In a federal lawsuit, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, Battalion Search and Rescue and Southern Border Communities Coalition argue the Trump administration is misusing so-called “national defense areas” to circumvent longstanding restrictions on military participation in civilian law enforcement.

In a statement, Brian Netter, legal director at Democracy Forward, one of the teams representing the plaintiffs, called the “national defense area” designation “an extraordinary abuse of power with devastating consequences for the people who live, work, worship, recreate, and carry out lifesaving humanitarian work along the border.”

“Public lands do not become military installations simply because the president says so, and the military cannot be handed sweeping new authority to police civilians by drawing a line around land that belonged to the public,” he said, adding, “Our Constitution and laws impose clear limits on the use of the military for civilian law enforcement for a reason.”

The Trump administration began sending troops to the area in March 2025 to support border security and has since expanded the military’s presence along the border in other states. By April of that year, the Defense Department assumed jurisdiction over the 109,651 acres from the Department of the Interior.

The designation made the land, officially named the New Mexico National Defense Area, an expansion of Fort Huachuca for three years. The Defense Department said the designation allowed troops to detain people accused of trespassing in the military area after crossing the border illegally.

However, the lawsuit argues that the federal agencies exceeded their authority to transfer public land through emergency powers. “No statute authorizes the creation of ‘national defense areas,’ let alone permits carving one out of formerly public land,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit adds that the Defense Department has historically used such land restrictions only temporarily to protect people or property during accidents or emergencies.

“Creating a semi-permanent military zone along the southern border for purposes of immigration enforcement is directly contrary to the agency’s longstanding practice,” the lawsuit says.

Beyond alleging violations of federal law, the plaintiffs say the military zones are disrupting their work by limiting access to public lands used for recreation and conservation; supporting border communities; and providing humanitarian aid.

James R. Holeman, founder of Battalion Search and Rescue, said his organization leads volunteers who search for people in distress in remote areas and recover the remains of migrants who died crossing the border. Over the past three years, he said, the group’s monthly searches along the Arizona and New Mexico border have uncovered more than 100 death sites.

“Imagine how many more people could be found if we had the access, resources, and support to search systematically. Instead, we’re being locked out,” he said, adding that vast stretches of borderlands are “virtually inaccessible to humanitarian searchers” because of federal designations.

“Now the government is closing off even more territory. We don’t find weapons or drugs. We find Bibles, prayer cards, love notes, and the belongings of people simply trying to survive,” Holeman said. “There is no meaningful, systematic government effort to search for the missing and the dead. They don’t search, and now they’re preventing us from searching.”

At roughly 10:13 p.m., officers with the Prince William County Police Department responded to calls about property destruction near Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.

Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano, 27, was arrested at the scene and has been charged with felony destruction of property, trespass with intent to damage property, and felony injury to a monument, per the police department.

The alleged destruction via a sledgehammer has caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the historic military monument, police said.

Per the Washington Post, a second Marine from the statue is missing the bayonet from the rifle slung over his back, while a third figure’s helmet and face had been “chipped and gouged.”

The memorial was created in honor of Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph of U.S. Marines raising the flag over Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Feb. 23, 1945.

Austrian-born American sculptor Felix de Weldon, serving with the U.S. Navy at the time, was so moved by the image that he immediately constructed a scale model of the flag raising.

It would take him another nine and a half years to complete the full-sized model now standing in Arlington, Virginia. The smaller monument, allegedly defaced by Maldonado Soriano, stands near the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

Maldonado Soriano is being held without bond pending a court appearance.

During a review period from June 1, 2024, through May 31, 2025, the VA made at least one error in 17,900 cases, roughly 38%, regarding disability decisions for painful scars, according to a recent VA Office of Inspector General report.

920 of those decisions, per the report, led to millions in overpayment and will continue to accrue without “corrective action.”

For service-connected painful scars, as a result of burns, surgeries, shrapnel and gunshot wounds, among other sources, the VA requires a physical examination to support a veteran’s claim.

However, the OIG found that the Disability Benefits Questionnaire “does not clearly define objective versus subjective evidence.

Therefore, claims processors sometimes provided evaluations for painful scars without objective evidence to support the evaluations, which led to overpayments in disability compensation.”

