded — at least implicitly — that those ambitions have not been fully achieved.

“I think it’s accomplished a great deal, but it’s not over,” he said. “There’s still nuclear material, enriched uranium that has to be taken out of Iran. There are still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled. There are still proxies that Iran supports. There are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce.”

Netanyahu later quipped that the only way to remove Iran’s highly enriched uranium is ”you go in, and you take it out.” He further stated that Trump assured him he “wants to go in there,” though the prime minister declined to specify whether Israeli or U.S. special forces would be involved, or if it would be a coordinated effort under international supervision.

Trump, during his Sunday interview, said that Iran’s nuclear enrichment site was under close surveillance by the Space Force — and that “we’ll get at that at some point, whenever we want.” He warned, meanwhile, that “if anybody got near the place, we will know about it, and we’ll blow them up.”

Munitions are low, senator warns

The news comes as retired Navy captain and former astronaut Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., raised concerns about dwindling U.S. munitions amid the war.

Kelly, citing multiple classified Pentagon briefings, asserted that American inventories of Tomahawks, Army Tactical Missile Systems, SM-3 interceptors, Terminal High Altitude Area Defenses (THAADs) and Patriots had been significantly drawn down over the course of the conflict.

“I think it’s fair to say it’s shocking how deep we have gone into these magazines,” he told “Face The Nation” on Sunday. “We’ve expended a lot of munitions. And that means the American people are less safe. Whether it’s a conflict in the western Pacific, with China or somewhere else in the world, the munitions are depleted.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, in response to a post on X about Kelly’s remarks, rebuked the senator for allegedly “blabbing on TV” about a closed-door briefing. “Did he violate his oath...again?” @DeptofWar legal counsel will review," Hegseth wrote.

Kelly then jabbed back at the defense secretary by posting a video of their exchange during an April 30 hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, in which Hegseth publicly acknowledged that it would take the Pentagon “months and years” to rebuild the supplies of advanced weaponry depleted in Operation Epic Fury.

In the first 39 days of the air and missile campaign against Iran, the U.S. military burned through nearly half of its stockpiles of several key munitions, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The systems affected included Patriot and THAAD interceptors, as well as Precision Strike Missiles. Replenishing those inventories to prewar levels is projected to take up to four years.

That’s according to Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy John Perryman, who addressed service needs and quality of life concerns at a forum hosted by Military Officers Association of America this month.

With the back-to-back operational demands of the military intervention to capture and extract Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in January, followed by the airstrikes on and subsequent naval blockade of Iran, and amid ongoing drug interdiction operations around South and Central America, older force generation models are proving less effective, he said.

“So, one of the things we’ve learned is we’re going to have to come up with a different force generation model,” Perryman said. “... And so we think we can do better in our force generation model to generate the readiness that we know the department is going to consume. And so … let’s take a step back and really evaluate what that should look like.”

Throughout his career, he said, the force generation model had largely been based on a peacetime mindset.

“It’s like this conveyor belt that’s very prescriptive, and it executes on time,” he said.

For example, Perryman said, carrier strike groups deploy on three-year centers, meaning they cycle through training, deployment and maintenance every three years.

As recently as 2020, then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday defended this structure amid proposals for change from then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, saying the Navy had “made and are projecting into the future to continue to meet every commitment, every deployment that we’ve been directed to do.”

But the deployment of the Ford, which will have been deployed for more than 330 days when it’s slated to pull into port in Norfolk, Va., at the end of this month, has reopened the debate about how the Navy, which has historically had five- to seven-month pumps, should structure deployments and time at home, Perryman said.

The Navy, he said, was considering challenges ranging from acquiring enough spare parts, to building in appropriate time for reset and training.

“So really that’s what we’re taking away from this. And we’ve started to do, I think, some pretty transformative work in that area,” he said.

The Navy in late April marked a first in more than two decades with three aircraft carriers operating simultaneously in the waters surrounding the Middle East.

Three’s company: Trio of US carriers operating in Middle East for first time in decades

Perryman’s comments advance a proposition by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle in late April at the Modern Day Marine Symposium. Caudle suggested transitioning amphibious ships, also on a 36-month deployment cycle, to a 50- or 52-month cycle that would incorporate two deployments.

