Wars

Lt. Gen. Joseph Jarrard said U.S. military bases lack the sensors and counter-drone systems needed to detect and defeat swarm attacks. The warning follows recent remarks from Secretary of State Marco Rubio about unidentified aerial phenomena. Congress has pressed the Pentagon for a base-defense plan.

Jared Kushner held an hourslong meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel one day after speaking with Hamas representatives, in an effort to restart a stalled Gaza agreement. Israel agreed to form working groups on the Board of Peace's demilitarization plan, and sources said the two sides discussed a U.S. general overseeing the process. No breakthrough was announced.

The Pentagon announced a $22.9 billion contract with Raytheon for Tomahawk cruise missiles. The award follows heavy expenditure of the weapons during the Iran conflict. It is one of the largest munitions contracts of the year.

Sen. Jon Ossoff delivered an excoriating floor speech accusing President Trump of lying the nation into war with Iran, calling the conduct 'uniquely despicable.' The remarks came as the 60-day negotiation deadline lapsed. The White House dismissed the speech as political posturing.

President Trump threatened to bomb Oman if it 'gets in the way' of a deal with Iran, as the 60-day window for peace negotiations expired with the war still in stalemate. Oman has been holding its own talks with Tehran aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The White House has not said what follows the lapsed deadline.

A Russian court sentenced a prominent Kremlin critic to 11 years in prison for opposing the war in Ukraine. Prosecutors charged him under laws criminalizing the spread of false information about the military. Rights groups called the sentence one of the harshest yet handed to an anti-war figure.

Russia and Ukraine exchanged another round of deadly long-range strikes, with casualties reported on both sides. The attacks come as winter approaches and both militaries target energy and defense infrastructure. Neither side signaled movement toward talks.

The USS Washington is en route to the Middle East to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln, whose crew has been deployed for months amid reports of food shortages and broken plumbing. Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about conditions aboard. The Lincoln's deployment has run past 260 days.

President Trump said the United States will reduce joint military exercises with South Korea after Seoul declined to join the war with Iran, citing his 'very good relationship' with North Korea's leader. South Korean officials say they hope to open talks over the decision. Democratic lawmakers called the cuts inane and haphazard.

Lebanese authorities say Israeli strikes on several towns in the south killed eleven people, the deadliest day there in months. Israel described the targets as Hezbollah infrastructure rebuilt in violation of the ceasefire.

Ukrainian cruise missiles hit one of Russia's largest solid-fuel rocket motor plants, touching off fires visible from miles away. The strike extends a campaign aimed at the industrial base feeding Russia's missile arsenal.

Tehran dismissed as "delusions" President Trump's remark that the United States has total control of the Strait of Hormuz and might keep it, insisting the waterway "will remain Iranian." Iranian state media escalated the propaganda war with billboards promising revenge as the standoff over the shipping chokepoint hardens.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that Polish forces thwarted a Russian plot to assassinate an American citizen in Warsaw, describing it as an unprecedented act by Moscow on Polish soil.

After nearly a decade of complaining that modern electromagnetic launch systems are too complicated, President Trump signed a memorandum directing the Navy to strip them from aircraft carriers and revert to steam catapults. Officials and outside experts warn the reversal would carry a heavy price tag and years of redesign work, and Sen. Mark Kelly, a former Navy pilot, tore into the decision.

As sanctions tighten and a Strait of Hormuz deadline approaches, analysts warn that Iran could strike U.S. bases, ships and Gulf infrastructure this fall rather than absorb the economic squeeze quietly.

Thousands of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, deployed for more than 250 days in support of the Iran war, have reportedly faced food shortages and broken plumbing, with at least two crew members said to have tried to jump overboard. Democratic senators are demanding answers, the USS George Washington is heading out to relieve the carrier, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the reports are 'completely misrepresented.'

Ukrainian drone pilots destroyed an entire American tank brigade in a live war game, delivering hard battlefield lessons to the U.S. military and NATO about how quickly armor can be neutralized.

Russia has held an iron grip on Crimea since seizing it in 2014, and Russian civilians have long vacationed on its beaches. Now Ukrainian drone strikes by sky and sea are hitting the peninsula hard and upending everyday life there.