In addition, the report found that physical manifestations of the disability were often evaluated under two separate diagnostic codes, often resulting in “pyramiding” and overpayment.

The report notes that more than a half-million veterans currently receive VA disability benefits for painful scarring caused or worsened by military service, but it took a random sample of 70 decisions from a review population of 47,300.

It further notes that the OIG took the findings to the VBA in February 2026 and following the briefing, “30 additional decisions completed from January 1 through January 31, 2026… identified a 43 percent error rate.”

The VBA, while agreeing with many of the OIG’s recommendations, including revising the “Scars/Disfigurement” section of the DBQ; ensuring employees understand how to accurately evaluate painful scars; and reviewing and correcting the processing errors on decisions the Office of Inspector General team identified, took issue with the statistical sample and the contextualization of those estimates.

“The OIG examined 130 decisions, representing approximately 0.27 percent of the total review population of about 47,300 decisions, and identified 60 errors, which form the basis for the projected 17,900 errors referenced throughout the report,” per VA comments in the report.

“Importantly, only seven of the 60 errors OIG found resulted in improper payments, which represents about 5.4 percent of the sample, and when viewed across the full review population, only about 0.015 percent of all decisions reviewed. The remaining 53 errors, more than 88 percent of the sample, were technical or procedural issues that did not result in improper payments.”

The VA is working to complete the OIG’s suggestions by February 2027 at the latest.

The Army wants contractors that can manufacture up to 10 barrels per month within three years, according to the Sources Sought notice. The deadline is Nov. 23.

Companies were asked to provide details of their ability — or their subcontractor’s capacity — to make barrels, including whether they could add “chrome bore coatings on a steel tube up to 30 [feet] long and up to 7,500 pounds in weight,” the notice said. They should also provide the maximum length and weight of tube that they could coat.

Also desired are details on a company’s boring, milling and rifling capabilities, as well as details on raw materials, such as “steel preform production, forging, guide bore, and heat treatment.”

The notice asks contractors to estimate their capacity to manufacture 155mm barrels within 18 months, and up to 10 barrels per month within 36 months. Companies should also offer a cost estimate for an “initial production quantity of 40 cannon tubes (broken down by caliber or indicating pricing for a combined/flexible mix),” the Army said.

Currently, the Army makes large-caliber barrels for howitzers and tanks only at the aging Watervliet Arsenal in New York.

While America and Europe have been focused on expanding production of howitzer ammunition to meet demand in the Ukraine war and replenish domestic stockpiles, another problem is a lack of manufacturing capacity to replace worn-out cannon barrels.

A 2024 Pentagon budget document stated that Ukraine’s heavy use of M777 howitzers created a demand for more than 30 M776 tubes per month, according to The War Zone. The document admitted that Watervliet could not keep up with demand, and asked for emergency funding to be transferred to enable a second manufacturer of barrels.

The new notice doesn’t mention how many additional barrel manufacturers are needed. However, the Army is exploring whether to replace the M777 with a weapon based on Korea’s popular K9 howitzer.

The framework, announced Thursday, includes initial spare parts plus 10 years of modification kits and sustainment. It also covers orders from foreign customers, with production continuing at 156 aircraft per year, according to Lockheed.

In exchange for the decade-long commitment, Lockheed will self-fund at least $7 billion in initiatives supporting the F-35 program, the Pentagon said.

“With the greater certainty that comes from the U.S. government’s transformative approach to F-35 production and sustainment, we can make the upfront investments needed to expand capacity, improve efficiency, and build a more resilient supply chain,” Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet said in a statement. “That’s good for the taxpayer, good for our suppliers and, most importantly, good for the United States and its allies.”

Neither announcement gave a total value or per-jet price. Lockheed said the F-35 Joint Program Office and the company will work out terms, pricing and schedules in a formal contract if Congress approves a multiyear buy and provides the money in the coming months.

A multiyear buy lets the Pentagon purchase a weapon across several years under one contract instead of negotiating annually, which generally lowers unit cost. Lockheed said the framework is expected to save taxpayers billions of dollars through “long-term pricing and industry volume discounts.”