By getting two deployments out of the same training and maintenance phase, Caudle suggested the Navy could “reduce the overhead … [and] gain some efficiency,” Breaking Defense reported.

Army, Air Force reevaluate demands

Other senior enlisted leaders who spoke alongside Perryman also described the difficulty of adapting to operational demands and an uncertain timeline.

Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer said his service was working to develop “true readiness measurements” while also “trying to manage the current op tempo.”

At home, he said, the Army was working to modernize training ranges and align training more closely with current threats.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David Wolfe said months of air sorties had left the service with “tired folks out there and some tired equipment that needs our attention.”

“Another thing we’ve learned is that when you put the resources and the parts forward with the aircraft, the aircraft fly at an amazingly high rate, right,” he said.

“So we’ve got some work to do in that department with, you know, stable and predictable budgets and making sure that we’ve got the parts and the resources that we need in the places that we need them,” Wolfe added. “We need to do a better job of that in garrison, when we’re getting ready for whatever is to come, whatever we’re asked to do.”

But all the enlisted leaders emphasized their troops were performing well. The senior enlisted adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, David Isom, said the number of troops who had returned to duty after combat injuries was “off the charts.”

Isom added that he’d visited the sailors onboard the deployed carrier Ford and found them “motivated, excited, mission-focused.”

“I think that kind of inspiration keeps people coming back and inspires the next generation,” he said. “And we do see a lot of propensity to serve.”

Trump, in a post on Truth Social, characterized the dissemination of the archives as an effort to achieve “complete and maximum transparency.”

“With these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’” the president wrote, adding, “Have Fun and Enjoy!”

The Department of Defense — in coordination with the White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Energy, NASA and the FBI — disclosed 162 files on its newly launched “UFO” website. Additional batches are expected to be released on a rolling basis as they are discovered and declassified.

“These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a statement. “It’s time the American people see it for themselves.”

The Pentagon, however, cautioned that much of the material remains analytically indeterminate.

“While all of the files have been reviewed for security purposes, many of the materials have not yet been analyzed for resolution of any anomalies,” a caveat accompanying the files said.

In the initial release, accounts of unidentified objects were reported in the skies over Greece, Iraq, Japan, Kuwait, the United States and elsewhere.

One of the documents includes a transcript of a conversation between Mission Control and astronauts James “Jim” Lovell and Frank Borman during 1965’s Gemini 7 space mission. The transcript opens with Borman’s report of a “bogey” — a contemporary nomenclature for an unknown aircraft — as well as a debris field he said consisted of “very, very many [...] hundreds of little particles.” The record is accompanied by handwritten annotations documenting the encounter, including a note in the upper-right corner reading “UFO Sighting by Borman.”

A separate document contains an “unresolved” unidentified aerial phenomenon report from May 2022 over Kuwait, with an image showing an elongated area of contrast in the upper-left quadrant that appears to increase in intensity along its length.

The Trump administration’s disclosure comes in the wake of a viral moment in February, when former President Barack Obama appeared to lend credence to long-running public speculation by saying during a podcast appearance that aliens “are real.” He later walked back the remark.

Speaking on Wednesday, Obama clarified: “One of the things you learn as president is government is terrible at keeping secrets.”

“If there were aliens, or alien spaceships, or anything under the control of the United States government that we knew about, seen, photographs, what have you, I promise you, some guy guarding the installation would have taken a selfie with one of the aliens and sent it to his girlfriend,” Obama asserted.

But at the time, Trump told reporters he “doesn’t know if they’re real or not,” while criticizing his predecessor’s comments as a “big mistake.” He subsequently pledged to release any files on UFOs and extraterrestrials citing the “tremendous interest” in the topic, a move that garnered bipartisan support.

A U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet from USS George H.W. Bush launched “precision munitions” at the smokestacks of M/T Sea Star III and M/T Sevda, disabling the vessels before they could reach an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman, according to U.S. Central Command.

“U.S. forces in the Middle East remain committed to full enforcement of the blockade of vessels entering or leaving Iran,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of CENTCOM.

The U.S. military has turned away 50 commercial vessels operating in the strait since the U.S. Navy blockade began on April 12.

