Next-gen air dominance and surprise new Air Force leadership: 2025 review
A look at some of the top stories that defined the air warfare beat this year.
Navy’s chief information officer steps down
Jane Rathburn wrote about her exit online, but did not disclose why she made the move.
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GPS: Still the gold standard in global navigation
The GPS network continues to prove its unmatched reliability, and it’s only getting stronger.
The Break Out: Tracking DOGE in the DoD budget and cyber workforce worries [Video]
What those DOGE-related footnotes in the fiscal 2026 budget request mean, and a check-in on the Pentagon's cyber workforce, this week on The Break Out.
After cuts to DoD’s cyber workforce, experts see short-term readiness risks, but also opportunity
“If [adversaries] see that we're unable to respond, as we have in the past, then it's very likely that we will see an increase in malicious activity," one expert told Breaking Defense. "No question about it."
Mining for DOGE: Defense budget docs show $11B in ‘efficiencies,’ but what are they?
An analysis by AEI conducted in partnership with Breaking Defense scoured thousands of pages of fiscal 2026 Pentagon budget documents, some of the most definitive accounting yet for DOGE’s impact at the Department of Defense.
Navy’s Phelan says DOGE’s cost cutting has saved $1B for service
“We’ve embraced the DOGE agency to come in basically to help us figure out processes and things that we’re doing that don’t make sense,” Navy Secretary John Phelan said.
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Data overload threatens decisionmakers as autonomy expands
Reducing cognitive overload on warfighters while improving “time to trust” for autonomous systems is a matter of design.
‘Lean and mean’: Hegseth releases new memo limiting IT consulting work
“While we rely on our vital industrial base to deliver cutting-edge technology and support, we must in-source more expertise and harness the unparalleled talent of our existing experts to drive financial efficiency and operational strength,” Hegseth wrote in the memo.
DISA will see 10 percent cut to workforce, agency chief tells lawmakers
“It's giving us an opportunity to ruthlessly realign and optimize how we are addressing what is an evolving mission," head of DISA Lt. Gen. Paul Stanton said about the cuts.
HASC approves $150B defense increase as GOP shuts down amendments to curb Hegseth, DOGE
Effectively untouched after about four hours of debate, the bill will now go to the House Budget Committee.
‘Blatant disregard’: Air Force, Senate panel face off over infrastructure spending
“We’ve got too much infrastructure, and oh, by the way, Congress passed a law that said they're going to expect us to pay double for that excess infrastructure that we don't want. We’ve got to fight that,” said Gen. David Allvin.
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Keeping sensitive information safe in a new AI era
Why edge and endpoint security can’t be an afterthought.
DOGE-related workforce cuts have left the Navy with a ‘big challenge,’ CIO says
“In some cases, we lost some people that we wanted to lose, but we lost some people that we didn't want to lose," CIO of the Department of the Navy Jane Rathbun said.
Navy Secretary axes contracts for fleet maintenance software, ‘DEI,’ climate in $300M purge
John Phelan's memos come only a few weeks after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth published a memo directing the termination of $5 billion worth of contracts.
Can Hegseth’s push to in-source IT consulting at the Pentagon actually happen?
Critics said the cost-saving instinct was valid, but parts of a new, sprawling mandate were “unrealistic.”
Hegseth slashes $5.1B in Pentagon contracts for IT consulting, ‘non-essential’ activities
A memo from the secretary of defense also directs the Pentagon's Chief Information Officer to prepare to negotiate more favorable cloud computing service deals.