FIRST ON FOX: Two former Navy SEALs are planning to bring hundreds of veterans to Washington, D.C., next week to march in support of Pete Hegseth’s confirmation for defense secretary.

Hegseth, a former Army National Guardsman, will take the hot seat before the Armed Services Committee for a hearing on Tuesday ahead of a confirmation vote.

The group, organized by Bill Brown and Rob Sweetman, are planning to pack "as many veterans into the hearing room" as possible. They plan to have veterans meet outside the Dirksen Senate Office Building at 4 a.m., before the building opens at 7 a.m. and the hearing kicks off at 9:30 a.m. 

The pair got to know Hegseth through his participation in the yearly New York City SEAL Swim in the Hudson River, organized by Brown. 

A group of veterans will also meet at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at 9 a.m. to march in support of Hegseth. Brown is inviting all veterans to bring American flags and join their group. 

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"There's something really powerful about having a physical presence of support, other than just social media," said Sweetman. His organization, 62Romeo, helps veterans transitioning out of the military get their sleep back on track and is helping to sponsor the event. 

Sweetman expects at least 100 SEALs to join and hundreds of other veterans. 

Brown said he and others began organizing the march over the "total dismay that a lot of us in the military, a lot of us who served our country and war and overseas, have with the current leadership in the Pentagon."

Jurandir "J" Araujo, Hegseth’s first commander when he was stationed at Guantanamo Bay prison in 2004, who’s planning to help rally support, told Fox News Digital that back then he used to tell his colleagues that Hegseth would be president one day. 

"I immediately noticed his dedication and commitment to the mission, and not only to the mission but to his men."

"As a young second lieutenant and platoon leader, Pete cared about not only training and instructing his men, but being a part of their daily lives," said Araujo. "He was always very caring about his troops, and their satisfaction with what they were doing there. 

"I always saw something in him that was special," Araujo went on. "I gave him the call sign as a lieutenant of double-A, which means all-American."

"I made a point to tell the first sergeant, I said, you know, I said, "Lt. Hegseth, prepare yourself because this guy is gonna be president one day."

Hegseth’s nomination has been rocked by allegations that the former Army National Guardsman and Fox News host drank too much and behaved inappropriately with women.

A recently unearthed police report from 2017 revealed a sexual assault allegation against him that Hegseth thoroughly denies. Others have taken issue with his past comments arguing that women should not serve in combat roles.

Some still have said they don’t believe he has the experience for the job, having retired as a major. 

The veterans coming to support him in D.C. are not deterred by the allegations. 

"The Lt. Hegseth that I knew, and the Pete Hegseth that I know today is a man of integrity," said Araujo. "That's what I gauge my measurement on, as far as leadership and the ability to lead men and this country.

"His view on women in combat is the same as mine," said Brown. "The focus should be what’s going to make us the most lethal and combat-efficient force we can be." 

"We're not little guys, we're big muscly dudes. Most women are going to have a hard time, with my plates, with my gear, dragging me out of harm's way. It’s just the truth… Pete was speaking out of love."

Both Brown and Sweetman said they were infuriated over the Afghanistan withdrawal and spurred to action when the Pentagon failed its seventh audit in a row. They hope Hegseth will hold those responsible for the withdrawal accountable and cut out waste at the Pentagon. 

"There's gross corruption, fraud, wasting, abuse in the Pentagon," said Brown. "No one's been held accountable for the travesty in Afghanistan."

"We are hemorrhaging money with some of the defense contractor initiatives," said Sweetman. "There are no checks and balances on some of these large contracts, with some of the larger companies that are embedded with the government, and so we're looking at a huge budget that a lot of it is unaccounted for, specifically when we talk about the audits. How come you don't know where the money is going?"

Angelo Martinez served with Hegseth in Cuba, when he was a young soldier and Hegseth was his platoon commander. Martinez is now a staff sergeant, and has been in the Army for 21 years.

"I had the pleasure, or maybe not, of meeting many personalities or officers," he said. 

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"The difference between him and other officers, and there's very few of them that treat other people, meaning the enlisted soldiers, as, not saying equal, but they will look at you as an equal person."

"A lot of officers kind of look above us as U.S. enlisted soldiers, and he's one of the few people that took the time to get to know the soldier, understand you, listen to you, listen to your viewpoints and stuff like that. He was one of the few that cared." 

"I'm actually on my way out of the military, and I joke that I hope one of the last few things I do here is I can take down the other secretary of defense and hang [Hegseth] up on my wall," Martinez said.

The NCO said he believed the fact that Hegseth didn’t retire as a colonel or a general was a plus, recalling times in Cuba when he and his platoon were on duty while the officers were off scuba diving on break. "He didn’t join them, he felt like he needed to be there with us."

"He's not that officer that would sit back and say, ‘You know what? I'm just gonna sit back and supervise and not have to deal with the grunt work.' Him not having the colonel rank or the star, it keeps him like among us still, rather than a distance, like someone above us looking down."

Martinez went on: "I have had people talk to me, asking about who he was, and how people had mixed feelings about him, what he did. And you know, a lot of people sometimes get a misunderstanding of who he is, but once you get to know him, you realize that he is the person for the job. Once you get to know him, you’ll probably be more comfortable with him being in that job."

President-elect Donald Trump, fed up with the U.S.' lagging ship-building capabilities, offered an out-of-character solution to the problem: Outsource production if the U.S. can’t keep up. 

"We’re going to do something with ships. We need ships. And we may have to go a different route than you would normally go," the incoming president suggested to radio host Hugh Hewitt. 

"We don’t build ships anymore. We used to build a ship a day. We don’t build ships anymore. We want to get that started. And maybe we’ll use allies, also, in terms of building ships. We might have to." 

He noted China’s vast outpacing of American shipbuilding capabilities. 

"China’s building, from what I’m hearing, every four days, they’re knocking out a ship. We’re sitting back and watching, and we’ve suffered tremendously."

Trump’s stance is sure to put the domestic shipbuilding industry and labor groups on alert. But it comes as China’s shipbuilding capacity is more than 232 times greater than that of the U.S., and the Navy has for decades struggled to build ships on time. 

And it's a divergence from his campaign promise to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., and trigger a blanket tariff on global imports into the U.S., along with a 60% tariff on all goods imported from China.

China’s navy is the largest in the world, with more than 370 ships and submarines. The U.S.' battle force includes 295 vessels, including 11 active aircraft carriers. In 2017, Congress passed a law requiring the Navy to keep and maintain 355 ships. 

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Without disclosing details, Trump hinted at a plan to grow the Navy's ship fleet. 

"We’re going to be announcing some things that are going to be very good having to do with the Navy. We need ships. We have to get ships. And you know, everybody said, ‘Oh, we’ll build them.’ We may have to go to others, bid them out, and it’s okay to do that. We’ll bid them out until we get ourselves ready," he said.