Friday’s confrontation capped a tumultuous week in the waterway.

On Monday, the U.S. destroyed six Iranian small boats, as well as cruise missiles and drones, that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched against ships under U.S. escort through the strait. The escort was part of the U.S.’s short-lived Project Freedom, a military operation to escort commercial ships that has since been paused.

U.S. forces also intercepted the Iranian-flagged unladen oil tanker, M/T Hasna, in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday as it made its way toward an Iranian port.

A U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet from the USS Abraham Lincoln fired on the vessel after issuing several warnings, disabling the tanker.

And on Thursday, the U.S. conducted strikes against Iranian military facilities after Iran launched missiles, drones and small boats at three U.S. Navy vessels transiting the strait.

Despite continued military conflict around the Strait, President Donald Trump downplayed concerns about potential escalation, telling ABC News on Thursday that U.S. strikes against Iranian targets were just a “love tap” and that the four-week-old ceasefire was still in effect.

The U.S. and Iran remain in discussions over an agreement that would reportedly end the Iran war and shut down the country’s nuclear program.

The U.S. fired at Iranian missile- and drone-launch sites, command-and-control locations, and intelligence and surveillance hubs after “unprovoked” Iranian attacks against Arleigh Burke-class destroyers USS Truxtun, USS Rafael Peralta and USS Mason.

“CENTCOM does not seek escalation but remains positioned and ready to protect American forces,” CENTCOM said.

No U.S. vessels were struck as a result of the attacks.

Pentagon says Iran ceasefire holds despite exchanges in Strait of Hormuz

Despite the uptick in military activity, President Donald Trump told ABC News on Thursday that U.S. strikes against Iranian targets were just a “love tap” and that the ceasefire was still in effect.

On Monday, the U.S. destroyed six Iranian small boats, as well as cruise missiles and drones, that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched against ships the U.S. was escorting through the strait as part of Project Freedom, which has since been paused.

On Wednesday, Trump said the war would “be over quickly” at an event for Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate Burt Jones.

The U.S. and Iran are reportedly deliberating over a peace memorandum that would end the war and halt Iran’s nuclear program.

In late April, the U.S. Senate, led by sponsor Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., unanimously approved the “Maverick Act,” introduced by freshman U.S. Rep. Abraham Hamadeh, an Illinois Republican and Army Reserve officer. The bill, which has yet to become law, authorizes the secretary of the Navy to hand over the service’s three remaining F-14D Tomcats to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center Commission in Huntsville, Alabama.

It allows the commission to put the aircraft on display, but also permits them to be operated in “an airshow … or a commemorative event to preserve United States naval aviation heritage.”

In other words, U.S. F-14s could take to the sky once more.

This is all significant because of the aircraft’s complex and high-stakes national security history. When the Grumman-made aircraft was retired in 2006 after 32 years of service, Congress acted quickly to mitigate the threat of foreign theft or security breach, specifically from Iran, which has operated variants of the Tomcat since 1979 and is the only remaining country to fly them.

(Notably, in 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” Cruise gets back into the cockpit of an old F-14 found in the hangar of an unnamed adversary nation. While there are some conflicting details mixed in to keep the identity of that rogue nation vague, that still-operational Tomcat is a definite tip-off.)

The Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act specifically prohibited the Department of Defense from selling any F-14 fighters or parts, or granting an export license to allow any to leave the country. While it did carve out a narrow exception to allow sales to museums for historic preservation, the legislation led DoD to take radical measures to ensure none of the retired aircraft fell into the wrong hands.

Retired F-14s that had been sent to the “Boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona — a common resting place for retired aircraft that might have some future military use as parts or spares — were ordered shredded into two-foot-by-two-foot “bits” by a contractor paid nearly $1 million to carry out the work.

The move came after the Associated Press found foreign buyers had been able to get their hands on F-14 parts, despite the caution and prohibitions.

“Investigators also found some sensitive items accidentally slipping into surplus auctions rather than being destroyed as they were supposed to be,” CBS reported at the time. “In an unusual move when dealing with retired aircraft, the Pentagon is trying to shut off all avenues for Iran’s parts purchasers by demolishing the F-14s, then combing through the scraps to make sure nothing useful remains.”

