Looks like the White House just can’t quench its thirst for the minerally good stuff. This morning, Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration is set to launch a critical mineral stockpile, called Project Vault, backed by $12B in seed money split between $1.67B in private capital and a $10B loan from the US Export-Import Bank. […]
Well, it’s certainly been a busy start to the week for the Pentagon press office. Yesterday, between a rabble-rousing speech by Pete Hegseth at Lockheed’s factory in Fort Worth, the release of a plan to fully overhaul the DoD’s innovation ecosystem, another plan to accelerate AI development for the military, and the official announcement of […]
We can all breathe a sigh of relief. On Sunday night, Congress finally released a compromise draft of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a breezy 3,000-page bill that authorizes a record $901B in defense spending, $8B more than the White House initially requested. The must-pass bill is headed for a vote in the coming […]
If you’ve been tracking some numbers coming out of the Pentagon recently, you’ll have seen a whole lot of zeroes. Earlier this week, the Department of Defense/War (take your pick, we don’t judge) dropped a whopping $150B solicitation for the Missile Defense Agency’s Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) program, tapping over 1,000 “qualifying […]
Well, the whole defense spending kick is showing no signs of abating. Yesterday, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te announced in an op-ed in the Washington Post that his country plans to spend an extra $40B (about NT$1.25T) on defense to counter the growing threat from China. A massive portion of the supplementary defense package—which would be […]
Christmas came early for the defense tech world. On Monday, Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering (USW(R&E)), Emil Michael, unveiled the six Critical Technology Areas (CTAs) that made the cut on the Pentagon’s pared-down list of priorities, a key signal of where the Department intends to direct R&D resources. Hope y’all aren’t too bummed […]
Well, that Hegseth speech wasn’t the only good piece of defense tech news to come out at the tail end of last week. On Friday afternoon, Reuters reported that the US Army plans to buy at least a million drones in the next two to three years, and that they plan to buy 500K a […]
Happy Hegseth Lecture Day to all who celebrate! Everyone’s favorite new monthly tradition—SecDef Pete Hegseth gathering a bunch of super important people for a stern talking-to—is back for its November rendition, but with a bit of a twist this time. Instead of calling his audience fat, Hegseth is set to deliver an “Arsenal of Freedom” […]
When President Trump said, “If [NATO members] don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them,” earlier this year, his mind was clearly on Europe. That message got through and ignited a speedy and spendy military buildup on the Old Continent, sure, but one much bigger—and closer—NATO ally has stayed out of the defense spending spotlight […]
In case you weren’t aware, Europe is, like, kinda freaking out over its defense posture. There’s a whole-ass war still waging on its eastern front, the US has become a less-than-reliable ally, and, well, defense stores are not necessarily where everyone wants them to be. Defense budgets are on the rise, but the continent—based on […]
