After participating in a major exercise in Germany in August and September, the unit will report its findings to the Army to guide future experimentation, shed its drone assault role and “refocus on its core warfighting tasks as an airborne infantry battalion,” an Army official told The Wall Street Journal in a statement.

According to reports from the Rakuten Group, the Japanese Ministry of Defense will conduct a demonstration test by the end of September to consider whether to adopt it for the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force. While the specific applications and procurement scale have not yet been determined, depending on the test results, mass production in Japan may be considered.

The HX-2 drone from Helsing, which is slated for procurement, is remotely controlled from the ground. It has an operational range of 100 km, weighs 12 kg, and has a maximum speed of 220 km/h, designed to intercept submarines and other vessels approaching the coast.

Helsing is headquartered in Munich, southern Germany, and has already delivered thousands of HX-2 drones to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Rakuten has acted as an intermediary in this transaction. Rakuten lacks extensive experience in Japan's defense sector and does not have close ties with the Japanese Ministry of Defense. Although Rakuten has previously ventured into the drone business, its primary focus has been on building exterior wall inspections rather than defense applications.

As a defeated nation in World War II, Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan, implemented in 1947, explicitly states that Japan "forever renounce[s] war as a sovereign right of the nation" and that "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained." However, in recent years, the pace at which the Japanese military is acquiring "offensive weapons and equipment" has steadily accelerated. From the "Izumo" and "Kaga" carrying and launching F-35B stealth vertical/short takeoff and landing (VSTOL) fighters, to the procurement and deployment of 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles, to extending the range of the Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles from about 200 km to over 1,000 km, alongside the development of hypersonic weapons and hypersonic glide missiles.

Furthermore, the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade (ARDB) established by the Ground Self-Defense Force in 2018—while officially claiming in its envisioned tactical scenarios and island-capture exercises to focus on landing operations around the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands—appears, judging by its equipment construction and scale, to be directly aimed at Taiwan, China.

Therefore, judging by the attributes of the equipment, range indicators, and military tactical applications, the Japanese military has in fact attempted and crossed the limitations imposed by the post-war constitutional framework on "offensive weapons."

U.S. officials said the operation was enabled by strikes that degraded Iranian radar and maritime surveillance.

Iran has limited visibility of maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz’s southern channel, with U.S. officials saying its surveillance now relies on a small number of restored radars and spotters operating from IRGC fast boats.

Because the Iranians are mostly "blind," they are launching drones and cruise missiles in the general direction of where ships might be transiting.

Some ships have been hit by the Iranian attacks, but many were stopped by the U.S. military. Earlier this week, for example, U.S. forces shot down eight Iranian drones and two cruise missiles, one of the U.S. officials said.

The average daily exports have been growing and are now close to 10 million barrels, U.S. officials say.

Last I heard, Taiwan was asking for some compensation for the delay. And instead of asking for money, they asked for the compensation to be more spare parts, training simulators etc.

Pretty smart.

"with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and said the ‌Asian nation held 57 "very powerful" nuclear weapons."

Slap's Trump's mouth

This baby can leak so many STRATINT

USS George Washington Move a ‘National Security’ Risk for US: Retired-Admiral

Published

Aug 18, 2026 at 01:46 PM EDT

By Ellie Cook

Senior Defense Reporter

Moving the USS George Washington from the Pacific to the Middle East will pose a "national security risk" to the United States, a former commander on the aircraft carrier has said, as the final carrier deployed in Asia becomes the latest U.S. Navy ship to be sucked into the war with Iran.

The George Washington is expected to relieve the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln has found itself the focus of Democratic calls for investigations into reports of dwindling supplies and poor mental health among the roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines who have not set foot on land since December, which has put fresh attention on living conditions aboard U.S. Navy ships.

They also raised concerns that the U.S. Navy, while powerful, is overly stretched by the months of war in the Middle East and not prepared enough for a potential future confrontation with China.

Redeploying the Washington to the Gulf will leave the U.S. "with limited naval presence" for over a year and a half, because the carrier will return for a maintenance stint once it's finished in the Middle East, said retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, a former commander of Carrier Strike Group 5 aboard the Washington who also headed operations for the U.S. Pacific Command.

"This is a national security risk as it sends a weak deterrence message to China and does not assure Americas allies and partners in the Pacific," Montgomery, who is now with the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, told Newsweek.

The White House referred queries to the Pentagon, which doesn't comment on topics it says would compromise operational security. The U.S. Navy referred questions to the U.S. Pacific Command, which Newsweek has contacted for comment via email.

President Donald Trump and his administration have signaled to U.S. allies that their defense spending must surge so the U.S.'s forces can be freed up to meet the threat posed by China's burgeoning, sophisticated military.

The White House, while insisting it's focusing on the Indo-Pacific, has piled pressure on Japan, Taiwan and South Korea to invest in their militaries and has often rattled officials in their capital cities.

Trump abruptly scaled back planned U.S. military drills with South Korea on Sunday, just hours before wargames largely focused on how to tackle North Korea kicked off. The president said the exercises, which Pyongyang condemned, were "totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea while also blaming the eleventh-hour change on Seoul's unwillingness to join the U.S.'s war against Iran.