In a fascinating coda to the F-14 saga, NPR reported in March that Iran’s last 10 operational Tomcats may have been destroyed in strikes executed since the start of the current war on Feb. 28.

The Maverick Act names three specific F-14D aircraft by tail number, requiring that they be demilitarized and “do not possess any capability for use as a platform for launching or releasing munitions or any other combat capability, as determined by the Secretary,” according to the legislation.

The transfer to Huntsville for education and display must take place at no cost to the U.S., and the legislation specifically prohibits restoration of combat capability or foreign transfer.

“I want to thank Senator Sheehy and his colleagues for passing this legislation aimed at preserving for history one of the most iconic aircraft ever flown,” Hamadeh said in a statement. “As a former U.S. Army officer, I know that many of the men and women I served with felt the same way. That is why I proudly introduced this legislation.”

Hamadeh also noted that he had moved to save five retiring T-37 jet trainer aircraft from the Boneyard in a separate bill.

During a White House ceremony marking the return of the Presidential Fitness Test awards, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday the test will be mandatory in the DoD’s 161 K-12 schools across 30 military installations.

Recalling his childhood striving to earn the top award level, Hegseth said he hoped the requirement would serve as a “pilot for all of American education.”

“I remember it because it was something my country clearly elevated as important. We should be in shape; we should compete,” Hegseth said.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last July reinstating the test in public schools. On Tuesday, Trump signed a proclamation that reestablished the awards for those who meet age-level standards for three out of six exercises in the test.

“My administration is working very hard to defend Americas cherished athletic traditions and pass our values of excellence and competitiveness to the next generation,” Trump said during the signing.

Hegseth did not say when the test requirement will go into effect; the 2025-2026 school year is coming to a close this month, and school will restart later this summer.

The Presidential Fitness Test got its start under President Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 with the creation of a President’s Council on Youth Fitness. Gen Xers and Millennials may remember various iterations of the test, which included pull-ups, pushups, a run, rope climb and other challenges.

Beginning in the 1990s, the presidential sports councils began expanding recognition to engage all children, emphasizing wellness, nutrition and fitness.

In 2010, first lady Michelle Obama introduced the “Let’s Move!” campaign that promoted healthy eating and fitness to combat childhood obesity. The fitness test was retired two years later in favor of assessments that emphasized individual progress rather than competition with peers.

The new test includes three categories with two options within each category. Youngsters must complete either curl-ups (crunches) or planks; a one-mile run or 20-meter “beep” test; and “right angle” pushups, in which the athlete lowers themselves into a pushup until their elbows form a 90-degree angle, or pullups.

A beep test requires a runner to dash 20 meters back and forth on a track while keeping time with beeps.

To meet the standards, a 10-year-old boy must do 45 curl-ups, run a mile in 7 minutes, 57 seconds, and do 22 pushups; a 10-year-old girl must do 40 curl-ups, run a 9:19 mile and do 20 pushups.

Students who meet the targets, which differ for boys and girls, can receive a certificate.

A 2022 Pentagon study found that 77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver, with 11% of those disqualified for being overweight. The issue has long been considered a threat to recruitment and national security.

Noting the return of the Presidential Fitness Test, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who served in Trump’s cabinet during the president’s first term, said in a X social media that it was “great to see this test come back!”

“Could really benefit the fitness and future habits of today’s youth. Especially important for the US Armed Forces given that 78% of young people today don’t qualify for military service, with obesity being a major reason. Get fit!” Esper wrote.

During the event Tuesday, Hegseth said it was important for young people to strive for excellence.

“The idea that competition is bad is the beginning of the decline of a nation,” Hegseth said. “Competition is critical to who we are and ensuring that America stays on top.”

The U.S. military is tightening its entry standards by shifting more than two dozen medical disqualifications to the earliest stages of the recruitment process.

U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command, also known as USMEPCOM, announced this week that it will prescreen prospective recruits for 28 medical conditions that have been deemed highly unlikely to receive enlistment waivers.

The change does not alter the current eligibility standards so much as it recalibrates the timing of judgement. Determinations that once emerged later in the process will now be flagged at the very first point of contact.

