The extent of the drone war is underestimated, with Ukraine and Russia each using roughly 10,000 drones a day, the former CIA director and onetime commander of U.S. Central Command said, speaking at an American Primary Aluminum Association event in Washington.

“This is an unmanned systems war,” Petraeus said. “Tanks aren’t survivable there anymore.”

For Ukraine, drones and unmanned weapons have become central to how the country has leveraged a smaller, outgunned force against a much larger, better-financed adversary for almost five years.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered the creation of a new Unmanned Systems Forces military branch in 2024, and the Defense Ministry has said time and again that developing more autonomous weapons is a top priority.

But for the rest of the world, Petraeus said, the fighting in Ukraine is a window into the future and a warning about the dangers of being underprepared for the battles to come.

“Really, no NATO country and not even the United States is undertaking yet the urgent revolutionary institutional change that should be taken based on what we see in Ukraine, which is the future of war,” he said.

The U.S. needs a new concept of warfare that runs through force structure, training, procurement, personnel policy and bases, the general said, replacing much of the legacy, heavily manned equipment with unmanned systems that are cheaper and far more numerous.

“What’s going to happen is we’ll see the introduction of autonomous systems really for the first time in warfare,” Petraeus said.

Washington is making “some commendable steps” toward developing these weapons, according to Petraeus, including establishing a new Autonomous Warfare Command that requires each military branch to stand up its own component command.

“But my hope is that they will not just create an unmanned systems force in terms of force structure, but that they will also spur the initiation of true institutional change,” Petraeus said.

That includes how the U.S. buys weapons, Petraeus said, calling for “very, very substantial manufacturing capacity but not necessarily producing all the time.”

“You want it to be able to make software changes every week, hardware changes every few weeks, which is what’s going on in Ukraine because the enemy continues to evolve and Russia’s been innovating very substantially as well,” he said.

Ukraine will produce as many as 20 million unmanned systems this year, Zelenskyy said in a July speech, with a shortage of trained operators and the acquisition of some weapons components — including optics, gimbals, brushless motors and fiber-optic cable — becoming the domestic industry’s production bottleneck.

The general also rejected the idea that the U.S. war with Iran has hurt Washington’s ability to help Kyiv, though he acknowledged the U.S. has used “a fair number of missile interceptors,” which “makes it more difficult to share those with others around the world.”

The war has consumed between one-half and two-thirds of the U.S. inventory of certain missile-defense interceptors, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released in September.

“We can help the Ukrainians in any way in which we decide to assist them,” Petraeus said. “These are policy decisions.”

That is, at least, the proper terminology in this great American age of rebrands, one that has borne witness to such seismic overhauls as the Gulf of Mexico becoming the Gulf of America, Lake Ontario becoming Lake America, and a push to call New Mexico … New America.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 29 the term “artificial intelligence” would henceforth be retired in favor of “super intelligence.”

“As these capabilities continue to improve, they increasingly represent not merely artificial intelligence, but a new era of Super Intelligence,” the executive order stated.

The president followed that “SI” declaration up with an Oct. 8 Truth Social post asserting that anyone who uses the previous moniker would be branded “THE ENEMY!”

The U.S. Navy this week became one of the first services to avoid that traitorous designation, cementing the super initiative and calling on “all Navy echelons, commands, activities, and personnel [to] use ‘Super Intelligence’ and ‘SI’ in place of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI,’” a service memo stated.

“This policy applies effective immediately across all official Navy correspondence, flag letters, OPORDs, wargame documentation, instructional material, fleet advisories, public communications, official websites, strategic assessments, congressional reports, and non-statutory internal and external policy documents,” the memo continued.

As part of the super overhaul, echelon II commanders, type commanders and systems commanders will be required to review all “public releases, intranet portals, and external presentations for compliance” no later than 30 days after the release of the super memo. These personnel will then be required to submit a super report on completing the task.

The directive does not require retroactively amending previously published documentation or contracts, the message noted, while existing laws and statutes “will continue to be cited as statutorily required until conforming congressional amendments are enacted.”

A Military Times request for comment from the sea service regarding what consequences might result should “artificial intelligence” be used was not returned as of press time.