“We have fundamentally changed how we stabilize the American defense industrial base to produce at speed and scale,” said Michael Duffey, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment. “This agreement with Lockheed Martin proves it. By aligning financial incentives with actual performance, we are ensuring our warfighters are equipped with the lethal capabilities they need to fight and win.”

Neither the Pentagon nor Lockheed described those performance-based incentives.

At 850 jets over 10 years, the framework averages 85 U.S. aircraft per year. That matches the Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 request for 85 F-35s across the services. In fiscal 2026, Congress funded just 47 F-35s.

The framework comes days after the Air Force told Congress it needs 1,509 combat-coded fighters, or jets assigned to combat units, by 2035. The request came in a force structure report sent Oct. 16. F-35As would make up about 40% of that fleet.

The House and Senate versions of the annual defense policy bill would both let the Pentagon sign multiyear F-35 contracts. The House passed its bill in July. Senate Democrats blocked theirs from reaching the floor that month, and leaders have put it off until after the November midterm elections. The framework can’t become a contract until both bills pass and are merged into a single law.

The framework also faces a funding hurdle. Congress has not yet approved a full-year defense budget. A stopgap funding law keeping the government open through Dec. 11 holds spending at last year’s levels and generally bars the Pentagon from starting new programs or multiyear buys.

Lockheed pitched the framework as a readiness fix, saying steady orders will improve the F-35’s mission-capable rate, the percentage of time jets can fly at least one assigned mission.

“Predictable demand from long-term contracts with suppliers will enable bulk procurement of raw materials and critical parts, slashing turnaround times and reducing logistics bottlenecks,” Lockheed said. “This will result in better mission-capable rates by eliminating the annual contracting cycle that has historically strained the industrial base.”

A Government Accountability Office report in June found that the rate fell from 67% in fiscal 2021 to 44% in fiscal 2025, while the share of time jets could fly all assigned missions dropped from 38% to 25%. Later that month, F-35 program chief Lt. Gen. Gregory Masiello told senators the fleet had outgrown its support system.

The F-35 deal follows a string of Pentagon framework agreements aimed at speeding up weapons production.

In January, Lockheed reached an agreement to speed PAC-3 MSE output, then signed another weeks later to quadruple THAAD interceptor production. The THAAD deal led to a contract worth more than $35 billion in June. Last year’s defense bills had already approved multiyear buys for both interceptors.

On Oct. 19, the Pentagon announced a framework with BAE Systems covering up to seven years of buys of Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System laser-guidance kits.

Lockheed said the program will support 317,000 U.S. jobs and roughly $79 billion in yearly economic activity over the decade.

Freed from Cold War-era constraints, the U.S. Army has been upgrading its existing missiles and rocket artillery and developing new, longer-range systems. Those investments are largely in response to the growing size and sophistication of China’s missile arsenal, which the U.S. military worries could deny its forces access to the Western Pacific during a conflict. The intensification of training with the Philippines and Japan reflects a shared concern about China’s military capabilities.

The emphasis on long-range fires in the first island chain is visible in the extended deployments and first-of-their-kind drills involving those weapons, especially the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. HIMARS can conduct land-attack and maritime-strike missions using guided rockets with ranges of a few dozen miles or ballistic missiles with ranges of a few hundred miles.

U.S. Army HIMARS operated in Japan for the first time in 2021 during an exercise in Hokkaido and were first deployed to Japan’s Southwest Islands, which separate the East China Sea from the wider Pacific, in 2022 for an exercise on an island northeast of Okinawa. Since then, HIMARS has been a common feature of U.S. exercises with Japan, most recently this year’s Keen Sword, for which Army HIMARS were sent to a Japanese island that is only 150 miles east of Taiwan.

The Army’s HIMARS has a longer history in the Philippines, but in recent years, U.S. and Filipino troops have employed it in new roles, such as anti-ship strikes, and in new parts of the country. Exercises in 2024 and 2025 saw HIMARS deployed to Palawan, facing the South China Sea, and to the northern coast of Luzon, facing Taiwan.

