Section
Defense
Lawmakers press Trump on Taiwan after Xi summit
Lawmakers urged Donald Trump to clarify support for Taiwan after he left Beijing without resolving a delayed arms package, turning summit optics into an immediate test of deterrence policy.
Trump stays open on Taiwan weapons after China trip
Trump said after his China trip that he had not decided whether to approve more weapons for Taiwan, leaving a pending package in limbo after the Xi summit.
Pentagon abruptly cuts US combat forces in Poland, officials say
The Pentagon has abruptly canceled the deployment of an armored brigade combat team to Poland, cutting US combat power on NATO's eastern flank by nearly half as the Trump administration accelerates a drawdown of American forces across Europe.
Hegseth faces bipartisan fire over $29bn Iran war cost as Congress demands exit plan
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faced a bipartisan grilling in back-to-back House and Senate Appropriations hearings as the Pentagon disclosed the cost of the 11-week Iran war had climbed to $29 billion with no clear end game.
China Gains Major Edge on US Amid Iran War, Intelligence Report Finds
A classified US intelligence assessment prepared for the Joint Chiefs chairman warns that China is exploiting America's war with Iran to gain military, economic and diplomatic advantage.
Hegseth targets Kelly as alarm grows over US missile stockpiles
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has threatened a Pentagon legal review of Senator Mark Kelly after the Arizona Democrat disclosed concerns about US munitions depletion in the Iran conflict, a move national security experts called a diversion from the substance of the stockpile problem.
GOP presses Hegseth on Iran war munitions, costs
Defense Secretary Hegseth pushed back on GOP concerns about Iran war munitions, saying the Pentagon has plans for escalation and exit.
Pentagon $1.5tn budget pushes weapons makers to fund their own factories
The Trump administration's $1.5 trillion defence request would force contractors to fund their own factory expansions and meet binding production targets under multi-year deals lasting up to seven years. The framework targets the Valley of Death gap between prototype and fielded weapons.
Trump eyes Italy and Spain for next round of NATO troop cuts
President Trump is weighing further US troop withdrawals from Europe, with Italy and Spain in the frame after 5,000 service members were pulled from Germany. Allied capitals are bracing for the announcement and coordinating contingency plans as Madrid faces particular pressure.
NATO braces for deeper Trump troop pullback after Germany cuts
European allies expect President Donald Trump to follow his 5,000-troop withdrawal from Germany with cuts in Italy and Spain, possibly scrapping a planned long-range missile deployment and rerouting forces to Poland. Diplomats see the moves as punishment for allies that refused help in the Iran war.
Pentagon puts Iran war cost at $25 billion, defends $1.5 trillion budget
Pentagon Acting Comptroller Jules Hurst III told the House Armed Services Committee on April 29 that the U.S. has spent about $25 billion on its war against Iran, mostly on munitions. Senate Democrats called the figure lowballed and put the actual running cost at $40 billion to $50 billion.
Taiwan parliament passes $24.8bn special defense budget to deter China
Taiwan's parliament approved a NT$780 billion special defense budget on Friday, granting President Lai Ching-te a significant portion of the military spending he requested before his planned trilateral meeting with Trump and Xi in Beijing.
Trump orders Pentagon to release UFO files, says public can decide for themselves
President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the Pentagon to release a trove of classified UFO files, including 120 PDFs, 28 videos and 14 images, telling Americans “the people can decide for themselves, ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’”
Pentagon awards Scale AI a $500m contract to sift battlefield data
The Pentagon has awarded Scale AI a $500 million contract to help process battlefield data and assist in operational decision-making, a five-fold expansion of a $100 million deal struck in September 2025 and the latest sign that the US military is wiring its planning workflow into Silicon Valley.
Vance presses Trump on Iran war intel as US missile stockpile fears mount
Vice President J D Vance has privately pressed President Donald Trump on whether the Pentagon is giving the White House an accurate read of the Iran war, including the scale of US missile-stockpile depletion. The report opens a rare crack in the administration's national-security discipline.
Inside Anduril: how a quiet engineer-CEO is building America's $31bn defense startup
Brian Schimpf, the soft-spoken former Palantir engineer who co-founded Anduril with Palmer Luckey in 2017, runs a $30.5 billion private weapons company whose Lattice software is being written into nearly every major Pentagon counter-drone program.
US ships $2.1bn in cheap APKWS rockets to Israel, Qatar and UAE as Iran war drains stockpiles
The State Department on May 1 cleared three emergency foreign military sales totalling $2.1 billion for the APKWS guided rocket, a Korean War-era weapon retrofitted as the West's cost-effective answer to Iranian Shahed drones. Israel and Qatar each get 10,000 rounds; the UAE gets 1,500 air-to-air guidance sections.
Taiwan defense budget stalls for third time as Trump-Xi summit nears
Taiwan's ruling and opposition parties on Tuesday failed for the third time to break a deadlock over a NT$1.25 trillion ($40 billion) special defense budget, with the latest negotiation collapsing days before US President Donald Trump's mid-May trip to China for a summit with Xi Jinping.