Becker, a decorated explosive ordnance disposal officer, was sentenced in 2022 to life without parole in the 2015 death of 32-year-old Johanna Hove-Becker, with a jury finding he was guilty of premeditated murder, assault consummated by a battery and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. The trial followed years of dispute over who would prosecute the case; Becker remained in the custody of Belgian legal authorities for two years after Hove-Becker’s death while the Navy declined to take jurisdiction. Then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ultimately ordered the Navy to take the case in 2018.

While prosecutors said Becker had had a “visceral” reaction to learning Hove-Becker had a new boyfriend and was thus motivated to later drug her with sleeping pills and push her from the window to her death, Becker’s attorney says evidence left out of trial points to the deceased woman’s own mental instability.

In an Oct. 16 petition for writ of certiorari, or formal review request to the Supreme Court, Becker’s attorney David Sheldon, a former Navy Judge Advocate General, argues that a series of text messages between Becker and his wife seven months before her death constitute evidence that she was suicidal and should have been included as part of Becker’s defense. Both Becker and Hove-Becker, the petition states, were separated at the time of her death and had other partners, though they continued to live together and co-parent.

In the messages, included in the petition, Hove-Becker allegedly tells Becker she’s “trying to work on not being nuts” and “terrified” of “losing my memory and my wits … losing my mental faculties against my will.”

The texts were excluded by the trial judge as hearsay, Sheldon states, but should have been included as key evidence of a “history of mental health problems,” particularly in light of other testimony from the prosecution that sought to establish Hove-Becker’s soundness of mind.

It’s the last in a series of appeals and follows previous disputes over hearsay in the case. A 2021 decision by the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals, or NMCCA, overturned a decision by the trial judge, Navy Capt. Aaron Rugh, which had excluded statements Hove-Becker made in 2013 accusing her husband of physical violence. She had claimed Becker had thrown her “around their hotel room and strangled her” after learning she’d had an affair, but she later recanted the statements in a joint counseling session, court documents show.

Later in 2021, though, the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, or CAAF, reversed the lower appellate court’s ruling, finding the judge was right to suppress the statements.

Texts Hove-Becker allegedly sent on the night of her death, including one stating “I f—ing hate my life,” also complicate the picture, though Becker was later accused of sending those messages himself.

In an interview, Sheldon said he believed the lower appellate courts should have allowed for admission of evidence supporting Becker’s claim that his wife had died by suicide.

“The government paints this picture throughout the trial that she somehow is sane right before she dies,” he said. “And that just didn’t match reality.”

In a 111-page opinion issued late last December, NMCCA declined to overturn Becker’s conviction, finding the prosecution had “presented overwhelming evidence of preparation, including [Becker] retrieving pills from his former desk one day before [Hove-Becker’s] death that match a description of zolpidem, and buying wine for someone he described as having a drinking problem.”

The court also noted that Hove-Becker was described by friends and co-workers as “happy and moving on with her life” around the time of her death.

CAAF, the last military appeals court before the Supreme Court, announced in June that it would not reconsider the case, and denied reconsideration a month later.

Becker has been incarcerated at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since his sentencing, Sheldon said. The Supreme Court is likely to make a decision within the next 90 days on whether it will take up the case, he said.

Addressing a crowd in Greenville, North Carolina, Trump claimed his administration had already distributed $1 billion in cash settlements to victims of the pollutants. He also pledged to direct the Justice Department to resolve unsettled claims; however, he tied the possibility of future payments to partisan politics.

“If we win the House and the Senate, I am directing the Department of Justice to settle all remaining legitimate claims as soon as possible and get it off the books and get it finished,” Trump said amid a slew of attacks on Democrats. He later added, “If we don’t win, there’s no money. If we do win, you’re getting it.”

Trump also said, “We don’t want to give any [money] to the trial lawyers.”

From the early 1950s to the late 1980s, service members and families drank and used water contaminated with trichloroethylene, a chemical that leaked into the water supplies from a local dry cleaning firm, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Underground storage tanks and industrial pollution also contributed, the National Research Council reported. Military authorities were unaware of the pollution until 1982, nearly three decades after it started.

The toxic compound has been linked to a slew of devastating health consequences — including deaths — and led to dozens of lawsuits.

A study released in 2023 found that veterans and family members stationed at the base are 70% more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than other veterans, and those who spent time at the base have linked cancer diagnoses to the exposure.