This year’s edition of Balikatan, the two countries’ largest annual exercise, showed their ability to move HIMARS around the country by land, sea and air: In April, U.S. soldiers and airmen transported a HIMARS to Itbayat, the Philippines’ northernmost municipality and only 100 miles from Taiwan, for a dry-fire exercise. A few weeks later, an Army watercraft transported a HIMARS launcher to Balabac Island, south of Palawan, for the first time for a live-fire exercise, which showed its ability “to protect shipping going into the Sulu and Celebes Sea,” the Army said.

The ability to move forces into and across the first island chain demonstrates alliance integration and sends a message to rivals, according to Gen. Ronald Clark, commander of U.S. Army Pacific. “It’s really a joint success story,” Clark said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. this month.

Clark pointed to a recent exercise for which soldiers loaded HIMARS launchers on aircraft at a base in Washington state and flew them to the Philippines, all of which was visible to adversaries. “We then join munitions from Korea that were drawn out of stocks there to the Philippines, where our adversary could see it, and then we conduct a live-fire on the backend of a HIMARS rapid-infiltration operation,” Clark added. “Being able to do that, it, one, takes a lot of skill. Second, it takes a tremendous amount of partnership with, in this case, allies to assist us.”

Clark said improving capabilities in increasingly complex exercises affects adversaries’ thinking. “To be able to conduct operational maneuver and have tremendous tactical effects that then have a strategic effect on our adversary is exactly what we were looking to gain, because what that does is it gives them pause.”

Over the past two years, the U.S. Army has introduced its Mid-Range Capability, a new ground-based missile system known as Typhon, to its training in the first island chain. Typhon can fire SM-6 missiles at air and maritime targets a few hundred miles away and Tomahawk missiles at land targets up to 1,000 miles away, bringing swathes of China and Russia into range from the Philippines and Japan.

Typhon’s first overseas deployment was in 2024 in the Philippines. It has remained there since then, and in May this year, it was test-fired for the first time, striking a target in central Luzon from nearly 400 miles away. The Army sent a Typhon to Japan for the first time in August 2025 for an exercise the following month, but the weapon lingered until November that year. It returned to Japan this summer, deploying to the southernmost of Japan’s main islands for exercises in June and September and moving to a base on Okinawa for storage in October. U.S. officials told Tokyo the deployment isn’t meant to be permanent, but it has no official end date.

The Typhon was sent to the Philippines at Manila’s request and “has maintained forward presence for now over 30 consecutive months,” Maj. Gen. Bernard Harrington said in a presentation at the AUSA conference. Harrington commands the recently established 7th Infantry Division/Multi-Domain Command-Pacific, which combines the 7th Infantry Division’s ground-maneuver elements with the long-range fires and non-kinetic effects of the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force.

Typhon’s presence in the Philippines has allowed for extended in-theater training, giving soldiers more insight into issues like “How do we sustain in the environment? How do you protect those types of systems in the environment? How do you connect sensor to shooter?” Harrington said in his presentation. “To be able to do that persistently forward and persistently with our ally in the Philippines and our partners is incredibly important for us.”

While the presence of HIMARS and Typhon in new places has been widely publicized, those deployments also create opportunities for U.S. troops to do less visible work to improve communications links and enhance their command-and-control networks, ensuring that friendly forces have a common operating picture of the battlefield and can use their weapons effectively in combat.

China has watched these developments warily. Beijing regularly criticizes U.S. exercises with Japan and the Philippines as provocative and destabilizing, and it has singled out Typhon deployments for vitriol. But experts cited by Chinese state media also say China has an advantage against weapons like HIMARS when they are deployed on islands near Taiwan because the islands’ small size and terrain will hinder mobility and concealment and their remoteness will make it easier to spot and block resupply efforts.

The logistical challenge is real. U.S. war games also emphasize the difficulty of resupplying small islands near Taiwan — but Harrington said it underscores the need for US forces to disperse and adopt lower-cost, lower-signature weapons alongside expensive missiles.

“This maximizes options for the Joint Force while also enhancing the protection and survivability of our soldiers,” Harrington told Defense News at AUSA. “For example, the employment of systems such as long-range one-way-attack drones, unmanned surface vessels, and long-range launched effects may enable our division to achieve a desired effect for the Joint Force while also preserving our larger, more exquisite systems until needed for a specific purpose.”

