• Trump's Navy secretary nominee said the President texts him in the middle of the night about rusty warships.
• Phelan said Trump sends him pictures of worn ships asking him what he's going to do about it.
• During his first term, the President was said to be very focused on the look of warships.

President Donald Trump's pick for US Navy secretary said multiple times on Thursday that he receives late-night texts from the President about rusty warships.

"I jokingly say that President Trump has texted me numerous times very late at night — sometimes after one in the morning," John Phelan, a businessman tapped to lead the Navy, told lawmakers during his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing.

He said that the president's late-night messages are about "rusty ships or ships in a yard, asking me, what am I doing about it?" Phelan added that he's told him, "I'm not confirmed yet and have not been able to do anything about it, but I will be very focused on it."

Later in the hearing, Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, showed Phelan a recent picture of the destroyer USS Dewey covered in rust and asked him how he felt about it.

He responded: "Please don't give it to President Trump because I'll get a text at like, one in the morning." He added he thought the rusty warship looked terrible and suggested that the Navy "should be ashamed."

And that wasn't the last mention of it. Toward the end of the hearing, he noted Trump's urgency in addressing problems in the Navy. He said that "the president did text me, I think it was 1:18 in the morning, of like three Rusty ships in a yard and said what are you doing about this."

The brown streaks of rust sometimes seen on Navy vessels are a sign of corrosion. It is a constant battle for Navy warships and their crews, and that fight is sometimes lost amid high operational tempos or maintenance delays, among other challenges.

The questions to Phelan were part of the committee's concerns about how the nominee plans to address the US Navy's shipbuilding and maintenance issues, which include critical industrial base problems and severely delayed projects, such as the Pentagon's priority submarines.

Phelan said one of his top priorities is to fix this shipbuilding issue, which is aligned with Trump's focus as well.

The White House did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the texts Phelan mentioned. The texts would be on brand for the president, who took a keen interest in the look of Navy warships in his first term.

In particular, he zeroed in on the new frigates and Ford-class carriers, calling some of the ship designs "terrible-looking" and "horrible."

The president's former defense secretary, Mark Esper, wrote previously that Trump would gripe about the first-in-class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, saying that the island "looks really bad." He also said Trump said US warships were "ugly" compared to Russian vessels.

In June 2020 near the end of his first term, Trump jokingly took credit for the look of the first of the Navy's guided missile frigate vessels.

"The ships that they were building, they look terrible," the president said, adding that when he looked at the design, he said, "That's a terrible-looking ship, let's make it beautiful." He said he eventually received a "beautiful model" of the frigate that he called "like a yacht with missiles on it."

Beyond the appearance of warships, Trump has also complained about ship engineering, most recently criticizing advanced systems on the Ford.

• New NATO naval drones are being put to the test in the Baltic Sea.
• The uncrewed surface vehicles are part of the alliance's efforts to deter aggression and sabotage.
• The new Task Force X is reminiscent of the US Navy's Task Force 59 efforts.

The NATO alliance has been testing new Task Force X naval drones in the strategic waters of the Baltic Sea, showing off the new capabilities of these uncrewed systems.

The drones are intended to help the allies keep an eye on Russia's activities in the region and deter the potential sabotage of critical undersea infrastructure such as data cables.

NATO Allied Command Transformation announced the drone demonstrations Wednesday, saying they "signal a significant step forward in integrating unmanned surface vessels, commonly referred to as USVs, to bolster NATO's ability to safeguard critical infrastructure and maintain security in an increasingly complex environment."

French Adm. Pierre Vandier, the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, said Task Force X will fill surveillance gaps in the region. Bart Hollants, an official from NATO's Allied Command Transformation Branch, called it "the first tangible results" of NATO's efforts to curb security threats in the Baltic.

The demonstration involved NATO maritime assets, including from the Royal Danish and German navies, testing how drones work together with crewed vessels. The testing activities included tactical maneuvering exercises like live-fire events with the goal of integrating drones into NATO's naval forces.

NATO announced its plans to establish Task Force X and employ naval drones in late January. The aim of the project is to counter and deter state and non-state actors from sabotaging undersea cables, as well as curb potential Russian aggression.

Task Force X is working to field "a fleet of maritime autonomous systems to provide persistent surveillance, detect and track potential threats, and enhance situational awareness," NATO said. "This approach offers a cost-effective and rapidly deployable solution to counter Russian aggression."

The move came after several incidents in which undersea cables in the Baltic were damaged by vessels linked to Russia and China.

These troubling incidents were suspected of being part of Russia's ongoing hybrid and irregular warfare tactics against Western European nations, gray-zone tactics below the threshold of armed conflict. Other recent examples include Russian interference in European elections and misinformation campaigns.

Concern about the targeting of critical undersea cables and related infrastructure has led NATO to take action. NATO's new Task Force X, the alliance said, is similar to the US Navy's Task Force 59, an initiative fielding naval drones in the Middle East.

Task Force 59 is a first-of-its-kind Navy initiative started in September 2021. Since then, the task force has conducted at least 35 bilateral and multilateral exercises, operating drones at sea for more than 60,000 hours across the Middle East.

Both the US Navy and NATO's efforts speak to the growing employment of uncrewed systems and, to some degree, autonomy in surveillance and deterrence roles. In both cases, the drones are intended to give military forces more options for missions, as well as a wider reach in troubled waters.

There are still plenty of unknowns about how these systems will be further integrated into naval warfare for both the US and NATO, though. Ukraine's use of drone boats to pummel Russia's Black Sea Fleet has been a notable win and asymmetric element in the war in Ukraine.

"The integration of autonomous systems also raises important issues such as command and control, data security, and the ethical implications of using artificial intelligence in warfare," NATO said in its release on the testing. "NATO is aware of these issues and is developing safeguards and protocols to ensure the responsible use of these technologies."

• President Trump's nominee for Navy secretary said the service's shipbuilding problem is a top challenge.
• Phelan said he wanted to examine the core issues, particularly with the Navy's submarine projects.
• US shipbuilding issues are multifaceted and not easily solvable.

President Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of the Navy offered up his vision for fixing the sea service's submarine construction shortfalls on Thursday.

A bunch of Navy shipbuilding projects are delayed, with a Navy review finding last year that the Block IV Virginia-class attack submarines are years behind schedule. The new Columbia-class ballistic missile subs are also dragging. Submarines are considered a Trump administration priority, as well as a key capability the US needs to confront top adversaries.

The president's nominee for SECNAV said that Trump's priorities are clear: "shipbuilding, shipbuilding, shipbuilding." He also said the Navy is "at a crossroads," grappling with "systemic failures" that include inadequate maintenance, massive cost overruns, and delayed shipbuilding.

Early in his confirmation hearing Thursday, John Phelan, a businessman with no prior military experience, was asked what he plans to do to get the submarine construction programs back on track.

Phelan, who identified Navy shipbuilding as a top challenge in his answers to advanced policy questions, wants to start by reinvigorating the US industrial base. 

"That could come from a couple of different angles," he said.

Phelan pointed to several ideas from the SHIPS Act, such as incentivizing the private sector to invest in shipyards and helping make a shipbuilding career attractive to skilled workers with competitive pay. He also said there were some lessons to learn from foreign shipyards, something previous Navy secretaries have highlighted as well.

On submarines, Phelan said the priority Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarine is critical. He said he needed to examine the "root cause analysis" of the delays and cost overruns on the major programs, including in industry.

"I do think we need to analyze ways to create more competition for some of the components" for the submarines, he said, and that comes from working with and incentivizing the private sector.

"What you want to try to do is make it so that the private sector, you make the pie bigger, and so they can have a smaller slice of a bigger pie," he said. "And I think if we can create the right incentives, that's the right way."

In answers to pre-hearing questions, Phelan said he wanted to "push for a more agile, accountable, and flexible shipbuilding strategy by streamlining procurement, enhancing budget flexibility, strengthening partnerships with the defense industrial base, and holding contractors accountable for cost and schedule overruns." He also said modernization with the help of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence is key.

During the hearing, Phelan, who highlighted his experience as a businessman as a complement to Navy expertise already available in the department, said he is "candidly fearful" for what he will discover once he starts reviewing contracts.

He added that if confirmed, he wants to return to the concept of shared risk, saying that while it's okay for the private sector to make a profit, it should be based on their share of the risk.

General Dynamics Electric Boat, which is building Virginia-class and Columbia-class submarines, announced earlier this year that it plans to hire 3,000 additional workers in 2025, building on the expansion of its workforce.

A complex problem

At Phelan's confirmation hearing, Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi and the committee chairman, didn't mince words when describing the Navy's shipbuilding problems.

"If we threw a zillion dollars at the Department of the US Navy today, we couldn't build the ships because we don't have the industrial base. We've got to fix that," he said.

Navy officials, industry leaders, and experts have said that US shipbuilding problems are complex and not easily solved.

Many top Navy projects are seriously over budget and behind schedule. While the Navy has attributed these delays and overruns to COVID's lasting impact on the workforce and supply chain, the problems run deeper.

Many issues stem from the post-Cold War slowdown in Navy ship demand, which shrunk industry and the workforce, ultimately hollowing it out. Industry leaders have said the long-term consequences of that left them with less experienced shipbuilders and uncertainty, making it hard to produce ships at scale.

The increasing complexity and sophistication of Navy warships exacerbates that challenge, as do shifting requirements.

The US Government Accountability Office has said inconsistent demand signals from the Navy have been a major problem for industry and shipyards, often involving changing the number of ships ordered or scrapping entire programs altogether.