Trump told reporters the United States now has "total control" over the Strait of Hormuz and suggested Washington might hold the waterway indefinitely. The claim goes well beyond earlier administration statements that a reopening deal with Tehran was close. Roughly a fifth of the world's oil moves through the strait, and shipping insurers are still treating it as a war zone.

Ukrainian forces hit major grain export terminals at a Russian Black Sea port, damaging infrastructure that moves a significant share of Moscow's agricultural exports. The strike extends Kyiv's campaign against the economic machinery funding the war. Global wheat markets moved on the news.

Church leaders in Sudan describe a campaign of destruction and displacement as the civil war grinds on, with congregations scattered and buildings shelled or seized. Aid workers say Christian communities in contested regions are especially exposed. Relief efforts are struggling to reach them.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rejected the Trump-backed 15-point framework for Gaza, saying Israel will not begin any withdrawal until Hamas surrenders all of its weaponry. The plan had been the administration's most detailed attempt yet to pair disarmament with a phased Israeli pullback, and its rejection leaves the White House without an obvious path forward.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said between 30,000 and 50,000 North Korean soldiers are set to support Russian forces, a sharp increase over previous Western estimates. The figure suggests Pyongyang's involvement has moved well past the limited deployments described earlier in the war.

The Pentagon has asked defense contractors for plans to speed up weapons production as the Iran campaign burns through American munitions stockpiles at a rate that has drawn attention in Moscow and Beijing. Reporting also describes a clash between Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth at Camp David over missile depletion.

Sen. Chris Murphy said Israel is not aligned with American national security objectives, pointing to its conduct in Gaza and its posture during the war with Iran. Murphy said he still wants a strong U.S.-Israel relationship but argued the current arrangement is not serving American interests.

German police are investigating drone sightings over a military base reportedly used to store Patriot missile system components, days after a bomb incident in Leipzig. The pattern echoes a run of unexplained drone activity over European defense sites.

Russian forces will give up control of two strategic bases on Syria's Mediterranean coast under a new agreement, Syria's Foreign Ministry said. The sites will be converted into joint Russian-Syrian training centers, marking a significant reduction in Moscow's unilateral footprint in the eastern Mediterranean.

Iran said it is holding no direct negotiations with the United States and will not restart diplomatic talks until Washington meets a set of conditions, including an end to what Tehran calls violations of the Islamabad Memorandum. Oil prices climbed and equities slipped as markets absorbed the stalemate, while Trump described the current posture as trading talk of annihilation for economic pressure: 'We are low-keying it.'

Russian missiles struck communities on the outskirts of Kyiv overnight, killing three people including a child and wounding others. Ukrainian officials said air defenses intercepted part of the barrage but that residential buildings were hit.

Oleksiy Yukov spent years retrieving the bodies of fallen soldiers from both sides so families could bury them, work that earned him the name “collector of souls.” He was killed on the job, and Ukraine is mourning a man who insisted the dead still deserved dignity.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine is reportedly pressing for a negotiated exit from the conflict with Iran, citing sharply limited military options for a decisive outcome. The reporting suggests the uniformed leadership sees diplomacy, not escalation, as the more realistic path.

An unmanned aircraft believed to have come from Ukraine detonated in Bulgaria close to a natural gas pipeline near the Romanian border. The incident raises fresh concerns about the war’s spillover into NATO territory and European energy infrastructure.

Tehran signaled that an agreement over the Strait of Hormuz is within reach but warned it would not by itself reopen the world’s most important oil chokepoint. Iranian officials tied any full reopening to a broader ceasefire settlement that remains unresolved.

The U.S. Army relieved a senior general overseeing forces in Europe roughly two months before his tour was scheduled to end, according to two officials speaking anonymously. No public explanation was given. The abrupt removal comes as European commands absorb a widening list of Russia-linked provocations and a leadership shakeup across the services.

American intelligence assessments warn that Moscow may attempt a limited strike against a NATO member, calculating that a measured provocation could expose gaps in Article 5 and fracture the alliance rather than unite it. The warning arrives alongside a separate finding that an explosive-laden drone found near a German airport was Russian-owned.