The U.S. also lags in nuclear submarines, according to military experts. The U.S.’ nuclear submarines reached a Cold War high of 140, according to Jerry Hendrix, retired Navy captain and senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute, in an op-ed for American Affairs. 

"The bottom line is that the American submarine force, the ‘point of the spear’ of American power, upon which so many military plans depend, is unprepared to meet the current threat environment, and there are no quick fixes. It has taken decades—and a sequence of bad assump­tions and poor decisions—to fall into the current state of unpreparedness," he wrote.

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The most recent figures show the U.S. submarine flight at 68, only 50 of which are classified in the hunter-killer "fast attack" category. 

Currently, China controls 46.59% of the global shipbuilding market. South Korea comes in second at 29.24%, and Japan third with 17.25%. The U.S. has a relatively insignificant control of the market at 0.13%. And it costs roughly twice as much to build a ship in the U.S. as it does elsewhere in the world. 

Congress' $895 billion annual defense policy bill authorized $33.5 billion for new ships and submarines. 

According to a Navy report last year, several key shipbuilding programs are years behind schedule, in large part due to a lack of workers. 

Trump also called out management of the Navy’s Constellation-class frigate program, blaming Biden-era officers for "playing around and tinkering," adding to costs. 

Speaking with Hewitt, Trump seemed to refer to a deal the Pentagon struck with the American arm of Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri for the new class of ships in 2020. 

"And they were going and really doing a good job, and the generals, you know, the Biden admirals and generals and all of the people that are involved, they started playing around and tinkering and changing the design, and this, you know, that costs. That costs a lot of money," Trump said.

"But the generals or the admirals went in, and they said, ‘Oh, why don’t we make it a little bit wider? Why don’t we do this? Why don’t we do that?’ And it was designed specifically for speed and other things. When you start making it wider, you start making it slower," Trump continued.

"We had it down, and they made changes. They always have to make changes. You know, these guys get in there, and they think they’re smart, and in many cases, unfortunately, they’re not smart, and they take something, and they make it worse for a lot more."

Then-President Ronald Reagan had a 600-ship goal for the Navy when he assumed office, dedicated to rebuilding the nation's fleet after the Vietnam War. But his administration also terminated a subsidy for shipbuilding that decimated the commercial market, meaning U.S. shipyards were solely dedicated to meeting the needs of the military.

President-elect Trump said on Tuesday that negotiating away the Panama Canal was a "very big mistake" by former President Jimmy Carter – ahead of Carter's state funeral later this week.

Trump said at a press conference that he believes the canal, which he would like the the U.S. to reclaim, is why Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan, who also opposed the treaty Carter negotiated to hand over the canal.

"It's a bad part of the Carter legacy," Trump said.

"He was a good man. I knew him a little bit, and he was a very fine person. But that was a big mistake."

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"Giving the Panama Canal to Panama was a very big mistake. We lost 38,000 people. It cost us the equivalent of a trillion dollars, maybe more... They say it was the most expensive structure… ever built. And giving that away was a horrible thing. And I believe that's why Jimmy Carter lost the election, even more so than the hostages," he said.

Speaking in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump lamented the fact Carter purportedly "gave" the canal lands back to the Panamanians "for $1." According to reports, no part of the treaty mentioned a $1 sale.

"I thought [giving the canal back] was a terrible thing to do," Trump said.

When reporters pressed Trump on criticizing Carter on the day of his Washington wake, the president-elect said he was a "very fine person" but that his politics left something to be desired.

Trump has also sparred verbally with Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino about his plans for the canal.

However, more than a century ago, another Republican – Theodore Roosevelt – celebrated the way the United States spearheaded the canal project in part through some diplomatic maneuvering.

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In the early 1900s, as the Colombian Senate balked at a treaty favoring U.S. control, Panama was in the process of declaring its independence from Bogota – and America quickly recognized the new nation and effectively circumvented the Colombians.

In 1903, President Roosevelt boasted of the accomplishment.

"Fortunately, the crisis came at a period when I could act unhampered [by Congress]. Accordingly, I took the Isthmus, started the canal and then left Congress not to debate the canal, but to debate me," he said. 

Trump’s plans to retake the canal have earned him praise from otherwise regular critics.

Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Sen. John McCain – with whom Trump often sparred – backed the man she otherwise tends to critique.

"Trump is right about the Panama Canal. This is very personal – my dad was born in the Panama Canal Zone."

The elder McCain was born in 1936 at the then-Coco Solo U.S. Navy installation – as a U.S. citizen since the canal zone was controlled by Americans.

The late Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina also expressed reservations about canal negotiations in the 1970s.

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In a letter to then-President Ford, Thurmond warned the Panamanians were cozying up to the Communist Cuban government, and that "any action on the part of the United States that indicates the slightest position of weakness or a willingness to accommodate anti-American sentiment in Panama, would result in many other Latin American countries moving in the same leftward direction."

Thurmond led 35 senators in crafting a resolution opposing what he called the surrender of U.S. sovereignty in the PCZ.

"Any loss of control of the Canal would be extremely detrimental to our vital interests, especially in Latin America. We should make it clear that U.S. vital interests there are not negotiable."

Carter's negotiations led to Panama taking full control of the canal by 1999. His other major diplomatic negotation – peace accords between Egypt and Israel – also remain intact today.

Mental health disorders are on the rise in the military, now accounting for more hospitalizations than any other ailment, according to a new Defense Department health report. 

Diagnoses of mental health disorders are up 40% over the past five years, from 2019 to 2023, according to a Defense Health Agency report. It found that anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) doubled over the five-year period. 

In 2023, active-duty service members experiencing a mental health disorder made up 54.8% of hospital bed stays, more than every other affliction combined.

From 2019 through 2023, 541,672 active-duty service members across all branches were diagnosed with at least one mental health disorder, according to the report. About 47% of those were diagnosed with more than one mental health disorder. In 2023, there were 1.3 million U.S. active duty troops.

The sobering report follows the New Year's Day vehicle attack in New Orleans that killed 14 people, revealing that the suspect, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was an Army veteran with multiple deployments.  

That same day in Las Vegas, Col. Matthew Livelsberger, an active member of the Army Green Berets, shot himself in the head in a Cybertruck full of explosives. 

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"As service members continue to experience increased rates of mental health disorders after the COVID-19 pandemic, help-seeking behaviors to address psychological as well as emotional well-being should be prioritized to maintain force readiness," the report read. 

The Pentagon could not immediately be reached for comment on what's behind the uptick in diagnoses and whether U.S. forces are mentally prepared to go into combat if needed. 

Female service members, those who are younger and those in the Army, were most likely to be diagnosed. 

The Navy led all other branches in depressive disorders, bipolar disorders and personality disorders.

Active duty female service members were diagnosed with PTSD twice as often as their male counterparts. 

The medical data came from records accessed via the Defense Medical Surveillance System and Theater Medical Data Store. It analyzed ambulance encounters, hospitalization or outpatient visits to a psychiatric facility, and other factors to define a mental health diagnosis. 