In 2022, President Joe Biden’s administration passed the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxins (PACT) Act, which expanded care for veterans exposed to different toxins and enabled affected individuals to pursue compensation.

In March, the Justice Department pledged to expedite settlements under the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, part of the PACT Act.

The U.S. Navy and Department of Justice opened a settlement option for faster payout in 2022, with applicants agreeing to waive litigation.

The Justice Department announced in March that it approved 649 settlement offers totaling $175 million over three weeks for those affected by the contaminated drinking water.

Since the program began, the department said it has approved more than 2,500 offers worth around $706 million. Individual payments range from $100,000 to $550,000.

The relocation is expected to be completed later this year and executed as a permanent change of station for the aircraft carrier’s crew and family members. The move, while long planned, had left many family members in limbo after the USS Abraham Lincoln’s routine six-month deployment was extended twice after the U.S. jointly launched Operation Epic Fury with Israel on Feb. 28.

The ship, which returned to San Diego, California, on Oct. 8, spent 322 days at sea — and 265 consecutive days without a port call.

At an August town hall meeting in San Diego, family members spoke with Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao and other senior officials, expressing frustration with Navy officials over reported food shortages, concerns about self-harm and confusion over the timeline regarding the impending move to Washington.

According to the release, the home port shift is part of the Navy’s “strategic dispersal of ships,” while noting that “Regularly scheduled depot-level maintenance maximizes the lifespan of our Navy vessels and keeps our fleets lethal, modern, and ready to defend the nation. The work conducted during the maintenance period will maximize the lifespan of Abraham Lincoln and re-establish the carrier at the highest state of material and combat readiness.”

The Navy did not provide a start date for the maintenance period. Naval Base Kitsap is the Navy’s third-largest Fleet Concentration Area and its most complex multi-mission installation, according to its website. The Lincoln will join its fellow Nimitz-class carrier, USS Ronald Reagan, in Kitsap.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Oct. 7 that the carrier strike group had been awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the military’s highest unit-level valor award.

Hegseth, who visited the carrier one day prior to the ship reaching shore, announced the award to the 5,000 sailors aboard the Lincoln, citing the “historic mission” that included completing “3,693 combat flights, sinking 64 Iranian warships, launching 450 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles and shooting down 77 one-way aerial attack drones.”

Explosive ordnance disposal warfare lieutenants with six years of commissioned service and lieutenant commanders with 10 years of commissioned service are eligible for bonuses of up to $100,000.

Both ranks can commit to a 2-year or 4-year contract with different payment plans.

Lieutenants who sign up for the 4-year contract bonus receive a $100,000 retention bonus and must complete the EOD Department Head Qualified training by 8 years of commissioned service.

Lieutenants can also opt for a 2-year contract bonus, netting $12,500 annually, with the possibility of another two-year bonus worth the same amount at eight years of commissioned service.

This track would ensure $50,000 in bonuses.

The Navy is offering lieutenant commanders $100,000 in retention bonuses if they sign a 4-year contract after notching 10 years of commissioned service.

They can also instead sign up for a 2-year contract after those 10 years, with a $15,000 annual payment. If they re-up the 2-year contract at 12 years, they are eligible for the same yearly payment until they reach 14 years of commissioned service.

Eligible officers can submit an application through their commanding officer for the retention bonus within one year of being eligible.

The officer must submit a copy of their original signed contract and commanding officer approval to the Bureau of Naval Personnel for consideration.

The Navy has recently devoted its explosive ordnance resources to Arctic training, as the U.S. and allied nations focus on defending the frozen terrain from Chinese and Russian infiltration.

U.S. sailors worked alongside Swedish and Norwegian troops during February’s Arctic Specialist 26 exercise to destroy explosives underwater and on land.

At the commission’s second meeting, members reviewed two service-level efforts: an Air Force and Space Force pilot in which the commission reported a 60% increase in military spouse placements over three weeks.

Members also called for measuring actual hires, promotions and retention rather than relying on participation figures alone.

The pilot matches spouses with hiring managers before they arrive at their next duty station.

Spouses can use the Air Force Civilian Careers website to identify where they expect to move, even before receiving formal permanent change of station, or PCS, orders. The program then facilitates introductions to hiring managers at the gaining installation.