On Aug. 1, 1943, Lt. Ernie Poulson co-piloted the Consolidated B-24 Liberator on a low-level bombing run of an oil refinery in Campina — part of the deadly American aerial raid of the Ploesti oil fields, codenamed Operation Tidal Wave. His aircraft was one of 53 lost that day. Paulson and his crew crash-landed on a river bank and were taken captive by the Romanian home guard.

As they awaited their fate in that dank, dark pit, the young American airmen could hear a commotion above them. Suddenly, a trap door opened and a head appeared. A woman’s voice spoke to them in heavily accented English:

“Hello, boys. There are only friends here. Now come up and let us help you.”

Poulson and the others didn’t know it at the time but they had just been saved by a guardian angel. Princess Catherine Caradja, a member of Romanian royalty, was now responsible for their lives as the hell of World War II raged around them in Europe.

That scene is a pivotal moment in Adam Makos’ new book Tidal Wave: The Pilots, the Princess, and the Enemy Ace – A True Story of Courage and Survival in WWII. The bestselling author of World War II books A Higher Call and Spearhead details an amazing account of a little-known side story of the ill-fated mission to destroy “Hitler’s gas station.”

“That’s what the brass thought in 1943 when they sent those bombers into Romania at low level: wipe out Hitler’s refineries in one great raid,” Makos told Military Times.

“They said it would shorten the war by six months. The truth was, Operation Tidal Wave was the opening salvo in a campaign that took an entire year to knock Romania out of the war and deny Hitler its oil. It took more than 67 American missions — and 237 bombers lost — to batter Romania enough to cause regime change,” he added.

At the time, Romania was a reluctant ally of Germany. Ruled by a despotic fascist, the country had joined the Axis powers to fight its archnemesis, the Soviet Union. However, many in Romania were wary of the Nazis and favored the Allies.

One of those who believed the country was on the wrong side of the war was Princess Catherine. When the Chattanooga Choo Choo crashed on her estate, she took an active interest in the welfare of its crew, rescuing them from internment in a Luftwaffe POW camp.

Instead, Poulson and his men went to a safer Romanian prison camp where Princess Catherine could protect them. She even managed to have the camp commander replaced when he became too severe in his handling of the Americans.

Makos was tipped off to the story by Frederick W. Smith, founder of FedEx, who died in 2025. Smith told the author about Poulson and how his crew was aided by the Romanian princess. As the author investigated, he learned the B-24 copilot was still alive

“We found one of the last survivors of the 1,700 men that flew that mission in 1943. I was overjoyed,” says Makos, adding, “Ernie had a sharp mind and was physically fit. At 97, as he was telling me this story, you could tell he was still a tough guy.”

As the war progressed, more and more Romanians were killed in the senseless slaughter of the Eastern Front in Russia. Support for the Nazis weakened and in 1944, the country’s monarch — Michael I, who was king in name only — led a coup against the country’s dictator and flipped sides to join the Allies.

This enabled Romania’s leading fighter ace — Prince Constantin “Buzz” Cantacuzino, who hated the Nazis — to assist Allied airmen held prisoner in his country, including Lt. Col. James Alexander Gunn, the highest-ranking U.S. officer shot down in the Ploesti Raid.

In a Messerschmitt Bf 109 painted with two large American flags on its sides, Cantacuzino flew Gunn to safety in Italy. From there, the colonel helped plan the Operation Reunion rescue of more than 1,000 captured Allied airmen, including Poulson and his crew, in Boeing B-17 bombers converted into troop transports.

Buzz flew escort for the Flying Fortresses in a North American P-51 Mustang.

Like most of Makos’ books, the narrative doesn’t end with the guns falling silent. The author writes about how Princess Catherine and Poulson meet again years later in Europe, where the American learned just how much was at stake for his benefactor if she had been caught.

After the Communists seized control in Romania, Catherine escaped to America, where she lived in Texas with one of the airmen on Poulson’s plane: Richard Britt. Following the Romanian Revolution in 1989, the princess returned to her homeland, where she died at 100 in 1993.

“This is such an amazing story,” Makos says. “We were so lucky that many of the people involved wrote memoirs, so we were able to piece it together and triangulate all the incredible events for accuracy. I interviewed Ernie Poulson in 2018 to get his side of it. He played such a movie-like role in this story.”