Meanwhile, military suicides ticked up again last year, following a dark trend the Pentagon has struggled to combat. 

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Overall, there were 523 reported suicides in 2023, the most recent data available, up from 493 in 2022. The number of active-duty troops who died by suicide increased to 363 from 331 the previous year, up 12%. 

Suicide is by far the biggest killer of service members, killing more than training accidents, illnesses, homicides or combat, according to the Defense Department (DOD). In addition to the sheer number, the rate of suicides per 100,000 also went up last year. 

Suicide deaths by active-duty service members have been on the rise since 2011.

Another troubling sign from the data is how many suicide victims sought help: 67% had a primary care encounter in the 90 days before their death; 34% had been to an outpatient mental health center; 8% had been discharged from an in-patient mental health facility; and 18% were on psychotropic medication at the time of their death. 

Within a year prior to their death, 44% of military suicide victims reported intimate relationship problems, and 42% reported a behavioral health diagnosis. 

A pair of suspected terrorist attacks on New Year's Day were both allegedly carried out by former U.S. service members, raising questions about how those with access to sensitive intelligence and the nation’s most advanced weapons get swept up in radical beliefs. 

Early Wednesday morning, Texas resident Shamsud-Din Jabbar allegedly plowed into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 14. He was a former Army staff sergeant, with a deployment to Afghanistan under his belt. 

Hours later, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded in flames outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas — a suspected terror plot that was linked to active-duty Army Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger, who allegedly carried out the attack that led to his own death while on approved leave. He was a member of the elite Green Beret unit. 

From 1990 to 2022, 170 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds plotted 144 unique mass-casualty terrorist attacks in the United States — 25% of all individuals who plotted mass-casualty extremist crimes during this period, according to a study by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

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"Though the number of those in the military who commit prohibited extremist activities may be small, even a single incident can have an outsized impact on the Department and its mission," Defense Department spokesperson Sue Gough told Fox News Digital when asked about the recent attacks and efforts to root out radicalism. 

"The Department is committed to ensuring that extremism does not gain a foothold within the Total Force and will continue its efforts to ensure that all service members can focus on mission accomplishment without the negative and divisive influence of extremist activities."

Here’s a look back at some other military radical extremists who have conducted attacks on U.S. soil in the 21st century: 

In 2009, former Army Major Nidal Hassan killed 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood Army base in Texas. The Islamic extremist and former Army psychiatrist had spoken out about the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Retired Colonel Terry Lee, who worked with Hassan, told Fox News that the Army major would make "outlandish" statements like, "the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor," referring to U.S. troops. 

Hassan reportedly shouted, "Allahu Akbar!" as he opened fire, killing 13 and injuring 30 others in the deadliest mass shooting on a U.S. military base. 

Hassan admitted to the killings in court and now sits on death row.

In 2021, Army soldier Bridges, 24, was arrested for conspiring to blow up the 9/11 memorial in New York and attempting to assist ISIS in killing U.S. soldiers. 

Now serving 14 years in prison, Bridges was caught when he began communicating online with a covert FBI agent who he believed to be an ISIS supporter in contact with ISIS fighters in the Middle East. 

Melzer, 24 at the time of his sentencing, is serving 45 years in prison for sending sensitive U.S. military information to the Order of the Nine Angles (O9A), an occult-based neo-Nazi and White supremacist group, in an attempt to facilitate a mass-casualty attack on Melzer’s Army unit.

He was arrested in 2020 after joining the Army in 2018 to infiltrate its ranks and gain insight for his work for O9A. After being deployed to guard a remote, sensitive foreign U.S. military base, he shared details about the site with O9A members and began to call for a deadly attack on his colleagues. 

Miller, a lifelong White supremacist, shot and killed three people, two outside a Jewish community center and one outside a Jewish retirement home, in Kansas in 2014. 

Miller had been vocal about intending to kill Jews, though all of his victims were Christians. 

He served in the Army for 20 years, serving two tours of duty in the Vietnam War and 13 years as a member of the elite Green Berets. Having led a branch of the Ku Klux Klan, Miller had a history of run-ins with the law. He served three years in prison after being convicted in 1987 of conspiring to acquire stolen military weapons and for planning robberies and an assassination. 

Miller has since died in prison. 

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Thompson, a Navy veteran, committed a Salafi-jihadist-inspired hatchet attack in Queens, New York in 2014, injuring four police officers. The attack was deemed an act of terrorism as Thompson was a recent Muslim convert. In the months preceding the attack, he visited hundreds of websites associated with terrorist organizations. Thompson was involuntarily discharged from the Navy in 2003, after having been arrested six times between 2002 and 2003 in domestic disputes. 

He was shot dead by police on the scene of the 2014 attack. 

In 2016, Johnson ambushed police officers in Dallas, Texas, killing five and wounding nine others. The 25-year-old Army reserve Afghanistan War veteran was angry over police shootings of Black men. He perpetrated the attack at the end of a protest against the recent killings by police of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.

Las Vegas authorities arrested Andrew Lynam, an Army reservist, alongside Navy veteran Stephen T. Parshall and Air Force veteran William L. Loomis — all self-identified Boogaloo Bois — on May 30, 2020, for conspiring to firebomb a U.S. Forest Service building and a power substation to sow chaos during a police protest after the killing of George Floyd. 

In total, 480 people with a military background were accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, some 230 of whom were arrested in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. 

As NATO member states struggle to meet their defense spending goals and war rages on Europe's eastern front, officials are struggling to agree on a plan to shore up hundreds of billions of dollars to bolster defenses. 

Eight NATO countries did not meet their 2% target for defense spending in 2024. And as many member states struggle with chronically stressed budgets, calls to meet those goals are not being heeded quickly. 

The European Commission estimates about 500 billion euros, the equivalent of $524 billion in investments, are needed in the coming decade to defend Europe against evolving threats. 

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The EU's budget cannot be used to fund defense directly, and some European officials and NATO experts are proposing a global defense bank to dole out funds for military modernization. 

A defense, security and resilience (DSR) bank would issue bonds backed by AAA ratings for financially strapped countries to upgrade their defenses and would provide guarantees for commercial banks to offer credit to defense suppliers. 

"This is not a substitute to raising defense spending in each of these countries. I think it should be a supplemental tool," Giedrimas Jeglinskas, chairman of the national security committee in the Lithuanian parliament and a former NATO official, told Fox News Digital. 

His remarks echo those of incoming President Trump, who has long threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO due to the number of nations missing the mark on the 2% goal for defense spending. 

"I think we have to look at it also as an opportunity for the U.S. as well," Jeglinskas added. "I understand the skepticism by Donald Trump of the World Bank and then the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and IFC [International Finance Corporation] and other institutions. I think there's been a lot of capital deployed and a lot of investments that these banks or institutions do. The real impact is, at best, questionable. So, I think we have to have very clear KPIs [key performance indicators]. We need to build defense." 