Speaking Thursday, Phelan identified budget shifts, cost, and spending transparency as major issues he'd tackle, which falls in line with both Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's priorities for the military and broader government.

The budget for the Pentagon is a bit of a moving target at the moment. Hegseth has ordered the military to reallocate $50 billion to Trump priorities by pulling funding for certain legacy programs. The cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has also been invited in to find fraud and waste in the Pentagon.

That could involve sacking thousands of probationary employees within the Department of Defense. During Phelan's hearing, senators expressed concern about how the cuts could affect the Navy's public shipyards. Outside of the hearing, other lawmakers have likewise taken issue with the cuts.

Rep. Joe Courtney, a Connecticut Democrat, wrote a letter to Hegseth Thursday outlining "the danger of your department's disastrous layoff plans" and expressing his concerns over how they could impact firefighters at the Navy's Naval Submarine Base New London in Connecticut, home to a bulk of the Navy's submarine force.

Courtney said firefighters are "an essential component of force readiness and safety," handling emergencies such as shipboard fires, hazardous material incidents, medical emergencies, and mutual aid support. "Reducing their numbers in the name of efficiency does not enhance our military readiness," Courtney wrote. "It weakens it."

• Radically reinventing the Air Force won't win a future fight, its director for force design said.
• The Air Force has been analyzing and wargaming what it'll need to defeat a top adversary.
• The service is now prioritizing how to tailor systems for countering very specific threats.

New fighter jets or bombers won't be enough to win the next war, the US Air Force director for force design, integration, and wargaming said this week.

Instead, the service needs to focus on what specific threats top adversaries like China or Russia pose to Air Force operations to tailor solutions for defeating them.

At a Hudson Institute event on Wednesday, Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, who oversees force design for the Air Force, talked about how the service is evolving its capabilities and strategies at what other leaders have described as a critical time.

Kunkel said that the Air Force has been on a decade-long journey to redesign and reinvent. That conversation started like this: "We probably just need to look at new fighters. We've always had fighters, so let's look at new fighters, and we've always had bombers, so let's look at new bombers."

The US military has fielded new fighters, such as the Boeing F-15EX Eagle II and the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, and new bombers, like the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider.

But just upgrading to next-generation aircraft isn't enough to prepare the US Air Force and larger Joint Force for future warfare. "When we do the analysis," Kunkel said, "what we find is just reinventing the Air Force doesn't win."

Instead, he said, combat success is more about integrating capabilities and systems together, using autonomy and all-domain sensing, for example. "Those are things that we're finding as game-changers," Kunkel said, because they address specific challenges to the force.

The problems facing the Air Force in a future fight could look similar to the fight in Ukraine today, where the skies are contested, with neither side being able to secure air superiority like what the US and its allies enjoyed in the Middle East.

American adversaries are fielding their own next-gen fighters, and air and missile defense systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated, demanding more from pilots. And there are also growing missile threats, both in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, to bases the service relies on to conduct air operations.

One of the Air Force's priorities in recent years has been Agile Combat Employment, which aims to boost survivability by having air assets operate from unconventional runways and outposts, thus complicating enemy targeting of US aircraft. Bases are fixed, but American adversaries can't target every piece of concrete, every road and highway.

ACE has been a major focus as China has been building an intimidating missile force that could overwhelm US airfields and airpower in a missile strike. The Air Force is now building on this thinking, looking to ideas that go beyond new aircraft.

Kunkel said the Air Force's focus is on something it hadn't really done before: tailoring attributes for capabilities based on the threat. The first step, he said, is to define the threat and how it's impacting US Air Force operations.

When the Air Force understands how potential enemies can pressure both air and ground missions, then it can determine what capabilities it needs to counter specific threats and deliver more than just an upgraded aircraft. Instead, it brings a targeted response.

The Air Force has faced tough questions about generating readiness and maintaining overmatch in a time of great-power competition. And last year, the service announced widespread changes in its focuses, more specifically in how it trains its airmen and develops capabilities needed for various threats.

At the time, then-Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the service was "moving forward with a sense of urgency to ensure we are ready to deter and, if necessary, win."

• US special operators need cheap weapons for future conflicts, and they need a lot of them.
• The war in Ukraine has shown the value of having lots of cheap weapons, such as drones.
• Operators and industry will need to work closely together to develop the right capabilities.

US special operators are going to need a bunch of cheap, expendable weapons to fight a fast-paced, high-intensity, and materially demanding future war, US military leaders said recently.

And those weapons are going to need to be able to be rapidly modified to adapt to ever-changing battlefield threats.

At the National Defense Industrial Association's US Special Operations Symposium last week, special operations leadership and other military officials spoke about the shift from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency to great-power competition and the challenges and opportunities that presents for the US military's elite special operations forces, or SOF.

Looking at a potential future conflict between the US and a major military power, like China or Russia, officials said a war like that would be fought across a range of contested domains, such as space, cyberspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum. Dominating these warfighting domains will be decisive, they said.

Preparation for this fight has led to increased demand for innovation and the acquisition of new weapons and combat technologies.

Lt. Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson, the director for Joint Fore development, pointed to Ukraine's success in crippling Russia's Black Sea Fleet with uncrewed surface vessels as an example. There are lessons to learn from the Ukraine war, he said, especially when it comes to drones.

The general said "there are a lot of cheap things you can do to have an asymmetric advantage."

US special operators are often among the first American troops to get their hands on new technologies, and they work closely with the defense industry to develop new systems.

Anderson said that he wants to see "technologies that are truly cheap in the hands of the operators" so that they can "experiment" with them and offer feedback.

Getting tech acquisition right

The key to developing these capabilities, he said, is rapid-cycle iteration. Industry and operators should work closely to develop new systems, edit them based on observations, and switch out capabilities quickly for different missions, he suggested.

But these systems need to be affordable, Anderson said, capable of being bought on a large scale for relatively low cost.

That's been important in Ukraine, where soldiers burn through thousands of drones and where new drone companies are constantly building newer, cheaper hardware and updating software based on current battlefield challenges.

In recent years, the Pentagon has been moving to achieve mass through drone warfare, as seen in Ukraine. The Replicator Initiative, announced in 2023, is the Department of Defense's effort to streamline the development of uncrewed systems with key industry partners, with the goal of deploying thousands of multi-domain drones at speed and scale.

The biggest challenges, though, lie in how DoD obtains new systems and works with the defense industry. Similarly, technologies related to artificial intelligence, autonomy, uncrewed systems, and electronic warfare are moving at breakneck speed, meaning what is innovative today may be obsolete tomorrow.

Chris Brose, the chief strategy officer at Anduril Industries, said that a potential solution to this problem is the creation of flexible systems that can be updated quickly.

Brose said that Anduril's work with DoD on countering drones with US Special Operations Command largely began with trying to solve problems that operators were experiencing on the field.

"It started with units that were deploying," he said, with "capabilities that were not working, with threats that were outpacing them, with technology that was rapidly getting better but they were incapable of incorporating."

Those challenges led to an understanding that operators and industry need to work together and quickly, adjusting in real time in different locations against different threats.

While much can be learned from the war in Ukraine, there are still unanswered questions, especially about how AI will evolve and what humans will actually be needed for in certain combat roles. SOF leadership said that autonomous capabilities and AI may potentially change what roles operators play on the battlefield, such as flying drones.

• A top shipbuilding executive said industry can build warships but isn't getting clear signals.
• Many big US Navy shipbuilding programs are delayed and over budget.
• Navy officials and shipbuilders have attributed the US' shipbuilding issues to both long-term and short-term problems.

A senior Huntington Ingalls Industries executive said the US Navy's mounting shipbuilding problems aren't because shipbuilders don't know what they're doing.

Instead, he pointed toward inconsistent demand and workforce issues that have drastically affected industry's capacity. Navy officials and analysts have raised some of these concerns as well.

Earlier this week, Tom Moore, senior vice president of government relations for major shipbuilder HII, addressed the widespread challenges facing the US Navy's top warship programs. HII builds Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, amphibious warships, and Ford-class aircraft carriers, among other vessels. Moore outlined how, historically, shipbuilders had delivered high numbers of vessels to the Navy and why that capability has decreased.

"Industry knows how to build ships at scale," he said, but when the demand went down after the Cold War, "we turned the spigot off, and we stopped demanding ships." The workforce shrank, and US industrial capacity dropped as the industry was hollowed out.

Experienced shipbuilders left for other work, backfilled by newer employees. Moore pointed to data showing that in the mid-1990s, the average electrical supervisor at Newport News and Ingalls Shipbuilding had been in the job for over 20 years. "Today, the average electronic supervisor has been there four-and-a-half years," he said. That's a lot of lost experience.

When looking into US shipbuilding challenges, industry insiders and analysts have also pointed to the Navy's inconsistent demand signals, which can involve ordering ships and then changing the order or scrapping planned programs altogether.

This is seen as a major problem for contractors, leaving industry partners in uncertain positions.

Broader economic issues, such as inflation, the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and competition for talent have exacerbated the problems affecting the industry.

The US Navy spends roughly $40 billion annually on shipbuilding projects, yet these projects are regularly behind schedule and battling rising costs.

Last year, a Department of the Navy review found that top programs, such as Block IV Virginia-class attack submarines, the Pentagon's priority Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, the Constellation-class guided-missile frigate, and the next Ford-class carrier, were all severely delayed and over budget due to COVID's impact on the workforce and supply chain, "with industry reticent to invest."