Poulson later headed the Atlas missile program for the U.S. Air Force, retiring as a colonel in 1961. He then became a professor of business at the University of Utah. He died in 2020.

Tapping into unreleased family archives, diaries, letters and firsthand accounts, Makos crafts a fast-paced, action-packed narrative that ties together many important individuals and historic events into a personal story about World War II. By presenting this aspect of the Ploesti Raid, he says he is focusing on the brave men who sacrificed so much to stop the Nazi war machine.

“Some 310 of them gave their lives, and they did help bring about an earlier end to the most terrible war in human history. Are we a country that remembers our heroes, those audacious young men who flew into the jaws of hell? Or will they be just a footnote in history?

“That’s why I wrote Tidal Wave: to make sure their names and their story are known.”

Earlier this year, the Defense Department awarded a nearly $41 million development contract to Singapore-based iX Biopharma to develop Wafermine, a small, ketamine-packed wafer that dissolves under the tongue.

Recently, the drug’s manufacturer announced that it is pursuing an emergency authorization that could make the medication available to troops before it receives full Food and Drug Administration approval, citing a September U.S. declaration of a military emergency that justifies the emergency use of drugs deemed necessary by the Pentagon.

A federal emergency use approval declaration by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Sept. 3 opened the possibility of early official authorization, giving the FDA a route to use unapproved medications to treat war wounds.

According to the notice, on July 15, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth determined “a military emergency, or significant potential for a military emergency, involving a heightened risk to U.S. military forces of an attack with a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agent or agents,” or an attack with agents that would cause life-threatening injuries.

The declaration continues: “Injuries arising from these attacks may cause those forces to experience moderate to severe acute pain and place them at risk of developing life-threatening hemodynamic instability, including shock or respiratory distress.”

Because of Hegseth’s determination, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. declared that “circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use of drugs” identified by the Pentagon.

The notice did not elaborate on the emergency circumstances or state which drugs would be identified for emergency authorization.

A Politico investigation published Tuesday found that iX Biofarma’s domestic manufacturing partner lacks the Nevada license required to operate.

iX Biofarma called the non-opioid medication the “world’s first sublingual ketamine for acute moderate to severe pain,” and said the wafer enables a different delivery mechanism, letting patients absorb the ketamine through the mucous membrane into the bloodstream.

Typically administered via injection, ketamine can alleviate pain, increase euphoria and cause dissociation and amnesia.

A 2023 study found that opioid use to alleviate battlefield injuries decreased between January 2010 and December 2019, while ketamine use increased.

The researchers found that “ketamine is generally used first for more severely injured patients and has increasingly been employed by the U.S. military as the primary analgesic for combat casualties.”

The company said it received a “sole-source” award for Wafermine development, meaning it did not solicit other vendors.

In the complaint filed in federal court in the District of Columbia, Marine veteran Tristyn Edwards and active-duty Marine Morgan Stampfli allege that they experienced fraudulent charges on their financial accounts and an increase in spam messages because of the breach.

In September, the DMDC said it had discovered a vulnerability on July 16 in a file-sharing system that allowed unauthorized users to access unencrypted files containing personal information, including full names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and military occupations.

According to the lawsuit, the vulnerability exposed millions of files containing information on service members and people affiliated with the military for approximately nine months before it was discovered.

The lawsuit also alleges that the DMDC failed to “promptly notify” affected individuals, some of whom were informed two or three months after the breach was found.

“The exposure of Plaintiff and Class members’ PII will cause various types of misuse in the coming months and years, including but not limited to, unauthorized credit card charges, unauthorized access to email accounts, identity theft, and other fraudulent use of their Private Information,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit argues that the Pentagon violated federal privacy laws by failing to protect personal records and maintain compliant cybersecurity systems, despite internal warnings about issues in its systems.

The complaint cites multiple reports from the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General describing failures by both the department and the DMDC to implement adequate cybersecurity controls.

In a report published days after the breach, the OIG said that “officials have not taken the necessary actions to demonstrate that they were operating at an effective level for 14 of the 20 [Inspector General Federal Information Security Modernization Act] core metrics.”