The United States' $824 billion defense budget in 2023 equaled half of total defense spending by all NATO member states combined at $1.47 trillion.

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The return of Trump to the White House, coupled with a U.S. push to refocus on China, has left Europeans wondering whether the U.S. will have less of an appetite to defend Europe in years to come. 

More EU defense chiefs and foreign ministers have pitched the idea of issuing joint debt through bonds to finance military projects. 

But some countries like Germany have voiced concerns about maintaining their own sovereignty and a disproportionate financial burden on some countries. 

The DSR bank idea is explained at length in a new Atlantic Council report by defense fellow Rob Murray.

"For allies across both the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions, the bank could go beyond offering low-interest loans for defense modernization to facilitating equipment leasing, currency hedging, and supporting critical infrastructure and rebuilding efforts in conflict zones like Ukraine," Murray wrote. 

"An additional critical function of the DSR bank would be to underwrite the risk for commercial banks, enabling them to extend financing to defense companies across the supply chain."

The goal would be to offer financing to small and medium-sized defense companies that often struggle with access to funds. 

"By providing loans with extended maturities, the bank would offer predictable and sustainable funding for defence modernisation. Its governance structures would align funding with collective security goals, such as upgrading arsenals and investing in emerging technologies," Jeglinskas wrote in a recent op-ed for the Financial Times.

Asked how the DSR bank would get countries to agree on defense funding priorities, Jeglinskas likened the idea to the U.K.-led Joint Expeditionary Force, a military alliance that includes Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

Jeglinskas noted the 33 trillion euros in European assets under management across the continent. 

"There's really no political will, no risk appetite to move them anywhere besides the kind of bond markets where they rest now," he said. "But several nations need to build that initial capital, and then, by using the sovereign rating to get to hopefully AAA in capital markets, raise that money from bond markets and to start funding defense programs."

The European Investment Bank has doled out long-term loans and guarantees to European nations' projects that align with EU policy goals. 

"But even they are struggling with kind of shifting their mandate towards more dual-use technologies is still not allowed in their funding package," said Jeglinskas. 

"Of course, every other bank in Europe is looking at EIB for their signals. That signaling hasn't been there yet. So, that's the point. We need to create some sort of mechanism, and that kind of global defense bank would be one of the tools that we could use to rally the capital and really direct it toward defense. So, it's really creating another multilateral lending institution."

As millions of Americans gather together with loved ones to celebrate the Christmas holiday and ring in the new year, hundreds of thousands of American men and women in uniform will mark the holidays away from family in decidedly less festive corners of the world. 

As of June, 165,830 U.S. service members were on deployment across the Middle East, Indo-Pacific region and Europe. That figure has likely ticked higher amid recent unrest across the Middle East, and it doesn’t include service members working at U.S. bases over the holidays and civilian personnel on overseas contracts.

Here’s a look at where service members will spend the holidays on deployment across the world: 

Around 43,000 troops are stationed across the Middle East as of October, an increase from the usual 34,000 amid the recent unrest and outbreak of war between Israel and Iranian proxy forces Hamas and Hezbollah. 

The Pentagon announced in October it would be moving troops into Cyprus to prepare for escalating unrest in Lebanon. And last week the Pentagon divulged that some 2,100 troops were in Syria — not the 900 they had long claimed. Another 1,000 troops are in Iraq carrying out missions to thwart ISIS. 

U.S. forces are stationed across Europe to support NATO forces and deter any potential Russian aggression. 

Major areas of deployment include Germany (34,894), Italy (12,319) and the United Kingdom (10,180).

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U.S. forces partner with allies in Asia to conduct joint exercises and coordinate on countering the threat of China and 

Areas of deployment include South Korea (23,732), Japan (52,852) and Guam (6,453).

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Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin thanked U.S. troops for serving over the holiday season in a Christmas message. 

"We know firsthand the holidays can be especially hard if you're far away from your loved ones. So for our troops stationed around the globe, we deeply appreciate your sacrifice," he said. "We know that your families serve too, and our military families are the foundation of America's strength."

Nearly one year after mysterious drones hovered near a top-secret military base in Virginia for 17 days, Sen. Tim Kaine says he is "very frustrated" with "so many unanswered questions" that remain. 

The Virginia Democrat said his state delegation will get a classified briefing on the situation Thursday. 

For more than two weeks in December 2023, the mystery drones flew into restricted airspace over the installation, home to key national security sites and the F-22 Raptor stealth fighters. 

The Pentagon has said little about the incidents other than to confirm they occurred after a Wall Street Journal report in October. If officials know where the drones came from or what they were doing, they haven’t shared it with Congress. 

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"We're kind of at the year anniversary of these incursions at Langley. And I'm very frustrated with the fact that there's still so many unanswered questions," Kaine told Fox News Digital. 

Lack of a standard protocol for such incursions left Langley officials unsure of what to do, other than allow the 20-foot drones to hover near their classified sites. 

As defense-minded lawmakers sought more answers, Langley officials referred them to the FBI, who referred them to Northern Command, who referred them to local law enforcement, one congressional source said. 

"I'm going to keep pushing the federal agencies to get their act together and have a clear agency that's responsible for answering rather than all pointing their fingers at each other and telling us that you got to go to some other agency to get an answer," said Kaine. 

The drones over Langley "don’t appear to be armed, but they are there for at least surveillance purposes. And they interrupted training exercises at Langley."

And during the recent drone phenomenon in New Jersey, unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have been spotted near Picatinny Arsenal and over President-elect Trump's golf club in Bedminster. Trump said he canceled a trip to his golf club due to the drone sightings. 

Drone incursions at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio prompted the base to close its airspace Friday night, and UAS sightings have occurred at U.S. military bases in the United Kingdom and Germany. 

A spending bill that must pass before the end of the week includes a reauthorization of the government's counter-drone authorities. But it is a simple reauthorization of a program many drone experts say is outdated. National security-minded lawmakers and experts have implored Congress to take up legislation that would grant the government greater detection capabilities and give state and local law enforcement the authority to deal with unauthorized drones. 

U.S. capabilities offer many different ways to take down a drone, including shooting them, zapping them with heat lasers and jamming the frequencies so they stop working and fall out of the sky.

Whether Congress needs to change laws is a point of contention, but one thing that is clear is incursions like the one at Langley prompt confusion over legal authority. 

"This is a little bit of a problem of too many cooks. And it's not clear who is the chef," said Kaine. "The FAA is looking at it. The FBI is looking at it. DOD looking at it.

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"This is a lot clearer if there's a drone incursion over a base in a war zone like Syria, for example, or Iraq at a base where U.S. military personnel are positioned. The authorities to knock these drones down in that setting are much clearer than if there's a drone incursion over a base on domestic soil. OK, not going to drone down over the city of Hampton, where the debris might fall into neighborhoods. The authorities on that aren't so clear." 

