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.
A look at some of the top stories that defined the air warfare beat this year.
Jane Rathburn wrote about her exit online, but did not disclose why she made the move.
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.
“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."
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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
Effectively untouched after about four hours of debate, the bill will now go to the House Budget Committee.
“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.
“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.
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.
Critics said the cost-saving instinct was valid, but parts of a new, sprawling mandate were “unrealistic.”
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.