The pilot entered its second phase in September, expanding to additional installations in the United States and overseas, according to the commission.

The military spouse commission also reported a 70% year-over-year increase in completed job profiles through SpouseWorks, a career and education resource for military spouses. Officials said they are working to make the platform easier to use and improve its ability to connect spouses with employment opportunities. The commission also announced that SpouseWorks is now available to spouses of all ranks.

Jennifer Hegseth, commission chair and wife of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, said the increase in completed job profiles suggested that spouses were ready to pursue employment but needed a better way to connect with opportunities.

“So that just shows that spouses are wanting to work, they’re ready to apply, and they just needed the right outlet,” she noted in the meeting.

The Army’s Department of the Army Voluntary Reassignment Program, or DAVRAP, takes that approach a step further by helping eligible civilian employees maintain career continuity when a permanent change of station requires them to relocate.

Launched in May 2025, the voluntary program allows eligible Army civilian employees to seek noncompetitive reassignment to positions at their gaining installations.

The commission reported that more than 11,000 candidates had created profiles since the program launched, with more than 12,000 hiring managers participating across Army installations in the United States and overseas. Members in attendance did not discuss in detail the number of completed reassignments nor specify how many candidates were military spouses.

Linda Lelande, a Coast Guard representative, asked that the Coast Guard be kept in mind along with the other services, and said spouses can face similar employment disruptions when moving between Coast Guard installations.

“They often experience this very same problem where they have a job, maybe in childcare and then they go to another Coast Guard base and have to start over,” Lelande said.

She asked whether the service could adopt elements of the Army’s reassignment model. Commission members said they wanted to identify existing programs that work and expand them rather than create new initiatives without first examining what the services already offer.

Navy representative Angela Perryman urged the commission to measure whether employer partnerships lead to actual hires.

“It’s one thing to say you’re hiring military spouses, but I want to see numbers,” Perryman said. “I want to see how many military spouses have actually been hired into these positions.”

Members also discussed tracking employment outcomes by region and in relation to PCS moves.

The commission did not announce a finalized department-wide expansion plan or implementation deadline. Member discussions underscored the need to assess whether existing programs deliver measurable employment results before determining how they might be adopted more broadly.

A U.S. Navy administrative message, or NAVADMIN, released Monday, establishes the Submarine Chief of the Boat as a general rating equivalent to a command master chief. The Navy said the change is intended to provide a clearer career path, specialized training and advancement opportunities for submarine sailors seeking the leadership position.

The Chief of the Boat, or COB, serves as the commanding officer’s principal enlisted adviser, responsible for issues affecting sailors’ welfare, morale, job satisfaction and utilization, according to the Navy’s enlisted occupational standards.

Previously, the COB was assigned by billet and identified by Navy Enlisted Classification 8COB, according to the Navy’s personnel manual. The existing policy specified a normal 36-month tour and allowed submarine sailors in paygrades E-8, E-8 selectee and E-9 to qualify for the designation.

Under the previous policy, selection involved a screening process for sailors seeking the assignment. Those historical requirements should not be assumed to remain in effect under the new rating; the NAVADMIN directs applicants to the submarine force’s senior enlisted program assignment instruction, COMSUBLANT/COMSUBPACINST 1306.2, for current application requirements and selection criteria.

The new rating is open to active-duty, submarine-designated sailors, all of whom must be submarine warfare qualified. Non-nuclear submarine ratings will be the primary source of candidates, though other submarine-designated personnel may be considered on a case-by-case basis. Selected Reserve sailors are not eligible.

The Navy will immediately convert E-9 personnel currently holding the 8COB designation to COBCM, according to the NAVADMIN.

The announcement does not specify how many sailors are expected to enter the new rating or detail how all existing selection and assignment procedures will change.

Meyer will now serve as Hegseth’s senior advisor to the task force, which is tasked with addressing the military’s “unacceptable” living conditions, the defense secretary announced Monday in a video on social media.

“Our warfighters should be focused on training, readiness and defending this great nation,” Meyer said during the video. “They shouldn’t have to fight for basic living conditions when they come home at night.”

As senior advisor, Meyer will travel to installations across the country, looking at their barracks, meeting with service members and identifying how to curtail any issues blocking the resolutions.