When drones encroach near bases overseas, the rules of engagement give service members more leeway to engage with them. 

However, U.S. law does not allow the military to shoot down drones near its bases unless they pose an imminent threat. While Langley has the authority to protect its coastal base, the Coast Guard has the authority to protect the waters and the Federal Aviation Administration has authority over U.S. airspace, some of the most congested with commercial airliners in the world. 

Last week, a Chinese national was charged with flying an unauthorized drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. In October, Chinese national Fengyun Shi was sentenced to six months in prison for capturing drone footage over Huntington Ingalls Industries Shipbuilding in Newport News, Virginia, 10 miles from Langley Air Force Base. 

Two months prior to Langley, in October 2023, five drones flew over the Energy Department’s Nevada National Security Site, which is used for nuclear weapons experiments. U.S. authorities were not sure who was behind those drones either. 

A Chinese surveillance balloon traversed over the U.S. for a week last year before the Air Force shot it down off the coast. 

The U.S. Air Force’s Plant 42 in California, home to highly classified aerospace development, has also seen a slew of unidentified drone incursions in 2024, prompting flight restrictions around the site. 

The Senate voted to pass the $895 billion annual defense policy bill that includes a pay raise for U.S. servicemembers and a provision that restricts transgender care. 

The bill passed 85 to 14, and now heads to President Biden’s desk for his signature. 

The legislation scored a more bipartisan vote in the Senate than it did in the House, where more Democrats voted no on the legislation in protest of the transgender provisions. 

The bill prohibits military health care provider Tricare from paying for transgender care "that could result in sterilization" for children under 18.

The legislation passed the House last week 281-140, with 16 Republicans voting "no." Only 81 Democrats voted yes – 124 voting no – a much larger margin than in years passed when the legislation typically enjoyed bipartisan support. 

The 1,800-page bill details how $895.2 billion allocated toward defense and national security will be spent. It will be voted on more than two months after the start of the fiscal year. 

The $895.2 billion represents a 1% increase over last year’s budget, a smaller number than some defense hawks would have liked. 

Additionally, while the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) outlines policy, a separate spending bill will actually fund the programs it lays out. That spending legislation will be voted on in the next Congress, when Republicans will have a narrow majority in both chambers. 

A significant portion of the legislation focused on quality-of-life improvements for servicemembers amid record recruitment issues, a focus of much bipartisan discussion over the last year. That includes a 14.5% pay increase for junior enlisted servicemembers and increasing access to child care for servicemembers while also providing job support to military spouses.

The measure authorizes a 4.5% across-the-board pay raise for all servicemembers starting Jan. 1 and a 2% increase for civilian personnel within the Department of Defense.

It also puts more restrictions on Chinese-made drones, fearing their use in the U.S. could be for foreign surveillance. It specifically targets China-based DJI and Autel Robotoics. 

The NDAA mandates that a national security agency must determine within one year if drones from DJI or Autel Robotics pose unacceptable national security risks. If no agency completes the study, the companies would automatically be added to the Federal Communications Commission’s "covered lists," preventing them from operating in the U.S. 

DJI is the world’s largest drone manufacturer and sells more than half of all U.S. commercial drones. 

The bill recommends a $20 million increase in counter-unmanned aerial systems (UAS) Advanced Development budget and requires the Defense secretary to establish a "C-UAS task force" within 30 days and provide a report to congressional defense committees on the military’s latest counter-drone training efforts within four months.

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Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., led a group of 21 Democratic senators demanding an amendment to remove the transgender care restrictions from the NDAA. That amendment was not included as it would have forced the bill back to the House. Congressional leaders spent months conferencing to find agreement between the chambers and the parties on the yearly must-pass legislation. 

"Let’s be clear: we’re talking about parents who are in uniform serving our country who have earned the right to make the best decisions for their families," Baldwin said in a statement. "I trust our servicemembers and their doctors to make the best health care decisions for their kids, not politicians."

The amendment will affect care for 7,000 children, according to Baldwin, who said she would support the NDAA if not for the provision.

Other Democrats said they had objections to the provision, but the bill's provisions to strengthen U.S. defenses against China, raise pay for servicemembers, invest in new military technologies and replenish weapons stockpiles. 

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"Of course, the NDAA is not perfect. It doesn’t have everything either side would like … But of course, you need bipartisanship to get this through the finish line," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters Tuesday he shares his colleagues' "frustration" with House Speaker Mike Johnson's "extreme, misguided provision," but he said Democrats during the negotiation process were able to strip out "the vast majority of very far right provisions that had passed in the House bill."

Provisions like a blanket ban on funding for gender transition surgeries for adults did not make their way into the bill. Neither did a ban on requiring masks to prevent the spread of diseases. 

The bill also supports deploying the National Guard to the southern border to help with illegal immigrant apprehensions and drug flow. 

Another provision opens the door to allowing airmen and Space Force personnel to grow facial hair. It directs the secretary of the Air Force to brief lawmakers on "the feasibility and advisability" of establishing a pilot program to test out allowing beards. 

Democrats are also upset the bill did not include a provision expanding access to IVF for servicemembers. Currently, military health care only covers IVF for servicemembers whose infertility is linked to service-related illness or injury.

However, the bill did not include an amendment to walk back a provision allowing the Pentagon to reimburse servicemembers who have to travel out of state to get an abortion.

The bill extends a hiring freeze on DEI-related roles and stops all such recruitment until "an investigation of the Pentagon’s DEI programs" can be completed.

Johnson, meanwhile, touted $31 billion in savings in the legislation that would come from cutting "inefficient programs, obsolete weapons, and bloated Pentagon bureaucracy."

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Wednesday rebuffed the Biden-Harris administration's response to recent drone sightings in New Jersey, decrying how federal authorities have given no clear answers to Congress on their origin. 

In a Fox News appearance, Johnson agreed that the White House, and more broadly the U.S. government, does not seem concerned about the increased sightings in New Jersey and elsewhere in the Northeast. 

"Look, I'm the speaker of the House. I have the exact same frustrations that you do and all of us do. We don't have the answers. The administration is not providing them," Johnson said. 

Johnson said he set up a meeting last week with officials from the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, and "the answers are not forthcoming."

TRUMP SAYS THE GOVERNMENT 'KNOWS WHAT IS HAPPENING' WITH MYSTERIOUS DRONES

"They just say 'don't worry about it, it's not foreign entities, there's not a vessel offshore doing this, and they're not collecting any data.' OK, then what is it?" Johnson said. 

"You heard Mayorkas, who no one believes, we impeached him in the House as you know, the DHS secretary, he said in an interview a couple days ago, well because they changed the regulations to allow drones to fly at night, that's why everybody's seeing them now. They've always been there. I mean, look, people are not buying the answers," Johnson said. "We are digging in further to get the answers, and we're demanding that the administration do its job. We gotta protect Americans, protect our intelligence, of course, and our data and everything else. We're going to get down to the bottom of it, but we don't have the answers yet."