News of the Defense Department breach emerged alongside reports of a cyberattack targeting FBI personnel files. However, the group responsible for the FBI incident has not been linked to the Pentagon breach. The department offered affected individuals 12 months of credit monitoring and identity-restoration services.

“Had [the Defense Department] properly implemented standard cybersecurity controls — such as regular review of accounts, scanning for vulnerabilities, field encryption or tokenization of sensitive PII like SSNs, and routine monitoring of system logs for suspicious activity — the Data Breach could have been avoided,” the lawsuit says.

The Government Accountability Office discovered that 29 of 64 efforts outlined in the Defense Department’s Responsible AI Strategy and Implementation Pathway remained incomplete as of April 2026.

According to a report published Oct. 14, the GAO also found that staffing shortages had hindered the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer’s ability to take additional steps to implement responsible AI, which the department uses to help accelerate AI adoption.

GAO recommended that the department address staffing needs in its Responsible AI Division, which falls under the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, and issue a formal charter for the working council.

“Responsible AI should be considered the same as operationally effective AI,” said Owen Daniels, associate director of analysis at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

Effective testing, evaluation, verification and validation practices can help the military manage risks while ensuring systems operate as intended and operators understand their strengths and limitations, Daniels said.

Council ‘at risk of lapsing’

The GAO found that the Responsible AI Working Council did not meet from late 2024 until August 2025.

Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, or CDAO, officials told the watchdog agency that other priorities, including developing guidance for generative AI and contributing to government-wide AI risk-management resources, had prevented the Responsible AI Division from organizing meetings.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., raised a related concern about accountability during a May 2025 hearing regarding the Pentagon’s AI posture.

“It’s my observation that the Defense Department doesn’t lack in the number of principals, but rather, it often struggles with too little clarity in who is responsible for what.”

Officials from four DoD components told the GAO they faced implementation challenges during the hiatus that could have benefited from greater collaboration.

Six of the 10 DoD components surveyed said sharing responsible AI resources and best practices would increase their ability to incorporate the department’s six Responsible AI tenets into their AI use cases.

The council resumed meetings in August 2025, but the GAO found it still lacked a formal charter defining its responsibilities and specifying how frequently it should meet.

“Without a charter that defines roles and responsibilities for the council … and that specifies the frequency of council meetings, the council is at risk of lapsing again,” the GAO report reads. “Such a lapse could increase the risk of DOD facing Responsible AI implementation issues that it would not have the collaborative capacity to swiftly and effectively resolve.”

Slow staffing

CDAO officials told the GAO they were unlikely to fill vacant positions or increase staffing while the office underwent restructuring, following its realignment to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

In response, the GAO argued that “by … taking action to ensure it has staff in place to meet those needs,” CDAO could make better progress toward its goal of accelerating AI across the department.

Daniels said the staffing shortfall could make it more difficult to build AI literacy throughout the force.

“Operationally, the force needs to become AI literate, as warfighters will be responsible for determining when to deploy AI-enabled systems,” he said.

Service members need to understand AI systems’ limitations and recognize when delegating decisions to machines may be inappropriate, rather than defaulting to a machine’s judgment, Daniels said.

“Exercising meaningful human control — or to use the department’s term, appropriate levels of human judgment — over a military AI system requires robustly understanding a system’s operating boundaries through development, rigorous testing and evaluation, and training,” he said.

Congress’ role

The DoD agreed with the GAO’s two recommendations to issue a charter for the Responsible AI Working Council and address the Responsible AI Division’s workforce needs, according to the watchdog.

The GAO also urged Congress to order the department to implement earlier recommendations, including defining the responsibilities of organizations involved in AI activities and assigning responsibility and a timeline for identifying and managing the department’s AI workforce.

In a Sept. 21 letter, Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., Mark Warner, D-Va., and Chris Coons, D-Del., expressed concern that the Pentagon’s AI push could be outpacing its governance efforts.

“Recent events have given us growing concern about the extent to which agencies under your oversight have prioritized acceleration of AI capability adoption and ‘experimentation’ over effective governance,” the letter reads.

Reed has also called for Congress to establish clearer guardrails for military AI.

“Congress must do its job and provide balanced oversight, standards, and rules of the road,” he said.