The US Government Accountability Office said previously it had observed consistent issues, too, with the Navy's cost estimates, which "are often lacking and the assumptions unrealistic."

The Navy did not have new comments to share on shipbuilding problems at the time of publishing, pointing Business Insider instead to past remarks by service leaders. Previously, the Navy has often put the burden on industry, but it's a complex process.

Coming budget shifts within the Department of Defense amid changing priorities for a new administration may further impact the industry, though the plans remain unclear for the time being.

At a Hudson Institute event on Tuesday, HII's Moore highlighted potential solutions to the US shipbuilding problems, including a near-term reconditioning of the wide-ranging technical expertise and capabilities across the US military's industrial partners, recruiting employees with competitive pay, a long-term and consistent demand signal from the Navy about the warships it needs, and greater cost realism in contracting.

These ideas are not necessarily new when it comes to how to start addressing the US Navy's shipbuilding woes. Shipbuilders have noted the challenges of adjusting schedules to the Navy's demands.

The Navy has previously caused delays by overloading new projects with increasingly advanced technologies, putting strains on shipbuilding, such as when a host of new technologies bogged down the delivery and raised the cost of the first-in-class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford. President Donald Trump recently criticized this aircraft carrier in a discussion of government waste.

Many of the concerns surrounding the building of more vessels and maintaining and repairing the existing fleet have been aggravated by the rise of China's shipbuilding empire. With a clear national investment in its naval forces and blurred lines between its commercial and military shipbuilding, China has become the largest navy in the world and the largest shipbuilder by capacity.

The possibility of a conflict with China, such as a possible Taiwan contingency, has increased anxiety that the US Navy doesn't have enough ships or ways to repair them after battle damage. The US has a more capable fighting force, but these issues are critical in naval warfare.

Although the shipbuilding process faces deep-seated issues, "the Navy builds the most powerful and capable warships on the planet in the US with American workers," a GAO official said last fall.

• Ukrainian company Sine.Engineering is developing technology to help drones resist Russia's electronic warfare.
• Sine is focused on better communication between operators and drones, including non-GPS navigation.
• Its swarm technology is currently being tested with the Ukrainian army, its executives said.

A Ukrainian drone technology company is working to defeat Russia's intense electronic warfare, but it isn't hard-wiring them like fiber-optic drones.

Top Sine.Engineering executives told Business Insider that their work aims to completely change how operators work with drones as uncrewed systems continue to dominate the battlefield.

Sine develops communication platforms for uncrewed aerial vehicles operating in contested and GPS-denied environments, growing problems in modern conflicts like the war in Ukraine. It began focusing on designing solutions for drone communication challenges in 2022, and it started mass production the next year.

Sine uses non-GPS navigation systems to avoid jamming, relying on time-of-flight calculations to determine location. Its products are being employed by over 50 drone makers in Ukraine, as well as some outside of the country, it said.

The company's co-founder and CEO Andriy Chulyk told BI that knowing the battlefield is critical to designing technology for a war, especially when the goal is to defeat the electronic warfare capabilities of a major military power.

"You should try and test different kind of things" and be connected with the Ukrainian military "to receive constant feedback," he said.

Sine's data chips are as small as an SD card and designed to facilitate drone navigation to targets without satellites.

Many off-the-shelf drone systems and GPS-guided munitions rely on satellite information, but drones equipped with Sine technology depend on signals from a communication module that keeps track of the drone's location in a way that is somewhat reminiscent of the pre-GPS "dead reckoning" by pilots.

Sine's hardware and software tools are intended to provide reliable navigation and flight control, as well as resistance to GPS jamming. The company is also working on how to keep drones flying on radio signals even in contested environments filled with frequency jamming, electronic warfare that involves flooding frequencies with noise to disrupt signals.

Chulyk and Sine's Chief Strategy Officer Andriy Zvirko said that their drone parts are self-produced and affordable, both of which are crucial to scaling up operations.

When it comes to comms technologies for drones, "it's not only about price; it's about how they work," Zvirko said. "It's so hard to find a good provider. That's why we created our own because we have seen this gap on the market."

Many of Sine's products are active on the battlefield, but one of its newer focuses being tested with the Ukrainian army is drone swarming, which involves using autonomy to pilot multiple drones to targets. Drone swarming isn't a new concept, but Chulyk and Zvirko said that many drone developers have different ideas of what the capabilities look like.

Their vision involves an operator being able to run multiple uncrewed vehicles at once and switch to the drone they want to at a given moment. "We believe," Chulyk said, "it will make our military forces more effective because it will be possible to operate a lot of drones in the same time from one or two operators."

Sine is working to achieve autonomy in drone technology, but a key challenge is the amount of data that it needs to calculate for navigation and precision.

Artificial intelligence hasn't seen widespread usage on the battlefield yet, Ukraine's special drone unit Typhoon told BI this month, but such a capability could fundamentally change drone warfare and help overcome electronic warfare — the drone can continue flying on to its target even if the signal is severed.

Fiber-optic drones arose as a countermeasure to electronic warfare issues but aren't seeing extensive use just yet either, at least not compared to regular FPV drones. The drones are hard-wired to the operator, ensuring a reliable connection, but they have their own cons, including potentially limited range and environmental obstacles. The benefit though is that they can't be jammed by radio frequency jammers that have complicated drone operations.

Jamming has created a battlespace where drone units have to work harder and smarter to identify how the enemy is trying to sabotage their drones and how they need to adapt their systems to fly and get to their targets. It's also demanding more from industry.

• Chinese fighter jets have been popping flares or releasing chaff near foreign aircraft.
• Most recently, a Chinese J-16 let off flares close to an Australian P-8A to warn it off.
• This tactic has been appearing more frequently amid increases in aggressive intercepts.

Chinese fighter jets have repeatedly been accused of engaging in unsafe intercepts of US and allied aircraft by flying too close and recklessly popping off flares and chaff in their flight paths.

Aggressive intercepts have become more frequent, and former pilots say these tactics are dangerous on a number of levels, risking accidents.

China's aerial activities, including an incident involving an Australian maritime patrol plane earlier this week, mark a growing and dangerous trend, particularly above the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

On Thursday, the Australian Department of Defense said that a Chinese fighter aircraft had "an unsafe and unprofessional interaction" with a Royal Australian Air Force P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft made by Boeing. The incident occurred in the South China Sea on Tuesday while the P-8A was on a routine surveillance patrol.

The South China Sea has been a flash point for years now. China's increased coercion in the region has prompted issues with the Philippines, particularly around the Scarborough Shoal, and Vietnam, among others. The US and its allies, including Australia, have rejected China's territorial claims to islands and waters in the area.

This week, a Chinese People's Liberation Army's Air Force fighter jet popped flares close to the P-8, posing "a risk to the aircraft and personnel," Australia's defense department said. The Chinese fighter was a J-16, which is made by Shenyang Aircraft Corporation.

Beijing said its military's actions were "legitimate, lawful, and professional." China has repeatedly faced these allegations in recent years.

The Philippines, for instance, accused Chinese fighter jets of releasing flares in front of a Philippine Air Force NC-212i light transport plane last August, and last May, Australia called out China after its fighter jets allegedly popped flares in front of a Royal Australian Navy MH-60R helicopter.

And these incidents followed a 2022 intercept in which a Chinese J-16 released flares and chaff — small reflective metal pieces meant to confuse the seekers on enemy missiles — in the path of an Australian P-8, per past reporting. At least some of the released material entered one of the aircraft's engines.

These actions are considered especially dangerous, a former pilot told Business Insider.

Retired US Air Force Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell, a former F-16 pilot and drone operator who is now a senior resident fellow for air power studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said there are two problems with the Chinese aircraft behavior: its aggressive maneuvers in close proximity to the P-8A, which increased the risk of a midair collision, and the firing of the flares.

The flares, he said, "only increase the potential for aircraft damage," either through possibly burning the external structure or electronic equipment or being ingested by the engine.

What also makes China's activities so dangerous is the growing frequency at which they're occurring. The US and its allies have been sounding the alarm on unsafe intercepts by Chinese pilots in international airspace for years now.

In 2023, the Department of Defense said it had documented more than 180 coercive or risky intercepts by Chinese military aircraft since fall 2021, more in two years than the entire previous decade. In that same time window, the US documented around 100 such incidents involving allied and partnered nations.

"That's nearly 200 cases where PLA operators have performed reckless maneuvers, or discharged chaff, or shot off flares, or approached too rapidly or too close to US aircraft," said the former assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, Ely Ratner.

BI reached out to the Chinese embassy for comment on allegations against its military but did not receive a response.

Aviation experts have said the trend could reflect China's growing military might, confidence in the abilities of its pilots, and a stronger desire to challenge the US and its allies in areas of interest. US military aircraft have observed the Russians engage in similar behavior, such as the headbutt of an F-16 last year.

Unsafe tactics can lead to catastrophes, especially given some of the speeds at which these aircraft are flying.

Collisions have occurred involving Chinese and Russian intercept aircraft that have caused "the loss of American military aircraft in separate incidents," Cantwell said.

Notable incidents include the loss of a US EP-3 spy aircraft in the 2001 Hainan Island incident, which also claimed the life of a Chinese pilot, and the 2023 downing of an MQ-9 Reaper drone when a Russian jet clipped it over the Black Sea.

In response to Australia's accusations on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said that China had urged Australia to stop infringing on Chinese sovereignty and disrupting peace and stability in the South China Sea. Australia says its aircraft was operating in international airspace.