Johnson referenced how Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC News on Monday that there are thousands of drones flown every day in the U.S., and that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in September 2023 "changed the rules so that drones could fly at night, and that may be one of the reasons why now people are seeing more drones than they did before, especially from dawn until dusk." 

Mayorkas also said it was "critical" for Congress to expand authorities for state and local agencies to counter drone activity "under federal supervision." 

Johnson reacted to President Biden telling reporters at the White House on Tuesday that there was "nothing nefarious" happening with the drones, and that so far, there has been "no sense of danger."

"This is why we need Donald J. Trump back in the White House to bring steady hands at the wheel and a strong commander-in-chief," Johnson said. "He would have already had the answers, he would have already delivered to the American people and certainly to members of Congress. So leadership matters. That's why he got the mandate. That's why the American people can't wait for the America First agenda to start, and we can't wait either."

Federal authorities said Monday evening that the reported drone sightings have been identified as legal commercial drones, hobbyist drones and law enforcement drones, as well as manned aircraft, helicopters and even stars. Officials said that assessment was based on technical data and tips.

The House Intelligence Committee grilled federal law enforcement and intelligence officials about the drones during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., told CNN. 

Authorities told the panel there still is no evidence of public safety or national security threats, Himes said.

Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday that drone-detection equipment supplied by the federal government has yielded little new information. He declined to describe the equipment, except to say it was powerful and could even disable the drones, though he said that is not legal on U.S. soil. Murphy urged Congress to give states more authority to deal with the drones.

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Meanwhile, the FBI and New Jersey state police warned against pointing lasers at suspected drones, because aircraft pilots are being hit in the eyes more often. Authorities also said they are concerned people might fire weapons at manned aircraft that they have mistaken for drones.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Monday that the federal government has yet to identify any public safety or national security risks from any of the reported drone sightings in the northeast, saying officials believe they were lawfully flown drones, planes or stars.

"There are more than 1 million drones that are lawfully registered with the Federal Aviation Administration here in the United States," Kirby said. "And there are thousands of commercial, hobbyist and law enforcement drones that are lawfully in the sky on any given day. That is the ecosystem that we are dealing with."

The federal government has deployed personnel and advanced technology to investigate the reports in New Jersey and other states, and is evaluating each tip reported by citizens, he said.

About 100 of the more than 5,000 drone sightings reported to the FBI in recent weeks were deemed credible enough to warrant more investigation, according to a joint statement by DHS, FBI, FAA and the Department of Defense. 

Speculation has raged online, with some expressing concerns that the drones could be part of a nefarious plot by foreign agents.

Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said it Is unlikely the drones are engaged in intelligence gathering, given how loud and bright they are. He repeated Tuesday that the drones being reported are not being operated by the Department of Defense. When asked whether military contractors might be operating drones in the New Jersey area, Ryder rebuffed the notion, saying there are "no military operations, no military drone or experiment operations in this corridor."

Ryder said additional drone-detecting technology was being moved to some military installations, including the Picatinny Arsenal and at Naval Weapons Station Earle in New Jersey, where drones also have been reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s Defense secretary nominee ensnared in sexual assault allegations, plans to release his accuser from the confidentiality agreement he had her sign, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Graham, R-S.C., told NBC’s "Meet the Press" that Hegseth "told me he would release her from that agreement," adding, "I’d want to know if anybody nominated for a high-level job in Washington legitimately assaulted somebody."

Graham has said he will not take allegations from an anonymous source into consideration for Hegseth’s confirmation. 

Allowing Hegseth’s accuser to come forward publicly might lead to a spectacle similar to the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, during which his accuser, Christine Ford, was called to testify in the Senate about her accusations.  

TRUMP'S DEFENSE PICK GOES ON OFFENSE AS SUPPORT GROWS FOR HEGSETH CONFIRMATION

"The Pete Hegseth I know, this is not a problem I’ve been aware of," Graham said.

"However, if people have an allegation to make, come forward and make it like they did in Kavanaugh," he added, referring to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. "We’ll decide whether or not it’s credible."

A woman alleges that in 2017, she was sexually assaulted by Hegseth in a hotel room in Monterey, California.

Hegseth was not charged in the incident and insists the interaction was consensual, and the charge stemmed from a woman who regretted cheating on her husband.

Police recommended the case report be forwarded to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office for review, but no charges were filed. 

At the time of the alleged assault, Hegseth, 44, was going through a divorce from his second wife, with whom he shares three children. She filed for divorce after he had a child with another woman, according to court records and social media posts.

A payment was made to the woman, according to Hegseth’s attorney, as part of a confidentiality agreement because Hegseth feared the woman was preparing to file a lawsuit that could have cost him his job as a co-host on "Fox & Friends." 

Earlier this month, Hegseth’s attorney, Tim Parlatore, told CNN they had considered suing the woman for civil extortion before settling with a confidentiality agreement. 

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It is not yet clear whether the allegations may stand in the way of Hegseth’s confirmation. Republicans will have a 53-47 majority in the next Senate, and there is only room for Trump nominees to lose a few GOP votes, assuming no Democrats choose to back them. 

Hegseth does not appear to have lost any Republicans in the upper chamber at this point, including more moderate lawmakers such as Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. 

Hegseth met with both of them last week on Capitol Hill. According to Collins, "I had a good, substantive discussion that lasted more than an hour."

"We covered a wide range of topics ranging from defense procurement reforms to the role of women in the military, sexual assault in the military. Ukraine, NATO, a wide range of issues. I obviously always wait until we have an FBI background check and one is underway in the case of Mr. Hegseth, and I wait to see the committee hearing before reaching a final decision."

Trump's Defense secretary choice has also met twice with Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa. After their first meeting earlier this month, Ernst admitted on Fox News that she was not sold on Hegseth yet. However, after their second meeting this week, she released a statement, saying, "As I support Pete through this process, I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources."

Fox News' Julia Johnson and Tyler Olson contributed to this report. 

FIRST ON FOX: A Republican congressman is disputing Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s insistence that the State Department did not block citizens from leaving Mazar-i-Sharif Airbase in Afghanistan during the frenzied withdrawal. 

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, wrote a letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, demanding to know how many planes the State Department blocked from leaving the airbase, who made the call on whether to clear flights for takeoff, what the criteria for blocking delaying flights was and whether there had been communication with the Taliban.

Following the withdrawal, reports emerged that 1,000 people, including Americans, were stuck at Mazar-i-Sharif Airport awaiting clearance for their charter flights to leave. 

Many had made the 400-mile trek from Kabul to be able to get out more quickly at the airport in northern Afghanistan. 

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One flight organizer told Reuters the State Department had failed to tell the Taliban of its approval for flight departures in Mazar-i-Sharif or validate a landing site. 

Davidson said in the letter that when he was in talks with the State Department, an official asked him "which tail number" he was referring to, insinuating more than one flight had not received authorization to take off and been delayed. 