“This is a shift order,” Army Col. Megan McKinnon, USMEPCOM command surgeon, said in a statement. “Instead of doing complete processing and then handing it to the waiver authority, we’ve created a trigger on the front end for these specific conditions that requires additional Service sign off, because all Services agreed that they are unlikely to be waived on the back end.”

Officials say the goal is to conserve resources and reduce unnecessary medical evaluations, particularly in cases not expected to be approved.

The list, shared with Military Times, includes: any aortic anatomical abnormalities classified as congenital defects; surgical correction of the main cardiac vessels which are congenital defects; any heart valve replacement; Mobitz Type II second-degree atrioventricular block; bariatric surgery other than gastric sleeve; biopsy proved Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis; weight bearing joint replacement; cervical spinal fusion; current knee ligament rupture or repair within the past 12 months; stress fractures in any site within the past six months; pilonidal cyst or less than six months post-surgery; eczema or psoriasis requiring oral or injectable medications within the last 12 months; active malignancy; resolved malignancy; resolved malignancy with less than one year of remission; sickle cell disease; two or more unprovoked thromboembolic events; Marfan syndrome; fibromyalgia within the last 12 months; systemic lupus erythematosus; peanut anaphylaxis; implanted battery-powered devices; Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes; narcolepsy; parasomnias after the 18th birthday; use of antipsychotic or mood stabilizers; two or more lifetime suicide attempts; bipolar I or II with a documented episode of mania or hypomania; and previous discharge from any uniformed service for behavioral health conditions with the past 12 months.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also issued a memo in March directing a comprehensive review of military standards — including those pertaining to physical fitness, body composition and grooming — across all branches.

The new policy comes as President Donald Trump, speaking at an early Mother’s Day event at the White House honoring military moms, touted a recent uptick in enlistment. Fiscal 2025 marked the highest level of recruiting in more than 15 years, according to the Pentagon.

“Every branch is setting records in recruitment,” the president said on Wednesday. “I can say very confidently, at this moment, we have the highest recruitment, the most successful recruitment for the military — Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Space Force, all of it."

“We have lines of people waiting to get in. We’re taking people based on their fitness and their quality,” he added.

The Military Spouse Small Business Recognition Act was influenced by the high unemployment rate for military spouses and the rate of spouses that are self-employed small business owners or are interested in entrepreneurship, according to a Thursday media round table.

“Spousal employment and financial stability are among the top factors for service member retention, and when military spouses can’t build businesses, that retention suffers and our war fighters suffer, and our national security posture suffers,” Eliza Levy, ELPR’s founder and CEO, said to reporters.

If passed, the act would waive Small Business Association loan fees up to $1 million; reduce equity injection requirements; designate military spouse-owned businesses as an 8(a) Disadvantages Category; and require the SBA to track military spouse participation in loan programs.

Patricia M. Barron, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Military Community and Family Policy, said to reporters that the biggest link between military spouse employment and military readiness is retention.

She highlighted how aspects of military life, such as frequent moving or career gaps, make it difficult to retain employment as a spouse.

Barron noted that after constant moves and unemployment, spouses and their military counterparts begin to think about leaving the force, especially if it makes more sense financially.

“If we want to keep this volunteer force, that retention piece is incredibly important,” said Barron. “And the Department of War and the Congress, they have made military spouse employment a mission readiness issue.”

“It is no longer just a quality of life issue, and that’s why it’s so important,” Barron continued.

Military spouses have an unemployment rate of around 22% according to a 2024 Department of Labor fact sheet — approximately five times higher than the national average, which sits at roughly 4.3% as of March.

In addition, 48% of military spouses are either self-employed or are interested in being, but a lack of access to capital is a barrier that this act hopes to remedy.

The act has not yet been introduced to Congress as the coalition is still gathering support from members. Stephanie Brown, CEO of the Military Spouse Chamber of Commerce that is leading the charge for the act, said they are hoping to announce the two co-sponsors of the bill by late Thursday.

If deemed the best way to propel this bill forward, the coalition intends to attach it to the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.

