Us Pentagon

US not seeking war with Iran after striking three nuclear sites: Pentagon

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Sunday that America does not seek war with Iran in the aftermath of a surprise attack overnight on three of that country's nuclear sites. The mission, called Operation Midnight Hammer, involved decoys and deception, and met with no Iranian resistance, Hegseth and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference. This mission was not and has not been about regime change, Hegseth added. Caine said the goal of the operation destroying nuclear sites in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan had been achieved. Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction, Caine said.

Closure of Strait of Hormuz will hit Iranians hardest: Ex-Pentagon official

Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most important oil chokepoints located between Oman and Iran, connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea

OpenAI wins $200 mn contract with Pentagon to pilot AI for defence tasks

OpenAI will work with the Defense Department to come up with ways that AI can help with administrative tasks, such as getting health care for US military members and helping prevent cyberattacks

'Beijing top US threat': China preparing for war, warns Pentagon chief

Hegseth believes US President Donald Trump's "peace through strength" strategy is the appropriate response, and that the stagnating US defence industrial base must be revitalised

Pentagon mulls scrapping Aukus submarine deal with Australia, Britain

The review will study whether the deal, signed by President Joe Biden's team in 2021, is "aligned with the President's America First agenda," the Pentagon said

Pete Hegseth imposes fresh restrictions on reporter access to Pentagon

Hegseth said he was imposing the restrictions to protect classified national intelligence information, or CNSI

Pentagon chief Hegseth imposes sweeping press restrictions amid leak fears

Bedeviled by leaks to the media during his short tenure, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a series of restrictions on the press late Friday that include banning reporters from entering wide swaths of the Pentagon without a government escort areas where the press has had access in past administrations as it covers the activities of the world's most powerful military. Newly restricted areas include his office and those of his top aides and all of the different locations across the mammoth building where the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and Space Force maintain press offices. The media will also be barred from offices of the Pentagon's senior military leadership, including Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen Dan Caine, without Hegseth's approval and an escort from his aides. The staff of the Joint Chiefs has traditionally maintained a good relationship with the press. Hegseth, the former Fox News Channel personality, issued his order via a posting on X late on a Friday afternoon ...

Hotline between military, Washington air traffic controllers down for 3 yrs

A hotline between military and civilian air traffic controllers in Washington, D.C., that hasn't worked for more than three years may have contributed to another near miss shortly after the US Army resumed flying helicopters in the area for the first time since January's deadly midair collision between a passenger jet and a Black Hawk helicopter, Sen. Ted Cruz said at a hearing Wednesday. The Federal Aviation Administration official in charge of air traffic controllers, Frank McIntosh, confirmed the agency didn't even know the hotline hadn't been working since March 2022 until after the latest near miss. He said civilian controllers still have other means of communicating with their military counterparts through landlines. Still, the FAA insists the hotline be fixed before helicopter flights resume around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Defence department officials didn't immediately respond to questions Wednesday about the near miss earlier this month and the steps it is

Pentagon orders removal of books on diversity, anti-racism, gender issues

The Pentagon has ordered all military leaders and commands to pull and review all of their library books that address diversity, anti-racism or gender issues by May 21, according to a memo issued to the force on Friday. It is the broadest and most detailed directive so far on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's campaign to rid the military of diversity and equity programmes, policies and instructional materials. And it follows similar efforts to remove hundreds of books from the libraries at the military academies. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the memo, which was signed Friday by Timothy Dill, who is performing the duties of the defence undersecretary for personnel. Educational materials at the libraries promoting divisive concepts and gender ideology are incompatible with the Department's core mission, the memo states, adding that department leaders must promptly identify books that are not compatible with that mission and sequester them by May 21. By then, the memo says,

Pentagon orders removal of up to 1,000 transgender troops from military

The Pentagon will immediately begin moving as many as 1,000 openly identifying transgender service members out of the military and give others 30 days to self-identify, under a new directive issued Thursday. Buoyed by Tuesday's Supreme Court decision allowing the Trump administration to enforce a ban on transgender individuals in the military, the Defence Department will then begin going through medical records to identify others who haven't come forward. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who issued the latest memo, made his views clear after the court's decision. "No More Trans @ DoD," Hegseth wrote in a post on X. Earlier in the day, before the court acted, Hegseth was more blunt, telling a conference that his department is leaving wokeness and weakness behind. "No more pronouns," he told a special operations forces conference in Tampa. Department officials have said it's difficult to determine exactly how many transgender service members there are, but medical records will show th

Trump plans record $1.01 trillion national security budget this year

The defense budget will fund the Golden Dome missile defense project, shipbuilding and nuclear modernization, border security among its top priorities