Col. Francis Hoang, who worked on Afghanistan evacuations with his group Allied Airlift 21, told the Foreign Affairs Committee, "We spent three weeks hiding these nearly 400 people from the Taliban, keeping them alive and fed using funds from American donors."

During a hearing last week, Davidson asked Blinken, "Did the State Department block American citizens from departing from the airfield in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan?" 

"Absolutely not," said Blinken. 

"You know they were blocked!" said Davidson. 

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"I'd be happy to look at any information you have on that. I'm not aware of any American citizens who were blocked."

"I have the emails. I have the photographs of American, blue passport-holding American citizens who were on the airfield awaiting departure that got clearance for safe third countries to depart to, and the order came down from the United States government. Was it the State Department?" Davidson asked. 

Blinken's testimony came three months after the committee voted along party lines to recommend he be held in contempt of Congress, when he refused to appear to testify again about the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. 

Republicans released a lengthy report in September highlighting how State Department officials had no plan for getting Americans and allies out while there were still troops there to protect them. 

The report claimed that Ross Wilson, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan at the time, grew the embassy's footprint instead of sending personnel home despite warnings from military officials that a Taliban takeover was imminent. 

"You ignored warnings of collapse from your own personnel," Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul told Blinken. 

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Blinken defended the Biden administration's handling of the withdrawal, saying every American who wanted to leave had been given the opportunity to do so and thousands of Afghans have been resettled internationally. 

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to ask for the resignation of every senior official "who touched the Afghanistan calamity."

Democrats, meanwhile, insist the blame for the 20-year war's acrimonious end lies with a deal Trump negotiated with the Taliban for U.S. withdrawal.

The Senatevoted to advance its annual $895 billion defense policy bill, a signal that the legislation is on track to pass despite Democratic grumblings over a transgender care provision.

A vote to invoke cloture, or pass an agreement to limit debate, on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed the Senate 63 to 7 on Monday evening. The bill now heads to a final vote later this week.

The legislation passed the House last week 281-140, with 16 Republicans voting no. Only 81 Democrats voted yes – 124 voting no – a much larger margin than in years passed when the legislation typically enjoyed bipartisan support. 

The 1,800-page bill details how $895.2 billion allocated toward defense and national security will be spent. It will be voted on more than two months after the start of the fiscal year. 

The $895.2 billion represents a 1% increase over last year’s budget, a smaller number than some defense hawks would have liked. 

A significant portion of the legislation focused on quality-of-life improvements for service members amid record recruitment issues, a focus of much bipartisan discussion over the last year. That includes a 14.5% pay increase for junior enlisted troops and increasing access to child care for service members while also providing job support to military spouses.

The measure authorizes a 4.5% across-the-board pay raise for all service members starting Jan. 1. 

The NDAA typically enjoys wide bipartisan support, but this year’s focus on eliminating "woke" policies was hard for some Democrats to stomach. 

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The policy proposal to prohibit Tricare, the military's health care provider, from covering transgender services for the minor dependents of service members has raised concerns, prompting the leading Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, to reconsider his support for the bill.

"Blanketly denying health care to people who clearly need it, just because of a biased notion against transgender people, is wrong," he said in a statement. "This provision injected a level of partisanship not traditionally seen in defense bills."

The goal of that provision is to prevent any "medical interventions that could result in sterilization" of minors.

Other provisions, like a blanket ban on funding for gender transition surgeries for adults, did not make their way into the bill, neither did a ban on requiring masks to prevent the spread of diseases. 

The bill also supports deploying the National Guard to the southern border to help with illegal immigrant apprehensions and drug flow. 

Another provision opens the door to allowing airmen and Space Force personnel to grow facial hair; it directs the secretary of the Air Force to brief lawmakers on "the feasibility and advisability" of establishing a pilot program to test out allowing beards. 

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Democrats are also upset the bill did not include a provision expanding access to IVF for service members. Currently, military health care only covers IVF for troops whose infertility is linked to service-related illness or injury.

But the bill did not include an amendment to walk back a provision allowing the Pentagon to reimburse service members who have to travel out of state to get an abortion.

The bill extends a hiring freeze on DEI-related roles and stops all such recruitment until "an investigation of the Pentagon’s DEI programs" can be completed.

It also bans the Defense Department from contracting with advertising companies "that blacklist conservative news sources," according to an internal GOP memo.

The memo said the NDAA also guts funding for the Biden administration’s "Countering Extremist Activity Working Group" dedicated to rooting out extremism in the military’s ranks. The annual defense policy bill also does not authorize "any climate change programs" and prohibits the Pentagon from issuing climate impact-based guidance on weapons systems.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., touted $31 billion in savings in the legislation that would come from cutting "inefficient programs, obsolete weapons, and bloated Pentagon bureaucracy."

The compromise NDAA bill, negotiated between Republican and Democrat leadership, sets policy for the nation's largest government agency, but a separate defense spending bill must be passed to allocate funds for such programs.

The mysterious drone phenomenon centered in New Jersey has prompted government officials to issue fresh calls for expanded power as their counter-drone authorization is set to expire this week. 

The current drone-countering authorities — authorized as part of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 — grant both the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) authority to use advanced detection technologies to identify, track and intercept drones that aren’t complying with the law.

The 2018 measure exempts the agencies from other laws that prevent interference with aircraft and wiretapping without a warrant. It expires on Dec. 20, and lawmakers must attach a last-minute extension to a stopgap spending bill to fund the government this week in order to prevent a lapse. 

But government officials say the 11th hour, piecemeal approach harms their ability to counter drone threats.

"We cannot appropriately budget, we can’t strategically plan for the future," Steven Willoughby, deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security’s counter-drone office, said during a security forum last week. 

"The administration has been seeking, for several years now, additional authorities to expand the counter-UAS authorities, both of the federal government, which are themselves very limited, and also to give state and local authorities the authority to use certain C-UAS technologies with federal oversight," a senior Biden administration official told reporters on a call over the weekend. "That legislation has been pending."

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A DHS official said that while there is "no known malicious activity in New Jersey," the sightings there "highlight a gap in our current authorities, and so we would also urge Congress to pass our important counter-UAS legislation." 

The White House-backed Counter-UAS Authority, Security and Reauthorization Act of 2024 would expand the government’s drone authorities and renew them until 2028 — and add new state and local drone authorities. 

But a separate, bipartisan House plan would scale back the proposed state and local authorities in favor of authorizing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to take down drones, instead of just regulating their use in airspace. 

But lawmakers don’t have time to hash out their disputes over which agency should get what authority before agencies lose their powers entirely — so the narrow extension of authority attached to the stopgap measure is only expected to last a matter of months.

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For nearly a month, New Jersey residents have alerted authorities to sightings of mysterious drones, some as wide as six feet, hovering in the sky at night. Sightings have ranged from 4 to 180, and some of them seem to be operating in a coordinated manner, and some unmanned aerial systems have been spotted near the Army's Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle.