After months of fits and starts, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to impose sweeping sanctions on Russia and Iran, passing a bill named for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, who spent years pushing it. The measure now heads to the House. Supporters call it the most significant economic pressure Washington has applied since the invasion of Ukraine began; skeptics question whether it arrives too late to change Moscow’s calculus.

In a single night at the end of July, more than 70 missiles and 280 drones struck a village outside Kryvyi Rih. Among the dead was a Christian family known throughout the small community for opening their home to neighbors. The account puts names to a barrage that was reported, at the time, only as a number.

Pakistan announced that an attack on any of the three signatories will be treated as an attack on all, formalizing a security bloc that spans the Gulf, Anatolia and South Asia. The pact lands amid open conflict in the Middle East and signals that regional powers are building their own guarantees rather than waiting on Washington’s.

Fighters from a breakaway faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North attacked Christian communities in the Nuba Mountains on July 24, killing one pastor and abducting another. Church leaders in the region say attacks on clergy have become methodical rather than incidental.

Troops from Operation Enduring Peace arrested a 48-year-old man suspected of taking part in an attack that killed at least 30 Christian residents of Naridon village in Kaduna State. Arrests in such cases are rare enough that local church leaders treated the news as significant in itself.

The Israeli military resumed its airstrike campaign against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon even as Israeli and Lebanese negotiators met in Rome for a second straight day. The split screen has become the defining feature of this round of talks.

President Vladimir Putin has selected the officer who will lead the Russian military's new drone warfare branch, formalizing a capability that has reshaped the war in Ukraine. The appointment signals that Moscow now treats drones as a service arm, not an experiment.

Police found a drone carrying explosives near Ukrainian cargo planes at a German airport, and a separate object later collided with a cargo aircraft in midair. Investigators are treating the two incidents as possibly linked.

A Russian missile and drone barrage across Ukraine's capital region killed at least 17 people, with Ukrainian officials saying depleted interceptor stocks left the country unable to blunt the attack. Kyiv renewed its appeal for more air-defense missiles as casualty counts rose through the day.

An IDF dog wearing a body camera entered a tunnel in southern Gaza and turned up dozens of rockets and other munitions. Paratroopers had stumbled on the tunnel while clearing the area above it.

The Army is carrying out a directive from War Secretary Pete Hegseth to curtail what he called "frivolous" anonymous reporting programs. Under the new rules, soldiers must identify themselves to Military Equal Opportunity officials when filing a complaint, though their identities will remain confidential within the process. Supporters say the change stops the weaponization of the system against commanders; critics say it will keep junior soldiers from coming forward at all.

The U.S. military has burned through nearly 80 percent of some key missile interceptors during the Iran conflict, and commanders are warning that stockpiles are now dangerously low, according to sources briefed on the numbers. A separate report says the Army has used virtually all of its long-range precision ATACMS and PrSM munitions. Patriot interceptors are under the same strain, with Russia and Iran firing missiles far faster than American factories can replace the rounds used to stop them.

Russia is trying to turn the Black Sea into "a second Strait of Hormuz," Ukraine's acting foreign minister warned, as strikes on Ukrainian ports and commercial vessels prompt shipowners to stop calling at the country's main maritime export corridor. The grain and metals moving through those ports are Ukraine's economic lifeline, and a sustained blockade would squeeze Kyiv's finances at the same moment the war is straining Western weapons stockpiles.

Ukraine says a video showing a remotely piloted Russian drone chasing a terrified civilian street vendor amounts to a war crime. The footage is the latest in what Ukrainian officials call a "human safari" in frontline cities, where cheap first-person-view drones are used to hunt individual noncombatants rather than military targets. Prosecutors say the practice has become systematic enough to document as a pattern rather than a series of isolated incidents.

Facing a drone threat that keeps getting cheaper, the Pentagon is poised to sign a first-of-its-kind contract for "Enduring High Energy Lasers," making directed energy weapons an official part of the Army's kit rather than a series of prototypes. The economics are the point: a laser shot costs a few dollars against drones that cost a few hundred. In parallel the Army has asked industry for a counter-drone missile that comes in under $150,000 apiece.