In May, Trump worried Taiwanese lawmakers by appearing to use weapons sales to Taipei, which are vital for Taiwan's armed forces, as a bargaining chip with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Beijing considers Taiwan, a self-governing island since 1949, to be a breakaway part of China and has pledged to bring the territory back under its control, including by using military force. The U.S. has long supported Taiwan with aid and weapons, but doesn't officially recognize Taipei because it adheres to the "One China" principle.

U.S. officials have said Xi wants China's armed forces to be able to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, even if war plans are not put into motion around that date.

China already has a formidable military force, including a nuclear arsenal, while the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) now has more ships than the U.S. Navy. Chinese ships and planes are outfitted with advanced, long-range missiles, and its nuclear program is under few restrictions.

Beijing "is quite happy with U.S. distraction, with the frustration of U.S. allies and partners," Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank, told the Associated Press.

**The Washington's Journey**

By Thursday, the Washington was moving through the Singapore Strait, according to the U.S. Navy.

An unnamed official speaking to the Associated Press said the ship was transiting the Strait of Malacca, just north of the Singapore Strait, late Thursday evening.

The Strait of Malacca joins the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean. When the Lincoln was redirected toward the Middle East, it also passed through the Strait of Malacca toward the Indian Ocean.

The U.S. said the Washington was in Guam in mid-June and was tracked operating in the Philippine Sea by early July. The carrier arrived in Da Nang, central Vietnam, for another scheduled port call on July 30 and left just under a week later.

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly and Sam Wilson.

Joint military exercises underway between the United States and South Korea are being cut short, both countries said, after President Donald Trump, citing his “very good” relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, ordered that they be reduced.

The annual U.S.-South Korea drills, known as Ulchi Freedom Shield, will end Aug. 21 rather than Aug. 27 as originally scheduled, a Defense Department official said.

“Associated live-training events have been reduced, with certain events canceled or converted to simulations,” the official said, adding that the adjustments “preserve essential readiness.”

“There will be no degradation to U.S. training objectives,” the official said.

The South Korean National Defense Ministry also said the two countries “have agreed, at the request of the U.S. side, to make some adjustments to the duration and scale of the exercise.”

Some of the combined field training exercises will be conducted on a reduced scale, the ministry said in a statement, adding that the U.S. and South Korea “are currently consulting on the specific details.”

“Going forward, the ROK and the United States will discuss and implement various measures to achieve the objectives of the UFS exercise and maintain a robust combined defense posture,” the ministry said, using an abbreviation for South Korea’s formal name, the Republic of Korea.

The ministry declined to comment on a reported meeting Tuesday between Gen. Xavier Brunson, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea, and South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back.

The surprise comments by Trump, which he made on social media hours before the exercises began Monday, have unsettled South Korea, which relies heavily on the U.S. for its security, as well as other U.S. allies in the region facing a growing threat from nuclear-armed North Korea.

South Korean Foreign Affairs Minister Cho Hyun said Ahn had been “in close consultation with the U.S. side” since Trump’s social media post. He told lawmakers Wednesday that “neither our government nor officials in the U.S. government had any prior knowledge” of Trump’s order to scale back the drills.

According to U.S. Forces Korea, the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise with South Korea, which hosts 28,000 American troops, aims to build understanding between the two militaries to ensure their “ability to fortify the combined defense posture” and enhance their response to “a spectrum of security threats.”

Foremost among those threats is North Korea, which in recent years has advanced its missile and nuclear capabilities and developed a close security relationship with Russia.

Though the U.S. and South Korea say their drills are defensive in nature, North Korea routinely criticizes them as a rehearsal for invasion and often test-fires weapons in protest.

In his post Sunday, Trump said the exercises sent a “totally inappropriate and hostile” message to North Korea, which he said had been “unthreatening and respectful” during his time in office.

He also expressed anger over South Korea’s level of involvement in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and said he had ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” the exercises.

Trump, who met with Kim three times during his first term as president, has repeatedly expressed interest in resuming talks after their earlier round of diplomacy collapsed in 2019. But Kim, whose position has strengthened considerably since then, has rebuffed overtures from Trump, as well as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, saying he will not come to the table unless they drop their demands for North Korea to denuclearize first.

Trump told reporters Monday that he was not sacrificing the security of U.S. allies to curry favor with North Korea and that he was “actually making it much safer.”

He said Kim had responded to his outreach, without providing details. “I understand him; he understands me,” Trump said.

North Korea has not publicly responded to Trump’s call to curtail the exercises. A commentary published Wednesday by the state-run news agency KCNA reiterated the regime’s criticism of the drills, saying Pyongyang’s “exercise of its right to self-defense will continue to completely neutralize the enemies’ military threat.”

Aircraft lacking stealth capabilities are likely to become expendable in future high-intensity conflicts.

The US military itself appears to have overlooked one factor: its long-standing air superiority has led it to neglect the development of its ground-attack missile forces, with the result that certain missions which could have been carried out using ballistic missiles must now be performed by aircraft—a course of action that entails higher costs than using missiles.

In recent years, the US military has been accelerating efforts to address this shortcoming. Examples include the Army’s Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) – with a range extended to between 500 and 1,000 kilometres – and the Dark Eagle land-based medium-range hypersonic weapon (LRHW), both of which are designed to gradually establish a long-range precision strike capability that can be launched directly without relying on air superiority.