Pentagon | Pakistan

Trump administration officials acknowledged in closed-door briefings with congressional staff on Sunday that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack United States forces first, two people familiar with the matter said. The US and Israel launched their most ambitious attacks on Iran in decades on Saturday, assassinating Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sinking Iranian warships and hitting more than 1,000 targets so far, officials say. But Sunday’s remarks to Congress appeared to undercut one of the key arguments for the war made by senior administration officials. They told reporters the day before that US President Donald Trump decided to launch the attacks in part because of indicators that Iranians might strike US forces in the Middle East “perhaps preemptively”. Trump, one of the officials said, was not going to “sit back and allow American forces in the region to absorb attacks”. Pentagon briefings lasted more than 90 minutes Pentagon officials briefed Democratic and Republican s...

US President Donald Trump said on Friday he is directing the government to stop work with Anthropic, and the Pentagon said it would declare the start-up a supply-chain risk, dealing a major blow to the artificial intelligence lab after a showdown about technology guardrails. Trump added there would be a six-month phase-out for the Defence Department and other agencies that use the company’s products. If Anthropic does not help with the transition, Trump said, he would use “the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow”. The actions mark an extraordinary rebuke by the United States against one of the premier companies that has kept it in the lead on national security-critical AI, threatening to give Anthropic a pariah status that Washington until now had reserved for enemy suppliers. Google and Amazon are among Anthropic’s financial backers. The moves further set a precedent that US law alone would constrain how AI is deployed on the battlefield, wit...

THE Defence Department has spent more than a year testing a device purchased in an undercover operation that some investigators think could be the cause of a series of mysterious ailments impacting US spies, diplomats and troops that are colloquially known as Havana Syndrome, according to four sources briefed on the matter. According to CNN, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, purchased the device for millions of dollars in the waning days of the Biden administration, using funding provided by the Defence Department, according to two of the sources. Officials paid “eight figures” for the device, these people said, declining to offer a more specific number. The device is still being studied and there is ongoing debate — and in some quarters of government, scepticism — over its link to the roughly dozens of anomalous health incidents that remain officially unexplained. CNN has asked the Pentagon, HSI and the DHS for comment. The CIA declined to comment. The devic...

The Trump administration is considering a Saudi Arabian request to buy as many as 48 F-35 fighter jets, a potential multi-billion-dollar deal that has cleared a key Pentagon hurdle ahead of a visit by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, two sources familiar with the matter said. A sale would mark a significant policy shift, potentially altering the military balance in the Middle East and testing Washington’s definition of maintaining Israel’s “qualitative military edge.” Saudi Arabia made a direct appeal earlier this year to US President Donald Trump and has long been interested in Lockheed Martin’s fighter, one of the people and a US official said. The Pentagon is now weighing a potential sale of 48 of the advanced aircraft, the US official and the person familiar with the talks told Reuters. The size of the request and its status have not been previously reported. The US official and a second US official, who acknowledged the weapons deal was moving through the system, said no final decision has been made and...

United States President Donald Trump ordered the US military on Thursday to immediately resume testing nuclear weapons after a gap of 33 years, minutes before beginning a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump made the surprise announcement on Truth Social while he was aboard his Marine One helicopter flying to meet Xi for a trade negotiating session in Busan, South Korea. He said he was instructing the Pentagon to test the US nuclear arsenal on an “equal basis” with other nuclear powers. “Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years.” The move comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that Moscow had successfully tested a nuclear-capable underwater drone, in defiance of Washington’s warnings. A senior Russian lawmaker said Trump’s de...

US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine on Sunday delivered a press briefing, providing details of the air strikes and bombing raids on Iranian nuclear facilities. US President Donald Trump said US air strikes on Sunday “totally obliterated” Iran’s main nuclear sites, as Washington joined Israel’s war with Tehran in a flashpoint moment for the Middle East. The US operation, called Midnight Hammer, was described by Gen Caine as the “largest B-2 operational strike in US history”, which inflicted “extremely severe damage and destruction” to the targets, US outlet CBS News reported. “This was a highly classified mission with very few people in Washington knowing the timing or nature of this plan,” Gen Caine said, adding that seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers flew east from their base in Missouri to participate in the mission in Iran. “At midnight, Friday into Saturday, a large B-2 strike package, comprised of bombers, launched from the continental United Sta...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday ordered a Pentagon review of the chaotic 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which has long been a target of Republican criticism. “I have concluded that we need to conduct a comprehensive review to ensure that accountability for this event is met and that the complete picture is provided to […]