The disputed body of water has seen a noticeable increase in altercations, with several between China and the Philippines last year as Beijing's vessels attempted to dominate the Scarborough Shoal.

China has claimed islands and waters in the South China Sea that overlap with other countries in the region, creating various territorial disputes that flare up occasionally, turning more serious.

• Fiber-optic and AI drones have come to prominence as countermeasures to jamming and electronic warfare.
• Ukraine's special drone unit Typhoon said it hasn't seen systematic application of these technologies.
• But once they become widespread, they'll change drone warfare because they're hard to beat.

Constant intense electronic warfare in Russia's war against Ukraine has led to the rise of drones that are resistant to signal jamming. It's still early days, but these things could be game changers, drone operators say.

These fiber-optic and artificial intelligence-driven drones are not yet being widely used, a special Ukrainian drone unit told Business Insider, but once they become as prolific as some other technologies, they'll completely change how drone warfare is fought.

The war in Ukraine has been defined by the use of uncrewed vehicles, the majority of which rely on radio frequencies to maintain a connection with their operators. In response, both sides have employed electronic warfare capabilities able to jam drones and seize control from the operators or cut video feeds, leaving pilots flying blind.

Operators needed a way around electronic warfare.

Ukraine first documented the Russians using fiber-optic drones last spring. They became more prominent in the fall. These systems are guided by a hardwire cable similar to a US-made anti-tank TOW missile. The cable maintains a connection between the operator and drone, ensuring the system can't be jammed.

At the time, it was unclear if fiber-optic drones would be widely adopted as the next evolution in drone warfare, but it was clear they had promise. Drone experts and top war watchers assessed that they'd have useful applications in some environments and situations but probably weren't a catch-all solution. The cables could get caught or cut, for example, and the systems would have shorter ranges.

The development indicated that both Ukraine and Russia would continue coming up with new solutions.

As of now, Ukraine's special drone unit Typhoon doesn't see a systematic application of fiber-optic drones or systems controlled by AI, another adaptation to electronic warfare that is highly sought after but still experimental.

"However," Typhoon told Business Insider, "if widely adopted, these technologies would fundamentally change drone warfare."

Typhoon is a newer National Guard of Ukraine drone unit. Unveiled last fall, Typhoon consists of engineers and operators specialized in uncrewed systems. Right now, Typhoon operates a diverse range of uncrewed aerial systems, mostly supplied by the National Guard and domestic innovation outfits. 

The unit's short-range reconnaissance drones, such as the first-person view DJI Mavic, are used for gathering intelligence, assessing targets, and guiding strikes. Its short-range strike drones are deployed for precision hits on enemy personnel, positions, and equipment, as well as against aerial targets.

Typhoon also operates bomber drones like HeavyShot and Vampire, which are mostly used at night because they're larger in size and easier to spot. Fixed-wing reconnaissance drones and strike drones are also often used for longer-range missions.

But the unit is also actively integrating emerging technologies, such as fiber-optic drones and "machine vision tracking with homing capabilities," which would help improve targeting. Each drone serves a specific purpose in missions, and part of Typhoon's mission is the training of operators for those specific skill sets. 

With fiber-optic and AI-driven drones, the challenges for front-line forces will be even greater.

Both of these systems are harder to take down than the regular radio frequency drones because they are invulnerable to electronic warfare. A drone flown by an autonomous terminal guidance system, once locked onto its target, would still maintain its flight path even if it's jammed, effectively making it a fire-and-forget weapon.

Fiber-optic drones are a less-expensive, lower-tech solution, keeping a hard connection so that operators can ignore any electronic warfare and continue to fly the drone towards its target. 

Typhoon said the options for destroying fiber-optic drones are relatively limited right now. Because they don't "rely on radio signals that can be detected by conventional electronic warfare systems," the unit said, "the only way to counter them is through timely visual detection and physical destruction."

Simply put, that means they have to see it and shoot it. The Ukrainians have deployed shotguns as a counter-drone tool. But they aren't always easy to detect, which means warfighters may have limited time to react for a kinetic kill.

These systems aren't seeing constant or consistent use just yet, but the Ukrainian forces have praised them for their accuracy and ease of use. Ukrainian and Western drone companies are now racing to churn them out.

• Google and Apple have updated the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America for US users.
• President Donald Trump signed an executive order mandating the change to "honor American greatness."
• Users will see their local name when it varies between countries; everyone else sees both names.

Apple Maps has followed Google Maps in updating the Gulf of Mexico's name for US-based users following an executive order issued by President Donald Trump last month.

As of Monday night, when users in the US search for "Gulf of Mexico" in Google Maps, they are presented with a result for "Gulf of America." As of Tuesday evening, the same change occurred in Apple Maps.

For people outside the US, the results populate as "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)."

The president signed an executive order on his first day in office to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and to change the name of the highest mountain peak in North America from Denali to Mount McKinley. As of press time, the name "Denali" had not yet been changed on Google Maps or Apple Maps.

The change in Google Maps was expected. Google said last month that it had "a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources."

The company said it would update Maps in the US after the Geographic Names Information System made the changes. The GNIS, a database of more than 2 million physical and cultural features throughout the US and its territories, standardizes geographic names for federal use.

Trump's executive order gave the secretary of the interior 30 days to implement the name changes and update the GNIS to reflect them.

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama changed the name of the mountain peak from Mount McKinley to Denali in honor of local Native groups' names for the Alaskan mountain.

Trump's order said that the surrounding national park area would keep the name Denali National Park and Preserve and that the secretary of the interior "shall work with Alaska Native entities and state and local organizations to adopt names for landmarks to honor the history and culture of the Alaskan people."

The renaming at the federal level has been a complex undertaking for government agencies and offices.

Historically, the Board on Geographic Names and the US Geological Survey would act immediately to update the GNIS. The Department of State would update the Geographic Names Server, which defines names of geographic features outside the US. But it's up to each agency and office to update their own websites accordingly.

Outside the US, other countries may not recognize the name changes.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said last month that "for us and for the whole world, it is still the Gulf of Mexico."

Google previously said that when official names vary between countries, Maps users will see the official name used in their country, while the rest of the world will see both names. The company said this was consistent with long-standing policy.

Google and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• President Trump has directed Elon Musk's DOGE to investigate wasteful Pentagon spending.
• White House NSA advisor Mike Waltz called US shipbuilding as "an absolute mess."
• Problems like ballooning costs, delays, and a hollowed industrial base are impacting shipbuilding.

President Donald Trump has given Elon Musk's DOGE a new target — the Department of Defense. The White House expects it to find billions of dollars in waste, including in what his national security adviser called the "absolute mess" in US shipbuilding.

This opens the door to DOGE cost-cutters trying to fire their way to efficiency in the federal bureaucracy that oversees shipbuilding, one part of the system struggling to design, buy, and build American warships.

The largest problem driving the ship delays and soaring costs, per naval analysts, is one not easily solved: The decline of the US shipbuilding industry and the shrinking of its workforce.

This weekend, President Donald Trump said he expected Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to "find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse" in the Pentagon. The Department of Defense's budget is over $800 billion, and it failed its seventh consecutive audit last year, meaning there's a lot of funding unaccounted for. The aim is to change that.

"We need to know when we spend dollars," Trump's secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, said Sunday in an interview with Fox News. "We need to know where they're going and why. That's simple accounting, and that has not existed at the Defense Department."

White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, a retired Army colonel, specifically pointed to US military shipbuilding programs as a point of interest. On Sunday, Waltz said on NBC's Meet the Press there was "plenty to look into in shipbuilding, which is an absolute mess, to look into contracting, into procurement."

He also expressed concern about the process, which pays shipbuilders to begin working before designs are finished. "You pay people right up front and then they don't deliver for years and years and years," and "maintenance and costs overrun," he said.

What are the problems?

The US Navy is the most powerful and most advanced naval force in the world today, but the Big Navy programs and industrial base that this force depends are struggling.

There has been a string of broken programs, such as the Littoral Combat Ship, some of which are now being decommissioned decades before their time, and the Zumwalt-class destroyers, the mission and armaments for which were a question mark for years. Each of the destroyers costs around $8 billion.

The new USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier's development was hamstrung by changing requirements and the integration of dozens of new technologies. It was delivered years behind schedule to the tune of roughly $13 billion.

And even now, major programs are facing tremendous delays. Last year, a Navy review found that top military shipbuilding projects, new submarines and surface ships, are delayed by years and facing rising costs.

That includes Block IV Virginia-class attack submarines, Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, the Constellation-class guided missile frigate, and the next Ford-class aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. The delays range, but most are a full year or two behind schedule.

The design and construction of these warships are overseen by Naval Sea Systems Command, which has a workforce of over 75,000 civilian and military personnel.

What are the causes?

Lawmakers, officials, government watchdogs, and experts have called attention to American shipbuilding woes, including weakened domestic industrial capacity, budget and schedule issues, and last-minute design changes.

Other challenges include the lingering effects of COVID-19, inflation, supply chain breakdowns, and a dwindling workforce.

US Navy officials, analysts, and industry experts have said inconsistent defense budgets, shifting Navy requirements and cost estimates, and reduced domestic capacity have been hollowing out the Navy's shipbuilding capabilities for decades.

The industrial base has shrunk, and the Navy is reliant on a few shipbuilders for design and construction. This same issue constrains maintenance and repair. Domestic capacity is limited, and international yards aren't an option due to current prohibitions.

Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, wrote last year that the Navy needs to break what she called the "doom loop." Shipbuilding, maintenance, and repair costs continue to rise as the fleet ages and shrinks. New construction issues arise in the process. And while the Navy criticizes shipbuilders, shipbuilders are lamenting the rising costs of wages, inflationary pressures, and budget uncertainty.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that under the Navy's 2025 shipbuilding plan, total costs would average $40 billion per year in 2024 for the next 30 years, about 17% more than the Navy estimates. That comes as the Navy prioritizes building a larger fleet with more distributed firepower. The goal is 390 total battleforce ships by 2054. 

The CBO said that the Navy's plan would put a strain on the US industrial base, meaning "over the next 30 years, the nation's shipyards would need to produce substantially more naval tonnage than they have produced over the past 10 years. The rate of production of nuclear-powered submarines, in particular, would need to increase significantly."

Why do shipbuilding problems matter?

America's top rival, China, is the world's leading shipbuilder. It has been building up its navy by leveraging commercial and military shipyards. Unclassified US Navy data indicates China has 230 times the US shipbuilding capacity. Seapower is a critical element of national power.

In a potential war with the US, China could have the advantage in combat repair and replacement.

The US Navy can't catch up in quantity, but it has options. It is looking into better sustaining its ships and subs, extending the lives of certain assets, fixing maintenance backlogs, and prioritizing autonomous systems.

Whether DOGE ultimately targets shipbuilding when it starts looking into the Pentagon remains to be seen. There's a lot of waste in the department and bipartisan concerns about that.

The DOGE is acting like an internal consultancy, triggering controversies and alarm as it sweeps through government agencies. Its head, Elon Musk, sought to shut down USAID and tried to access Treasury's tightly controlled payment systems. A review of Pentagon programs could trigger concerns about the security of defense systems and who, exactly, is digging into the department's plans and projects.

• US government and military websites went dark last week after being purged of certain content.
• President Trump's executive order directed all agencies to remove information related to gender ideology.
• Here's what's disappeared from the websites and public-facing communications.

The Trump administration has been intensely scrubbing government and military websites clean.

It has been tossing out DEI, gender ideology, race, and sexual identity information, among other things. Thousands of pages have been affected, with some going dark and others being overhauled or revised. Some webpages went down and have already come back while others may be gone for good.

The sweeping webpage purge followed a string of executive orders on a range of issues that affected public-facing communications.

Last Friday, the US Office of Personnel Management directed all federal government agencies to review internal and external information and remove anything related to gender ideology. The guidance included taking "down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that inculcate or promote gender ideology," prompting many websites to briefly go dark while they were scrubbed.

Trump said he was fine with that outcome. "If they want to scrub the websites, that's OK with me," he said, triggering concern.

The order includes the removal of references to trans and queer terminology and replacement of "gender" with "sex." The OPM memo also impacted the listed identities on department documentation, the jobs of employees "whose position description involves inculcating or promoting gender ideology," and shutting off email features for users to input their pronouns.

Some systems, though, have remained untouched, and there remains uncertainty about how far the executive order and other related directives will go. The White House simply pointed to the order when asked for comment.

Military websites

Military websites have been cleared of terminology related to gender ideology. This includes any and all references to the LGBTQ+ community, which has now been cut to just LGB.

Other pages have also gone missing. For instance, the Army and Navy removed webpages showcasing the contributions of female service members this week. Some of the pages were apparently restored after inquiries about the scrubbing, Military.com reported.

Ret. Navy Adm. James Stavridis, the former top commander in Europe, said on X that the views of women in DoD today are a "big mistake" with long-term repercussions.

In a statement to Business Insider, DoD said it "will fully execute and implement all directives outlined in the Executive Orders issued by the President, ensuring that they are carried out with utmost professionalism, efficiency, and in alignment with national security objectives. We will provide status updates as we are able."

The Army provided a similar statement on its online activities, and the Navy told BI its stance was in line with the Pentagon's. The Marine Corps told BI that the Marine Corps Public Web had completed a "comprehensive review of public-facing content hosted across the Marines.mil enterprise." The Coast Guard did not respond to BI's request for comment.

Content such as official messages and publications were not removed, instead requiring only a cancellation or revision. Historical and news-related content and videos weren't scrubbed either. 

Questions remain on who's been in charge of scrubbing the sites; the OPM memo appears to leave the task up to each individual agency. OPM also requested a complete list of actions taken by every department and any other plans to "fully comply with this guidance" by today.

The Pentagon also issued guidance last Friday from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth indicating identity months were "dead at DoD." That included February's Black History month.

That move comes amid new reports that transgender service members are already being affected in the wake of Trump's executive order and that identity-based clubs at West Point are being shut down.

Recent developments have sparked concern among some advocacy groups.

"The purges of DEI-related information from military websites and the targeting of specific communities in executive orders represent a significant step backward for inclusivity and equality within the armed forces," Rachel Branaman, the executive director of Modern Military Association of America, told BI.

These moves signal "that certain individuals are not valued or welcome within the military," she said, adding that these actions could have "far-reaching ramifications."

Right now, it's unclear if DoD's defense video and imagery distribution systems, known as DVIDS, will be updated. Defense Media Activity didn't respond to BI's request for comment.

As of now, it still includes previous imagery and graphics celebrating identity months like Pride Month. Just last week, the Air Force posted a graphic honoring Black History Month. 

The State Department, CDC, and other sites

Other federal government websites, such as those for the Department of State, were also scrubbed in line with Trump's executive order. This included the state department's travel guidance and resources for LGBTQ+ people, which has also been stripped to just LGB.

Some unrelated content, such as country data on the State Department pages, has also disappeared. The USAID website has been cleared out as well.

The Center for Disease Control and Protection, as well as other health resources, saw similar purges, including a swath of website pages related to trans and nonbinary healthcare, sexually transmitted infections and diseases, HIV, and vaccinations. Data related to youth and LGBTQ+ mental health, substance abuse, and violence, as well as federal goals for curbing that, were also removed. 

These moves sparked intense criticism. Lawmakers like Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called them "staggeringly stupid, anti-science" actions that will have "real consequences." Sen. Patty Murray of Washington likewise called these apparent purges "absolutely unacceptable."

After intense backlash from healthcare providers and other concerned parties, some of this information was restored. However, some guidelines on contraception and information on racial inequities is still gone. The CDC's website also still indicates it's being modified to comply with Trump's executive orders.

In a statement to BI, the CDC said: "All changes to the HHS website and HHS division websites are in accordance" with Trump's executive orders on gender and DEI.

Numerous pages have also gone missing on websites for the Census Bureau, Department of Justice, US Patent and Trademark Office, Food and Drug Administration, Department of the Interior, Department of Veterans Affairs, and a number of others, clearing out a range of data, including some sexual harassment pages and climate change information.

Trump's executive orders have already made an impact on government and military departments, but changes could continue as the guidance is implemented by various agencies. 

The OPM memo also impacts any training and resource groups related to gender identity, "intimate spaces" such as bathrooms, and programs, contracts, and grants. These have had impacts on other programs as well, pausing them amid reviews.

• Russia's electronic warfare tactics have forced Ukrainian drone operators to constantly adapt.
• It's a hidden battle in the electromagnetic spectrum, Ukraine's special drone unit Typhoon said.
• The intense electronic warfare fight is exceptionally demanding for Ukraine's forces.

Drone operators flying uncrewed aircraft over Ukraine are constantly running into invisible shields, causing them to suddenly lose control of their drones as signals are severed.

Everything's normal, and then suddenly, the controls are dead, feeds are out, and it's gone.

Electronic warfare has become as pervasive on the battlefield in Ukraine as drones are, jamming and confusing drones and traditional weapons alike.

It's an unseen threat demanding frequent adaptation. Ukraine's special drone unit, Typhoon, told Business Insider that this "hidden electronic warfare battle" makes drone warfare much more complicated for operators.

Electronic warfare refers to a variety of combat actions in the electromagnetic spectrum. For instance, jammers flood radio frequencies with noise, signals can be scrambled, and GPS systems can be spoofed. EW, as it is called for short, arose as a prominent countermeasure to the prolific use of cheap combat drones by both Ukraine and Russia.

In response, drone technology has started to evolve, with unjammable fiber-optic drones emerging in battle. These drones are tethered to the operator by a fiber-optic cable, ensuring a stable connection even in heavy EW environments.

Electronic warfare has affected more than just drones. It has also impacted Western- and US-provided precision weapons. US officials have described adversary EW as an ongoing challenge requiring new solutions for both the war in Ukraine and future conflicts.

Typhoon said the electronic warfare battle "plays a crucial role in modern warfare."

The unit said in response to BI's queries that electronic warfare is forcing Ukrainian drone units to do a lot more work before launching their uncrewed reconnaissance or strike systems. It also requires that they employ their own countermeasures.

Typhoon told BI that the unit's drone operators "must constantly analyze and adapt to the battlefield's electronic environment, identifying gaps in enemy jamming coverage to configure drones accordingly."

Ukraine's forces have worked to adapt to Russia's jamming, sometimes relying on alternative systems that don't depend on GPS, using other guidance mechanics, or locating and destroying Russian electronic-warfare sites. Ukraine has also developed its own techniques to scramble Russian drones and missiles.

Jamming is among the more prominent methods of neutralizing enemy drones. Intense jamming in certain areas of the front has kept many drones from reaching their intended targets.