Naval Support Activity Naples conducted a year-long analysis of radon levels at non-residential facilities from August 2024 to September 2025 but announced on Feb. 9 that the results it received in January were not reliable, as they did not meet the Navy Radon Assessment and Mitigation Program’s quality assurance standards.

NSA Naples has since reversed course, however, announcing May 4 that the results were in fact “valid and reliable.”

“Between August 2024 and October 2025, alpha track detectors were installed for long-term radon monitoring across 1,536 testable locations/rooms in 123 non-residential buildings at NSA Naples,” the Navy said. “Results were obtained from 1,449 of these locations, revealing 37 instances of elevated radon average concentrations.”

The Navy did not test residential buildings because those facilities were last tested in 2022 and 2023, and the Navy Radon Assessment and Mitigation Program requires testing every 5 years.

Guam barracks conditions spur Navy-wide housing inspection

The service began an error analysis process after the initial rejection of data occurred in February and found that the results met accuracy standards after all, NSA Naples said.

Radon exposure higher than four pCi/L, a unit of measurement that tracks radioactive decay, requires mitigation, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. All of the 37 rooms flagged for heightened radon exposure had pCi/L levels that exceeded four, with some as high as 12.

Elementary school and high school facilities affiliated with the installation, as well as a golf shop, were among those listed as containing a hazardous amount of radon.

The Navy said it will work to reduce those levels so that they fall below four pCi/L within the next two years, but it did not provide specifics as to what those mitigation strategies might entail.

Radon is a gas undetectable by the human eye or nose that results from the natural decay of uranium and thorium in rocks, water and soil. Individuals who are exposed to the gas over a long period of time have an increased risk of lung cancer.

The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General released a report on Aug. 19, 2024, raising concerns about the Navy’s handling of elevated radon levels at NSA Naples.

The report urged Navy officials to communicate better with individuals after finding that NSA Naples Housing and Public Affairs Offices “did not inform the 3,997 DOD personnel and dependents living in non-GO-GC off-base housing of the known potential for elevated radon levels.”

NSA Naples launched a radon detection assessment the same month.

The 16-page blueprint — the first issued since President Donald Trump’s return to office — describes the triad as “significant and pervasive” dangers to the homeland, to be addressed in phases.

During a conference call with reporters, Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s senior director for counterterrorism, declined to discuss classified details of the initiative but outlined its central objective as systemically eroding each group’s infrastructure. The plan includes identifying their networks; severing their access to weapons, financing and recruitment capabilities; and dismantling their operational capacity.

“We see a threat, we will respond to it, and we will crush it, whether it is the cartels, the jihadists, or violent left-wing extremists like antifa and like the transgender killers, the non-binary, the left-wing radicals,” he said. “We will take them on, head on.”

Gorka asserted that the administration sees a renewed wave of politically-motivated violence targeting Christians and conservatives, driven by what he characterized as “violent left-wing extremists” who have “espoused extremist transgender ideologies.” He cited the assassination of activist Charlie Kirk, as well as the mass shootings at Covenant School in Tennessee and Annunciation Catholic School in Minnesota, as evidence of the trend.

The attackers in the latter two shootings, each of whom died at the scene, were transgender. The person charged with Kirk’s killing, Tyler Robinson, reportedly had a transgender partner. LGBTQ advocates, however, warn against collectivizing blame for such events to the trans community at large.

“We will not permit politically motivated violence in the United States from either side of the aisle,” Gorka said. “But the sad truth is, the left has far more politically motivated assassinations or attempted assassinations to its credit in recent years, not the right.”

‘Toxic’ politics increase terrorism, extremism risk, DHS official says

A 2024 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that right-wing attacks had killed 112 people over the past decade, compared to 13 people killed in left-wing attacks and 82 killed in jihadist attacks.

The report predated the killing of Kirk, which occurred in September 2025, but also of Democratic State Rep. Melissa Hortman of Minnesota, who was shot dead at her home along with her husband Mark in June 2025.

The Trump framework marks a sharp departure from the Biden-era counterterrorism strategy, which classified white supremacists and militia movements among the most consequential threats to U.S. national security.

“Our new U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy is a return to common sense and Peace through Strength,” the president wrote in the document. “As I said after our first successful counterterrorism mission, just days after I was sworn back in office — if you hurt Americans, or are planning to hurt Americans, ‘We Will Find You and We Will Kill You.’”

