Pentagon

The year that was and the year that will be, according to our reporters

2025 was a year of change, both for the defense community and for Breaking Defense. Let's catch you up.

By Aaron Mehta on January 05, 2026 4:01 am
The New Year's Eve ball drop numerals for 2026 are displayed in Times Square on December 18, 2025 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Coming into 2025, the only certainty was uncertainty: Everyone expected the new Trump administration to shake things up, but no one was quite sure how.

Well, things certainly shook. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired generals by the handful. The Army secretary said he wants a prime contractor to die off. The Air Force got a new fighter jet, but the Navy’s version is in limbo. The government operated under a continuing resolution all year, suffered the longest government shutdown in history, and still somehow increased defense spending, thanks to the dark magic of reconciliation. (And we only got two days into the new year before the Venezuela situation exploded.)

The National Security Strategy, released in December, indicates even more changes to come, with an unprecedented emphasis on the Western Hemisphere and shots at Europe — at a time when Europe is seeing a surge of localized defense spending that could upend American manufacturers’ business plans. And of course, no one is ever sure what is coming in the Middle East or Asia, nor what the future of the Ukraine conflict will be.

[This article is one of many in a series in which Breaking Defense staff looks back on the most significant (and entertaining) news stories of 2025 and looks forward to what 2026 may hold.]

To try and capture everything that happened in 2025, we asked our reporters for a pair of year-end pieces: a list of their five favorite stories they wrote this year, as well as an overview of what they’ll keep eyes on in 2026.

You can see links to all of those below, but I want to note that this year was one of change for Breaking Defense as well.

We launched a full-time video effort, which quickly ballooned from one weekly show to three regular shows, plus three four-part roundtables, plus four different conference video packages. To say this has been a Herculean undertaking by the team would be an understatement, but as we head into 2026 we’re not just looking to sustain the great work we’ve done with multimedia, but to grow it with new editorial products as well. Keep an eye on the site for more on that.

The editorial team expanded as well. In May, we added Mike Yeo as our Indo-Pacific bureau chief. Then in September, we created a new full-time role covering the Pentagon, shifting Ashley Roque over from Army coverage; Carley Welch, our networks reporter, then moved to cover the Army, while we hired Mark Pomerleau to take over the networks and digital warfare beat. And to help keep the editors from going insane, we also brought on Rachel Cohen on the editor side.

Sadly, we also have to note two exits from the team. First, Justin Katz — our longtime Navy reporter, and my first-ever hire here at Breaking Defense — is heading for a new role outside journalism; we’ll have more info on his successor in the future. And secondly, Colin Clark — the founder of Breaking Defense, who has covered the Pacific for us since 2021 — has decided to retire and focus on the greater things in life, which mostly seems to involve catching fish and grilling them for his lovely family. We wish both of them nothing but the best and thank them for everything they’ve done for the publication and our readers.

With all that growth, we’re now the largest defense-focused newsroom in the world. That comes as the Defense Department has forced reporters out of the Pentagon in an ill-advised attempt to have only hand-picked media cover the largest US government agency and the world’s most powerful military.

It’s important to note that the main reasons put forth by the department for new measures that ultimately forced us out of the building are spurious at best. I’ve laid out the facts here, and that link also contains a podcast appearance where I discuss the issue. The bottom line: A free and open press remains vital to both the public and the military itself, and attempts to curtail that are fundamentally harmful to America and its interests.

I’m proud that the major defense trade publications came together to issue a joint statement that we will not be intimidated or stop covering key issues in defense simply because the current leadership at the Pentagon are scared of hard questions. In the meantime, our colleagues at the New York Times have sued the Pentagon over this issue, and I am optimistic that the courts will recognize our legal standing.

I look forward to the day when Breaking Defense, along with our colleagues, return to our desks in the Pentagon. In the meantime, we will continue to do our job — which, as the stories below show, combine deep insights into questions of policy and strategy, the best industry reporting available and, occasionally, falling down a rabbit hole of our own making for a deep dive on a subject no one was actually asking about.

Looking back at 2025

Looking forward to 2026

Thanks for reading us in 2025. We hope you’ll come back, early and often, in this new year.