In the Ukrainian army, every drone operation team "requires a jamming system mounted on their vehicle when deploying to their position, along with a tool capable of identifying the frequency of radio signals," Typhoon said, highlighting the complexities of countering modern threats.

Each brigade, too, has its own electronic warfare division focused on detecting, jamming, and disrupting Russia's electronic warfare, communications, and command systems.

Typhoon said operators engage in an ongoing process of analyzing signals, changing the frequencies their drones work on, and employing countermeasures. All of these are "invisible yet essential" components of successful drone operations, the unit said.

Founded last year, Typhoon has become a prominent element of Ukraine's efforts to expand its development and use of uncrewed systems.

Its operators, the number of which the unit wouldn't disclose for security reasons, have to be flexible and quick-thinking. The unit said that while fighting isn't like playing a video game, gamers can, in some cases, make good pilots because they may have already developed those skills.

Its engineers, likewise, must rapidly analyze and develop drone configurations.

But countering EW is a constant process and sometimes requires new strategies. A major part of the work being done by units like Typhoon is creating a favorable environment for launching their systems. That includes using electronic intelligence (ELINT) systems to identify what frequencies Russia is using for its jamming operations and then quickly configuring their drones to operate on alternative ones.

"This is an ongoing challenge," Typhoon said, "as the enemy continuously analyzes UAV frequencies and updates their jamming technology to adapt."

• Gamers have the skillsets to make great drone pilots, including quick decision-making skills.
• Drone operation is a complex process, especially on the dangerous battlefields of Ukraine.
• Ukraine's special drone unit Typhoon is playing a role in adapting to drone warfare challenges.

Screens. Headsets. Controllers. There's a lot about flying a drone that would feel familiar to gamers, but operating one in battle isn't anything like a video game, members of Ukraine's special drone unit told Business Insider.

The unit, Typhoon, says that real drone warfare is more complicated and more dangerous with deadly consequences.

Uncrewed systems, particularly a range of first-person view drones, are seeing widespread use in Russia's war on Ukraine. Ukrainian operators have made comparisons between how they fly their systems and how they play video games.

The FPV headsets aren't unlike virtual reality systems, and the controllers often have similar mechanisms, such as joysticks, to ones used with video game consoles. There's even a video game called "Death From Above" that puts the player in the position of a Ukrainian FPV drone operator, prompting the user to fly through the battlefield, target enemies, and drop bombs on vehicles.

But unlike a video game, the drone wars that are happening in Ukraine are real, coming at a cost in human lives. Drones are buzzing across its skies, constantly threatening soldiers and tanks.

"People think flying a military drone is like playing 'Call of Duty,' until they realize there's no restart option," a Typhoon operator told Business Insider, referencing the popular war-themed first-person shooter game.

Ukraine and Russia are engaged in a rapid arms race, developing new systems and countermeasures that require constant adaptation by both sides. Drone warfare has thus become a lot more complicated.

Operations are not as simple as just booting up a system and flying the drone to the target. Drone operators have to analyze the technical setup of the drone, Typhoon said, and then make modifications based on its objective and surroundings, as well as any other anticipated challenges, such as signal jamming.

Adjusting how the drone is being operated also includes reviewing real-time intelligence on the battlefield situation and terrain. And before takeoff, the operator has to coordinate with command. 

Once the drone is flying, it's not a straight path to the target. Enemy drones or countermeasures have to be considered and avoided, including strikes on the drone or attempts to locate and hit the operator. It demands "making split-second decisions — in real time," Typhoon said. 

Typhoon is Ukraine's new special drone unit. Officially established in June 2024, it was billed as a major expansion of military efforts to develop uncrewed systems. The number of operators in Typhoon isn't publicly available for security reasons, but it's actively recruiting. 

Some of the members were present when Typhoon was first revealed to the public, and they also appeared with drone equipment in a video shared online at the time. 

Typhoon's commander, call sign Michael, told BI the unit plays a vital role in the National Guard of Ukraine, "developing and applying specialized UAV [uncrewed aerial vehicles] expertise on the battlefield." He said the unit combines skilled personnel, such as engineers who can rapidly analyze and develop drone configurations and pilots capable of executing missions and delivering results in battle.

When looking for new recruits, Typhoon prioritizes operators able to learn quickly and adapt to the ever-changing battlefield. That includes gamers. 

"Gamers make great drone pilots because they are used to fast-moving situations on the screen, just like in real drone operations," Michael said. "They already have experience making quick decisions, reacting fast, and controlling complex systems, which are all important skills in combat."

Ukraine has increasingly prioritized the domestic production and the extensive use of drones. Many of these models can be made cheaply and at scale, helping fill gaps in Ukraine's options for striking Russian troops or defending territory as Western-provided missiles and artillery have sometimes been in short supply. 

Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have emphasized the importance of drone use in the war in Ukraine, and aerial, surface, and water-based uncrewed vehicles have helped Ukraine achieve some big wins.

Earlier this month, Zelenskyy detailed his ambitions to set new records for its domestic drone production. 

"Drones are something that has changed the nature of warfare and these changes are far from being over," he said. "Today, there is a direct correlation: we need drones to stop the enemy's advance and to avoid losing people and territory." For months now, Russian forces have been steadily grinding forward but at high costs.

• North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia have reportedly suffered significant losses.
• Although the troops are believed to be elite forces, they've been used similarly to Russian prison units.
• The soldiers appear to have been removed from combat.

North Korean forces sent to fight Russia's war appear to be the latest in a growing line of disposable troops that have been torn apart in its fight against Ukraine.

The troops sent to fight in Kursk are believed to be some of North Korea's more dedicated, better-trained soldiers, but they have suffered heavy losses in bloody "human wave" assaults. Ukraine's military has said that these forces haven't been seen in weeks, speculating that their high casualties may have led to them being withdrawn.

South Korea's intelligence agency supported these observations, per local media, saying there have been no signs of the North Korean forces engaging in combat in Kursk in weeks. The National Intelligence Service said that the high losses could be the reason they were pulled off the front line, but they're looking into it.

Expendable armies

Russia's war against Ukraine has devastated entire Russian military units, from elite forces to poorly trained conscript units, butchered convict armies, and wiped out mercenary forces. Like the North Korean troops, many of these forces have been described as "cannon fodder" or simply "meat."

The brutal Wagner mercenary group, which relied heavily on prisoners, lost an estimated 20,000 fighters in the fight for Bakhmut. Russia's Storm-Z penal units, which are basically convict forces, experienced high losses in front-line fights as well.

Last year, the British Ministry of Defense accused Moscow of "wasting lives in a grotesque approach that typifies the depths to which President Putin's regime is prepared to go." Now, North Korean forces seem to have experienced a similar fate.

Over 11,000 North Korean soldiers, mostly special operations forces, deployed to Russia's Kursk region last November in the wake of Ukraine's shock invasion of Russian territory.

Later, once the North Korean troops had seen actual combat, the Biden White House said that the soldiers were involved in front-line assaults in Kursk and were being treated "as expendable." A Ukrainian commander who faced the North Koreans in battle told Business Insider they were basically "cannon fodder."

Western and South Korean intelligence have tracked the reported casualties. The latest estimates put losses at around 4,000. The Institute for the Study of War think tank recently estimated that the entire contingent could be killed or wounded by April if current casualty rates were to continue. But North Korean forces no longer appear to be on the front line.

The Russian way of war

In a talk hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Tuesday, Seth Jones, president of the defense and security department at CSIS, said that the reported casualties were astonishing and that the soldiers are seemingly being used in ways similar to Russia's prison units, especially in Kursk, where the goal is to retake the territory Ukraine has seized and fortified.

"That's the way it appears that the Russians have used North Korean forces," Jones said, noting Russia has done this with higher-end forces as well. "This is the Russian way of war," he said. "It is stunning in the high-casualty component of it."

Last month, Jones and Benjamin Jensen, a fellow at CSIS' future lab and a professor at the Marine Corps University of Advanced Warfighting, wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal that although a majority of North Korean forces appear to have come from its elite Storm Corps, they're being used for mine clearance and frontal assaults on fortified Ukrainian positions. This isn't a primary function of special operations units.

Russia has shown improvements in its wartime tactics. Its electronic warfare and use of uncrewed systems have developed rapidly. It has also advanced its reconnaissance strike complex. But the way it approaches retaking territory and engages in attritional warfare with many losses continues.

A slow, grinding, attritional fight is not one that works to Ukraine's advantage, as Russia has more bodies it can commit to its war machine. Even as Ukraine continues to hold a significant portion of the territory it captured in Kursk, Russia has turned up the pressure, making it more difficult to hold. Moscow doesn't have an endless supply of bodies though.

Russia's human wave assaults, vicious tactics with roots in old Soviet doctrine, have been documented throughout the war. They're intended to strain and overwhelm enemy defenses, but they come at extreme costs.

The estimates for Russian killed and wounded in this war have been as high as 800,000. Western intelligence has tracked increasingly high daily losses, especially at the end of last year. The North Korean soldiers appear to now be being added to those losses. Neither the Russian embassy nor the Russian defense ministry responded to BI's requests for comment.

A bloody partnership

When North Korea deployed troops to fight for Russia, it appeared to signal a next step in a growing partnership. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin have negotiated a mutual defense pact, as well as arms deals.

Along with combat forces, North Korea has delivered ammunition and other weapons to Russia. What Kim could be getting in return remains highly speculative, but possibilities include certain space and satellite capabilities, as well as food, petroleum products, and help with its air force and submarines. North Korea is also getting critical insights into how its weapons, including both artillery and missiles, perform in battle and valuable lessons in the ways of modern warfare.