The first group of installations Meyer is expected to visit are all located in California, with Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms on Thursday and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar on Friday.

If sticking to schedule, Meyer will have visited 21 bases across the country, with most along the East Coast, by the end of December, according to a map displayed during the social media video.

“I want you to ask this question for the next couple of months: Where’s Dakota?” Hegseth posed during the video. “Could he be coming to my base, to my installation, to my camp, my fort? Because he might be.”

“He’ll be traversing the country on behalf of the Barracks Task Force, on behalf of me personally inspecting, holding town halls, getting real input, and then providing real solutions,” Hegseth continued. “Be on the lookout for him.”

Hegseth first formed the task force in October 2025 to be led by the assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment. The group is meant to identify investment opportunities and create department-wide policies for barracks standards.

The One Bill Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law in July 2025, gave the Defense Department $1.2 billion for barracks improvement, with $230 million allotted for the Marine Corps Barracks 2030 initiative and $425 million for enlisted boot camp barracks and other related facilities, as well as $1 billion for Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force restoration and modernization of military housing.

A Government Accountability Office report from August found that the Defense Department does not request enough funding to meet its installation maintenance and improvement needs, resulting in an estimated $285 billion of maintenance backlogs in fiscal 2025.

Previous GAO reports found that some barracks were “chronically neglected,” resulting in poor conditions that impacted enlisted service members’ quality of life. Thousands of service members lived in subpar barracks, with some having potentially serious health and safety risks, according to a 2023 report.

Recently, the Barracks Task Force funded various projects at installations across the nation, including modernized housing at Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, and a housing installation at Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton, Washington.

“From this point forward, there’s no confusion about who’s accountable,” Meyer posted on social media. “If we don’t get this fixed, there’s only one person to blame. Me.”

Former President Barack Obama awarded Meyer his Medal of Honor in 2011 for his service during the Battle of Ganjgal in Afghanistan in 2009 when he repeatedly entered an enemy ambush zone to rescue wounded comrades and recover the bodies of fallen service members. His actions were credited with saving 13 Americans and 23 Afghan personnel.

Meyer left the Marine Corps in 2010 and reenlisted in the reserves in April 2025, with his oath of enlistment administered at the Pentagon by Hegseth.

The combined tonnage of combat ships built by China in the two years through to December 2025 amounted to 636,208 tons, compared to 270,509 tons for the United States, according to data compiled by Flottes de Combat and French maritime industry association Gican.

China accounted for more than a third of the global naval tonnage constructed in 2024-25, based on the Euronaval report. U.S. lawmakers and congressional researchers have warned that China’s greater shipbuilding capacity, combined with delays and bottlenecks in U.S. naval shipbuilding, could hurt America’s ability to keep up with Beijing’s expanding fleet.

“We are seeing a fairly substantial expansion of naval forces, and consequently of shipbuilding,” said Philippe Missoffe, the general director of Gican, in a press briefing here on Tuesday. “We’re seeing an increase in power capabilities, particularly nuclear-powered attack submarines for example.”

Global naval construction overall was booming in the period, with 1.47 million tons of combat vessels built in 2024-25, compared with 959,671 tons in the prior two years. The value of global naval construction amounted to $123.9 billion, climbing from $81.8 billion in 2022-23.

The value of Chinese combat-vessel construction was US$43.5 billion in the latest two-year period, compared with $26.8 billion for the U.S., the report said.

China has reversed roles from 2022-2023, when production of the country’s naval yards amounted to 202,520 tons, compared with 245,703 tons for the U.S., according to the previous edition of the shipbuilding report published in 2024.

The U.S. fleet of combat vessels of more than 200 tons amounted to 3.11 million tons as of Jan. 1, 2026, compared to 1.44 million tons for China’s fleet, the report showed, That compares with 3.22 million tons for the U.S. and 1.3 million tons for China two years earlier.

Russia was in third place in terms of naval construction in 2024-25, with 149,056 tons built, followed by India with 76,430 tons and Italy with 53,700 tons. Turkey, France, Japan, South Korean and Romania rounded out the top 10 of naval builders.

The four-day Euronaval show, the world’s biggest maritime-defense exhibition, is set to kick of in Paris on Nov. 3. The number of exhibitors will be more than 40% higher than in 2024, according to the organizers.