Pete Hegseth orders Army to merge commands, cut jobs to reduce costs

The Army is planning a sweeping transformation that will merge or close headquarters, dump outdated vehicles and aircraft, slash as many as 1,000 headquarters staff in the Pentagon and shift personnel to units in the field, according to a new memo and US officials familiar with the changes. In a memo released Thursday, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the transformation to build a leaner, more lethal force. Discussions about the changes have been going on for weeks, including decisions to combine a number of Army commands. US officials said as many as 40 general officer slots could be cut as a result of the restructuring. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues. The changes come as the Pentagon is under pressure to slash spending and personnel as part of the broader federal government cuts pushed by President Donald Trump's administration and ally Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. In his memo, Hegseth said the Army must eliminate wastef

Trump defends Hegseth amid Pentagon turmoil, Signal chat leak probe

Trump backed Hegseth after ex-Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot said the Defence Department is overwhelmed by staff drama and turnover in the early months of Trump's second term

Pete Hegseth's Pentagon faces 'full-blown meltdown,' warns ex-spokesman

The warning from John Ullyot, who resigned last week after initially serving as Pentagon spokesman, followed statements by three top officials who were reportedly fired amid inquiry into leaks

Senate confirms Elbridge Colby as Pentagon policy chief despite GOP split

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed the appointment of Elbridge Colby to be the top policy adviser at the Pentagon, overcoming concerns that he has downplayed threats from Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. The vote was 54-45, with Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky as the only Republican voting against him. Three Democrats voted for Colby. In a statement, McConnell said Colby's long public record suggests a willingness to discount the complexity of the challenges facing America, the critical value of our allies and partners. And McConnell said Colby's confirmation encourages isolationist perversions of peace through strength to continue apace at the highest levels of administration policymaking. Vice President JD Vance criticized McConnell in an X post, saying that the senator's no vote - like so much of the last few years of his career - is one of the great acts of political pettiness I've ever seen. Vance spoke at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing early last month to

Pentagon backtracks on content purge, restores posts on women, minorities

Every day over the past few weeks, the Pentagon has faced questions from angry lawmakers, local leaders and citizens over the removal of military heroes and historic mentions from Defense Department websites and social media pages after it purged online content that promoted women or minorities. In response, the department has scrambled to restore a handful of those posts as their removals have come to light. While the pages of some well-known veterans, including baseball and civil rights icon Jackie Robinson, are now back up on Pentagon websites, officials warn that many posts tagged for removal in error may be gone forever. The restoration process has been so hit or miss that even groups that the administration has said are protected, like the Tuskegee Airmen, the first Black military pilots who served in a segregated World War II unit, still have deleted pages that as of Saturday had not been restored. This past week chief, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a video that ..

Pentagon latest agency to announce leak probe that could include polygraphs

The Pentagon's intelligence and law enforcement arms are investigating what it says are leaks of national security information. Defense Department personnel could face polygraphs in the the latest such inquiry by the Trump administration. A memo late Friday from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's chief of staff referred to recent unauthorised disclosures of such information, but provided no details about alleged leaks. Earlier in the day, President Donald Trump rejected reports that adviser Elon Musk would be briefed on how the United States would fight a hypothetical war with China. If this effort results in information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorised disclosure," then such information will be referred to the appropriate criminal entity for criminal prosecution, according to the memo. At the Homeland Security Department, Secretary Kristi Noem pledged this month to step up lie detector tests on employees in an effort to identify those who may be leaking informati

Elon Musk meets Pentagon officials, demands prosecution of leakers

Earlier on Friday, before arriving at the Pentagon, Musk lashed out at the New York Times, calling it pure propaganda. I look forward to the prosecutions of those at the Pentagon

Trump likely wants minerals refining on Pentagon bases to boost US output

Move is one of several planned for an executive order Trump could sign as soon as Wednesday after he told the US Congress last week he would 'take historic action'

Court-martial hearing to begin for Pentagon leaker facing years in prison

Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira, who was sentenced last year to 15 years in prison for leaking highly classified military documents, is scheduled to begin his court-martial on additional charges Monday. Teixeira pleaded guilty last year to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act, following his arrest in the most consequential national security breach in years. In his court-martial, Teixeira faces charges of disobeying orders and obstructing justice. At a hearing last year, military prosecutors said a court-martial is appropriate given that obeying orders is the absolute core of the military. But Teixeira's lawyers argued that further action would amount to prosecuting him twice for the same offense. The court-martial panel is convening at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts. The leaks exposed to the world unvarnished secret assessments of Russia's war in Ukraine, including information about .