Jones said that it appears Pyongyang offered troops to Moscow rather than react to a request, but it's unclear if North Korea fully understood how its troops would be used. For Putin, the benefit of using North Korean troops, much like Wagner and other forces, is the ability to avoid a contentious mobilization at home.

The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said last month that Pyongyang may be planning to deploy additional forces and military equipment to Russia. In recent weeks, though, North Korean forces have been absent from the front lines, potentially due to heavy losses. It's unclear, though, if that is temporary or permanent.

• North Korean troops deployed to Russia have proven capable and fierce.
• Russia is using them in high-cost "human wave" assaults.
• The conflict is an opportunity for North Korea to learn modern warfare tactics and adapt.

North Korea's soldiers are relentless, almost fanatical, in the face of death. They're determined and capable in battle, even in an unfamiliar fight, and their tactics are outdated but brutal.

That is what the West has been learning watching Kim Jong Un's army in action after Russian President Vladimir Putin called on the North Korean leader to supply fighters for his war on Ukraine.

Pyongyang deployed 11,000 men to Kursk in November disguised as Russian soldiers and carrying fake IDs. These troops are largely special operations forces, meaning they are more ardent in their beliefs and better trained than other units.

Russia has been pushing the North Koreans headlong into bloody assaults. The costs are high, but Kim's army is learning an important lesson in return: how to fight a modern war.

North Korea sent some of its best soldiers

This war is North Korea's largest military deployment to a foreign conflict in its almost 80-year history. To determine what the West is learning from this moment, Business Insider spoke to experts who have been closely following North Korea's performance, examined publicly released intelligence, and reviewed Ukrainians' observations.

Ukrainian and South Korean intelligence services have said that many of the troops that deployed to Russia are some of Pyongyang's best, drawn from the 11th Corps, also known as the Storm Corps. The unit is trained in infiltration, infrastructure sabotage, and assassinations.

Ukraine's top general, Oleksandr Syrsky, has said the North Korean troops are "highly motivated, well-trained," and "brave." And the Pentagon said this month that "these are relatively well-disciplined, competent forces" that are by all accounts "capable."

Some Ukrainian soldiers have relayed their experiences to Western media, describing the troops as fast and nimble, good shots, and seemingly fearless as they rush into battle despite heavy losses. North Korean soldiers have also been found carrying diaries with written dedications to Kim and their country.

"They, as individuals, are more skilled as soldiers, more disciplined as soldiers, more willing to fight as soldiers than some sources had presumed when they were first being sent there," said Joseph Bermudez, an expert on North Korea's armed forces at the Center for International and Strategic Studies.

North Korea has a culture driven by a martial philosophy that celebrates hard military power, and it maintains one of the world's largest standing armies with around 1.2 million soldiers.

The country's direct entry into the war has complicated the situation for the Ukrainians, particularly in Russia's Kursk where Ukraine is struggling to hold captured ground. Ukraine has lost roughly half of the territory it once held inside Russia, and the relentless human wave attacks and brutal assaults have worn down Ukraine's already strained defenses, depriving Kyiv's forces of time to rest and brace for further attacks.

The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said last month that North Korea may be planning to deploy additional forces and military equipment to Russia.

Pyongyang has denied sending troops to Russia, and Kyiv has said Russian and North Korean forces attempt to remove dead North Korean soldiers from the battlefield or even burn the faces of dead North Koreans to make them difficult to identify.

Russia is sending North Korean soldiers into bloody assaults

Russia has been sending the North Korean forces into very high-casualty front-line assaults. Biden's White House said late last month that "it is clear that Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating these troops as expendable and ordering them on hopeless assaults against Ukrainian defenses."

A White House spokesperson previously described the North Koreans as "highly indoctrinated, pushing attacks even when it is clear that those attacks are futile."

The Trump administration did not respond to a request for comment on its assessment of North Korean forces fighting in Russia.

Ukraine's Special Operation Forces said Friday the North Koreans fighting for Russia had not been seen in the Kursk area for around three weeks and had likely been withdrawn due to the heavy combat losses. BI was unable to independently confirm these details.

On the front lines, Ukrainian soldiers have said that the North Koreans are a capable fighting force that is adept at neutralizing drones. The soldiers are ruthlessly tough and determined, relentlessly pushing forward in "human wave" assaults, using fellow soldiers as bait, and casting aside armor for faster infantry movements. And they refuse to surrender, often opting to kill themselves with a grenade or bullet rather than be captured.

This is a defining element of the North Korean special operations training: soldiers are trained to follow orders aggressively, even if they suspect it will cost them their lives. If they disobey orders or fail without sacrifice, their families could suffer the consequences, Bermudez said.

North Korea is learning lessons in modern warfare

North Korean forces have suffered heavy losses fighting for Russia, per Western intelligence. Despite training with Moscow on infantry tactics, flying drones, artillery, and trench-clearing operations, the troops are still new to this war.

The soldiers "have been observed engaging in light infantry operations of a Second World War vintage — one man draws out enemy fire (in this case, drones) to locate a target, and others attempt to neutralize said target," said Michael Madden, a Stimson Center Korea expert. They have not prepared for a mechanized battlefield like Ukraine's, filled with armored vehicles and tanks.

"They've been trained to fight a war on the Korean Peninsula," Bermudez said, and while North Korea has watched various armed conflicts closely over the decades, its forces are now getting a real taste for it on a battlefield and in an environment they haven't been prepping for.

In the short term, that could have devastating consequences for the North Korean forces fighting for the Russians. The Institute for the Study of War think tank assesses that the entire 11,000-man contingent of North Korean forces could be killed or wounded in action by April if the current casualty rate continues. The latest estimates put losses around 4,000.

North Korea may consider these sacrifices worth it — if not for the Russian cause, then for what it learns in return.

"It is a dark version of the concept of 'you learn by doing,'" Madden said, noting that it's still early. "We will need further incidents and engagements to make more sound observations as to whether they are adjusting their tactics given the state of play in Russia and Ukraine."

But there is no doubt they're learning, acquiring knowledge critical for future conflicts that will make North Korea a more challenging combat force in East Asia. They're seeing the Ukrainian use of US- and Western-provided weapons systems, such as HIMARS and Abrams, for example, and how the Russians have adapted to them.

"They're bringing these lessons home in the hardest way possible: by bleeding for them," Bermudez said.

• US F-16s flew to Greenland for force posturing after Russian aircraft were detected in the Arctic.
• The US and Greenland continue their standard agreement for presence in the Arctic region.
• Tensions are high as President Trump continues pressing his desire to buy Greenland.

US F-16 fighter jets flew to Greenland earlier this week, highlighting the vast autonomous territory's long-standing role in supporting North American defense, even as the new administration complicates matters with new landgrab ambitions.

Right now is an unusually tense time between the US and Denmark, a longtime American ally, as President Donald Trump continues to push forward on ambitions to acquire Greenland. His newly confirmed secretary of state, Marco Rubio, says he's serious.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command confirmed Thursday that it monitored the activity of multiple Russian military aircraft in the Arctic earlier this week. The aircraft remained in international airspace and weren't seen as a threat, but as part of its defense mission, NORAD regularly scrambles patrol aircraft to monitor these situations.

Two patrols — one from the Canadian NORAD region and the other from the Alaskan NORAD region — were dispatched to track the activity. The Canadian patrol consisted of two Canadian CF-18s and KC-135 refueling aircraft, while the Alaskan patrol included two American F-35s, one E-3, and two KC-135 refueling aircraft.

Several hours after those patrols, NORAD "sent two F-16s from Alaska to Greenland exercising its standard agreement with Greenland to forward posture NORAD presence in the activity." The command said that the dispatch was not in response to any current threat.

Aircraft with the bilateral NORAD command regularly deploy to Pituffik Space Base on the western tip of northern Greenland. NORAD Public Affairs said that these aircraft "support various long planned NORAD activities with our allies and partners, building on the longstanding defense cooperation between the US, Canada, and the Kingdom of Denmark."

The routine activity highlights that Greenland isn't simply land; it is part of a strategic partnership.

In recent months, President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in a US acquisition of Greenland, a self-ruling Danish territory. He has called the island, which is rich in natural resources, an "absolutely necessity" and has even suggested using force or coercion to bring it under US control.

Trump's comments on Greenland have been met with a wide range of responses and confusion, especially with Greenlanders and US partners in Europe, but on Thursday, the newly sworn-in US secretary of state, Rubio, said on The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM that Trump's desire to acquire the island is "not a joke."

He said "this is not about acquiring land for the purpose of acquiring land. This is in our national interest, and it needs to be solved."

Beyond its natural resources, Greenland is also primely located in an area of growing strategic competition: the Arctic. It could support the US force posture in the Arctic, making it easier to monitor and counter China and Russia's ambitions in the region. China is a critical factor in Trump's attitude on the Panama Canal, as well.

In response to Rubio's remarks on Trump's ambitions, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said Friday, "I would be more surprised if he said it was a joke," per Danish public broadcaster TV2. "We have no interest in selling Greenland to the US, it will not happen."

• President Trump signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
• The federal government and military are already embracing the order, and Google Maps indicated it would also reflect the change.
• However, changing maps and charts isn't a simple process.

President Donald Trump's executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America is already resulting in changes across the federal government and military. Google Maps has indicated it would follow suit.

However, the federal process isn't as simple as crossing out the old name and writing in a new one. It's a complicated switch across the bureaucracy, involving a top-down effort to update official documents, communications, maps, and charts.