U.S. counterterrorism officials are set to meet with foreign counterparts on Friday to urge allies to take on a greater share of responsibility in confronting terrorist threats, including those in the Strait of Hormuz.

“We reject the concept of global police officer,” Gorka said. “We will measure your seriousness as a partner and ally by how much you bring to the table.”

Reps. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., and Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., both retired U.S. Army veterans and members of the House Armed Services Committee, are advancing a bill they dubbed the MISSION RX Act.

Their proposal is designed to allow Tricare beneficiaries and Department of Veterans Affairs patients to pay for prescription drugs at whichever is the lower of two prices: the rate negotiated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, or the cost offered through their existing coverage.

The bottom line, the congressmen say, is that anyone covered by Tricare or the VA would pay the lowest government-negotiated price.

Right now, only people enrolled in Medicare get to pay the rate for certain drugs set by the CMS.

This option does not automatically extend to those who are part of other federal health programs. The basic framework to lower drug costs for Medicare recipients was part of the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022 under then-President Joe Biden.

“After serving 25 years in uniform, I know firsthand the sacrifices our service members, veterans and military families make every single day,” Vindman said in an exclusive statement to Military Times. “The last thing any of them should have to worry about is whether they can afford the prescription drugs they need.”

“The veterans and service members I represent in Virginia’s Seventh District have earned every benefit this nation can give them. That’s why I’m leading this commonsense effort to reduce the crushing cost of prescription drugs for those who have served and sacrificed,” he added.

Vindman and Ryan’s push faces an uncertain future in the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority. The bill has four co-sponsors so far, all of whom are Democrats: Reps. Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and Bill Keating of Massachusetts.

It also has the support of a number of key organizations, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Marine Corps League, the Fleet Reserve Association, Air Force Sergeants Association and Commissioned Officers Association Public Health Service.

Before they entered Congress, Vindman and Ryan built their careers in the Army during the post-9/11 wars, each deploying to Iraq. Vindman began as a paratrooper and infantry officer, before going on to serve as a Judge Advocate General’s Corps attorney. Ryan, for his part, worked as an intelligence officer, earning two Bronze Star Medals.

“Military families have sacrificed so much for our country — it’s absolutely unacceptable that they’re being forced to pay more than other Americans for the same medication,” Ryan said in a statement.

“Our bill corrects this egregious oversight by ensuring that military families have access to the same lower drug prices that others do. Especially amid rising healthcare costs nationwide, leaving military families to bear the burden is simply un-American,” he continued. “They’ve stepped up and sacrificed for us — now we need to do right by them.”

The legislation, if enacted, would boost the savings for American taxpayers from lower drug costs. CMS already estimates that the original Biden-era measures could save $6 billion annually.

In a short statement, the Defense Commissary Agency said only that the change took effect Wednesday and applied to commissaries worldwide. Commissaries in states or localities that mandate bags fees would still have to comply with those laws.

“The policy, introduced on April 6, which required commissary patrons to pay for single-use plastic and paper bags, has been rescinded,” the statement reads.

In a separate statement, Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., a former Navy helicopter pilot, took credit for the reversal, saying the commissary agency’s decision followed months of advocacy.

Kiggans penned a letter to Anthony Tata, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, and she spoke about the issue directly with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee last week, she said.

“I was deeply frustrated when DeCA announced it would impose a charge for paper and plastic bags — an added cost that complicates a benefit intended to support our service members, retirees and their families," Kiggans said in a statement. “I appreciate Secretary Hegseth for listening to my concerns and taking swift action to eliminate this fee.”

The policy required commissary customers to pay 5 cents each for plastic bags and 10 cents for paper bags.

Providing the single-use bags costs the commissary agency $17 million per year, spokesperson Keith Desbois said when the agency announced the policy in March.

The commissary agency receives about $1.5 billion per year in taxpayer dollars to operate these discounted grocery stores as a benefit for the military community.

The Defense Department’s goal is an overall savings of 25% compared to commercial stores outside the gate.

Military Times reporter Karen Jowers contributed to this story.