On his first day back in office as president, Trump issued an executive order on "restoring names that honor American greatness," directing the Secretary of the Interior to implement a change to the area of the US continental shelf "extending to Mexico and Cuba" and remove all mentions of the Gulf of Mexico across "all federal references."

The executive order also included the reversal of former President Barack Obama's naming of Denali, North America's highest mountain peak located in Alaska, to Mount McKinley in honor of former President William McKinley.

The name "Gulf of America" has long been debated and satirized. However, Trump's executive order is the first time the US has directly acted to change it.

While many Republicans, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green have embraced and lauded the move, it's also been met with backlash and confusion from some internationally. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said last week that "for us and for the whole world, it is still the Gulf of Mexico." Reporting from The Telegraph indicated that the United Kingdom won't recognize the name change.

Earlier this month, Mexico's Sheinbaum joked that because a world map from 1607 — 169 years before the US was founded — labeled North America as Mexican America, perhaps the continent should be named as such.

Across the federal government and military, the change to "Gulf of America" has been quickly implemented. Sources familiar with the matter told Business Insider that internal documentation and public-facing communications are already updated or in the process of being updated, with map and chart changes to come.

On Friday, the Department of the Interior announced efforts were underway to make the changes.

Inside the Interior Department, the Board on Geographic Names has purview over names for federal use, but that's only binding to federal departments and agencies.

In the past, the board and the US Geological Survey would act immediately to update the Geographical Names Information System, a database of more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the US and its territories. The Department of State would update the Geographic Names Server, which defines geographic feature names outside of the US. But it's up to each agency and office to update their websites and information accordingly.

A US Navy spokesperson said once the internal systems the Navy gets its information from are updated, its maps and charts will be updated.

Google said on Monday that Google Maps would reflect the ordered name changes to the Gulf of America and Mount McKinley once the Geographic Names Information System is updated, in accordance with "a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources."

It also said that Google Maps users see the official local name in their region when nomenclature varies between countries, and the rest of the world sees both names.

The changing of some other maps and charts may involve a longer process. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, is engaging with the Board on Geographic Names for further guidance on the implementation, Scott Smullen, the deputy director of NOAA Communications, said.

The process from there, specifically how quickly maps will be updated across the federal government and military, appears fairly complex, requiring updating every reference.

According to Trump's executive order, the Secretary of the Interior has 30 days to implement the name change and ensure "all federal references to the Gulf of America, including on agency maps, contracts, and other documents and communications shall reflect its renaming."

The US Coast Guard's District 8, which oversees the Gulf of Mexico area, said it was "acting in compliance" with Trump's executive order. Just a day after Trump's executive order, the Coast Guard began using the term when announcing deployed assets to the maritime border between Texas and Mexico.

At this time, Apple Maps hasn't renamed the body of water. The Associated Press said last week that it would still use the name Gulf of Mexico while also acknowledging the Gulf of America in its style guide. It said that "as a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences."

BI's style is consistent, using the name "Gulf of Mexico."

As Trump's executive order is only effective domestically, other nations and international organizations could continue to refer to the region as the Gulf of Mexico, and similar variations exist elsewhere in the world. The Persian Gulf located south of Iran, for example, has long been the site of controversy, with some nearby Arab countries like Saudi Arabia calling it the Arabian Gulf.

• Pete Hegseth has been confirmed as defense secretary after a tie-breaking vote by JD Vance.
• The outspoken Army National Guard veteran and former Fox News host faced major controversies.
• Hegseth's confirmation suggests major changes may be in store for the Pentagon.

Vice President JD Vance on Friday delivered his first tie-breaking vote in the senate, confirming Pete Hegseth, a Trump confidant and Iraq veteran, as defense secretary after a contentious battle over his qualifications.

Democrats and three Republicans questioned Hegseth's readiness to lead the Pentagon, as the US Army National Guard veteran and former "Fox & Friends" host lacks experience in the defense industry or running large organizations that have characterized past defense secretaries.

Hegseth was barely confirmed on Friday night after a 50-50 Senate vote, which required a tie-breaking vote by Vance. Republican Senators Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, Susan Collins from Maine, and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska voted against Hegseth. All Democratic senators voted no.

The confirmation was only the second time in US history that the Vice President has been required to break a tie for a cabinet appointment. The first was Betsy DeVos' 2017 confirmation as secretary of education during President Donald Trump's first term.

Hegseth's confirmation is one of the closest ever for the position, which has often seen strong bipartisan support. For comparison, Lloyd Austin, a retired Army general tapped by former President Joe Biden, received 93 votes in 2021. In addition to Hegseth, one of the other closest votes occurred in 2013, when the Senate confirmed former President Barack Obama's pick, Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator and Vietnam combat veteran, by 58-41.

Hegseth's nail-bitter confirmation in the GOP-led Senate is a victory for Trump's unconventional Cabinet nominations. Since Trump announced his pick in November, Hegseth's personal history, controversial comments on culture war topics, and qualifications for the position have all been under fire.

At the Fox News host's confirmation hearing in January, he faced intense questioning, walking back previous comments he made against women serving in combat roles and promising to bring a warrior ethos back to the Pentagon.

He has also received support from many Republicans and veterans. Tim Kennedy, a retired Army Green Beret and mixed martial artist, has repeatedly advocated for Hegseth's candidacy, calling him "an agent of change." On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said that Hegseth would bring "a warrior's perspective to the role of defense secretary and will provide much-needed fresh air at the Pentagon."

Hegseth's confirmation may bring radical changes to the Pentagon that had been resisted in Trump's first term. It was Hegseth who then advised Trump to pardon troops accused or convicted of war crimes over the objections of top Pentagon leaders who worried this would erode the discipline and order in their ranks.

By rhetoric and background, Hegseth has been seen by lawmakers and officials as an unconventional pick.

Hegseth, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was among a group of National Guard members who had their orders to secure then President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration revoked after the January 6 insurrection due to controversy over his tattoo of a Jerusalem cross; he also has a tattoo of a Christian motto that dates to the Crusades and has been adopted by the alt-right.

Hegseth has also received backlash over his views of women serving in combat roles. During a podcast episode after Trump's reelection, Hegseth said, "I'm straight-up just saying we should not have women in combat roles," arguing it hurt the military's readiness. At his confirmation hearing in January, he took a different tone.

"Yes, women will have access to ground combat roles, given the standards remain high, and we'll have a review to ensure the standards have not been eroded in any one of these cases," Hegseth said, noting that if he's confirmed, he'll initiate a review of gender-neutral standards.

He has also been grilled about his drinking, beliefs against diversity, equity, and inclusion, and his personal history. During a media blitz to shore up his struggling candidacy, he vowed "there won't be a drop of alcohol on my lips" while he's the SECDEF.

In November, sexual assault allegations against Hegseth from an incident in 2017 were made public. At the time, Hegseth told police that the encounter was consensual and denied any wrongdoing; he was never criminally charged. In November, he told reporters that the matter was fully investigated and he'd been cleared.

Hegseth, an avowed opponent of the Defense Department's efforts to diversify its disproportionately white workforce, suggests major changes may be in store beyond the removal of any DEI or so-called "woke" policies.

His selection by Trump is also a sign the White House is focused on purging the military's top ranks of purported "woke generals," along the lines of the "warrior board" reviews first reported by The Wall Street Journal. 

• Deportation flights have begun, Trump's White House said Friday.
• Photos released by White House staff show people in restraints boarding a US airlift plane.
• Trump has tapped the military to assist with the deportation of immigrants in the US illegally.

President Donald Trump's White House said that the first deportation flights of immigrants who entered the US illegally were carried out this week. The president promised a mass deportation campaign with military assistance.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, confirmed the first of the flights on Friday morning, posting photos of people in restraints being boarded onto Air Force C-17 Globemaster IIIs.

"President Trump is sending a strong and clear message to the entire world: if you illegally enter the United States of America, you will face severe consequences," Leavitt said on X.

Two deportation flights on C-17s to Guatemala were flown overnight, a US defense official told Business Insider.

In a post on X Thursday night, Leavitt said the administration had arrested over 500 "illegal immigrant criminals." She said hundreds more were being deported by military aircraft. "The largest massive deportation operation in history is well underway," she wrote.

Prior to his reelection, Trump's campaign focused heavily on the issue of illegal immigration, criticizing the Biden administration for failing to protect US borders and repeatedly promising a mass deportation campaign. Deportations surged under former President Joe Biden but to less fanfare. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement data tracked almost 300,000 deportations of immigrants from October 2023 to September 2024, the highest since 2014.

Broadly, 1.1 million people were repatriated from the US in 2023. The broader term "repatriation" includes deportation, returns whether ordered or voluntary, and expulsions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

During Trump's inaugural address on Monday, he hit on the issue again, saying that "all illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came."

On his first day in office, the president signed an executive order declaring a national emergency at the US-Mexico border.

Trump also signed an order directing US Northern Command to "seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities."

A senior defense official said this week that the US military is moving an additional 1,500 active-duty soldiers and Marines to the border, boosting the force presence there by roughly 60% and raising the total active-duty force size to roughly 4,000 service members. Barred from engaging in direct law enforcement activities, the troops are operating in support roles.

Military aircraft being used in this mission include UH-72 helicopters, C-130 cargo planes, and the C-17 airlifters seen in photos from the White House. The defense official added that some military airborne surveillance assets could be sent to the border.