Law enforcement has been able to offer little explanation for the phenomenon — but steered the public away from the assumption that the drones originate with a foreign adversary. 

"To date, we have no intelligence or observations that would indicate that they were aligned with a foreign actor or that they had malicious intent," a Defense Department official told reporters over the weekend. "But I just got to simply tell you we don’t know."

"We have not been able to locate or identify the operators or the points of origin. We have very limited authorities when it comes to moving off base," the official added. 

"We’re also significantly restricted, and rightfully so — in fact, prohibited — from intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance here in the homeland." 

Additional unauthorized drone sightings have been recorded near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where officials closed the airspace for four hours due to the sighting, and Ramstein U.S. Air Force Base in Germany in recent days. 

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives passed its annual defense spending bill Wednesday, including a key culture-war caveat: a ban on transgender medical treatments for minor children of U.S. service members.

The provision in the 1,800-page bill states that "medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization may not be provided to a child under the age of 18," referring to the transgender children of military personnel. 

Republicans argued that taxpayer dollars should not fund potentially experimental and harmful procedures for minors.

House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., praised the passage of the defense measure, though it now heads to the Senate for approval in the Democrat-run chamber.

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"Our men and women in uniform should know their first obligation is protecting our nation, not woke ideology," Johnson said in a statement after the measure passed.

While the provision was a win for Republicans that could further push President-Elect Donald Trump's policy agenda, the measure did not incorporate several other Republican-backed provisions related to social issues. Notably absent were efforts to ban TRICARE, the military's health program, from covering transgender treatments for adults and a proposal to overturn the Pentagon's hotly-debated policy of reimbursing travel expenses for service members seeking abortions stationed in states where the procedure is restricted.

Democrats were largely outraged by the provision to strip TRICARE from service members' transgender children, with the House Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith, vowing to vote against the bill on Tuesday despite helping on other portions of the package. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., did not advise his party members to vote for or against it.

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The measure also drew the ire of the United Nations' Human Rights Council (HRC), which called it an "attack" on military families.

"This cruel and hateful bill suddenly strips away access to medical care for families that members of our armed forces are counting on, and it could force service members to choose between staying in the military or providing health care for their children," HRC President Kelley Robinson said in a statement.

The Senate's response to the transgender treatment provision will be pivotal in determining the final content of the defense policy for the upcoming fiscal year. If it passes, it would align with Trump's criticisms of the military's "woke" policies. 

The Supreme Court also heard oral arguments last week for a first-of-its-kind case involving Tennessee's ban on transgender medical procedures for minors, which could place further restrictions on the procedures.

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The $884 billion National Defense Authorization Act, which sets policies for the Defense Department, was passed in a 281-140 vote, with 124 Democrats and 16 Republicans voting against it. 

Other provisions also place limits on diversity, equity and inclusion-based recruitment and the teaching of critical race theory in military-run schools. Other policies include a 14.5% pay boost for junior enlisted troops, expanded child care access and enhanced job assistance for military spouses, reflecting a year of bipartisan focus on addressing record recruitment struggles.

Fox News Digital's Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.

FIRST ON FOX: The U.S. Military Academy at West Point is apologizing after an employee mistakenly said Pete Hegseth was not accepted by the historic military college, and now a lawmaker is seeking accountability.

Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., accused West Point administrators of trying to "sabotage" Hegseth's nomination to be President-elect Trump's secretary of defense.

Banks is now demanding information on how the error was allowed to occur.

"As you know, ProPublica reporter Jesse Eisinger had been preparing to publish a story falsely claiming that nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, was lying when he said that he was admitted into West Point but decided not to attend," Banks wrote.

"To preempt the publication of a blatantly false story, Hegseth published his West Point acceptance letter, proving the veracity of his claim and leading ProPublica to kill the story. Eisinger defended his reporting, claiming that West Point OPA told him ‘twice on the record’ that Hegseth had not even applied to West Point."

AFTER SECOND MEETING WITH HEGSETH, ERNST HINTS AT WHETHER SHE WILL OR WON'T SUPPORT CONFIRMATION

"It is outrageous that West Point officials would so grossly interfere in a political process and make false claims regarding a presidential nominee," he continued.

"Even in the unlikely scenario of OPA mistakenly making false claims not once but twice, it is an unforgivable act of incompetence that OPA did not make absolutely sure their information was accurate before sharing it with a reporter."

Banks asked the school to hand Congress "all communication and documentation regarding how West Point OPA falsely accused Hegseth of lying about his application."

When reached for comment, West Point apologized for the error and said the academy's records indicate Hegseth was accepted in 1999 but did not attend.

PETE HEGSETH SAYS HE WILL BE 'STANDING RIGHT HERE IN THIS FIGHT' AFTER MEETING WITH SENATORS

"An incorrect statement involving Hegseth’s admission to the U.S. Military Academy was released by an employee on Dec. 10, 2024. Upon further review of an archived database, employees realized this statement was in error. Hegseth was offered acceptance to West Point as a prospective member of the Class of 2003. The academy takes this situation seriously and apologizes for this administrative error," the West Point directorate of communications said.

Hegseth is a veteran of the Army National Guard who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It comes as he has continued meeting with senators as part of the confirmation process to join the next Trump administration.

CONSERVATIVE GROUP COMPILES LIST OF 'WOKE' SENIOR OFFICERS THEY WANT PETE HEGSETH TO FIRE

Banks, an Army veteran, has been a staunch ally of Hegseth's. His support will be critical next year, having won a landslide victory in November to be Indiana's next senator.

Eisinger, an editor at ProPublica, defended the outlet's handling of the situation in a lengthy series of posts on X.

"No, we are not publishing a story. This is how journalism is supposed to work. Hear something. Check something. Repeat steps 1 and 2 as many times as needed. The end," he said.

Banks told Fox News Digital, "Pete Hegseth will shake up the DOD and eliminate wokeness from our military and military academies. This upsets the bureaucrats at West Point, who now seem to be trying to sabotage his nomination." 

With the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad over the weekend and a new White House on the horizon, Iranian resistance leaders and U.S. lawmakers alike have begun expressing hope that Iran will topple its own leadership in a similar fashion, with U.S. help. 

"There’s a real chance for regime change right now, that’s the only way you’re going to stop a nuclear weapon," Sam Brownback, former U.S. ambassador for International Religious Freedom, told Fox News Digital at a Senate panel on Iran on Wednesday. 

"It’s not just now or never, it's now or nuclear," he said, as Iran enriches uranium to near-nuclear-capable levels. 

A bipartisan group of senators spoke in support of toppling the Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khameini – both through a return to former President Trump’s "maximum pressure" campaign through sanctions and supporting the Iranian resistance movement – a piece that was missing during the first Trump administration. 

Khameini has ruled Iran for 35 years. 

THE RISE AND FALL OF BASHAR AND ASMA ASSAD

"We have an obligation to stand together with allies in making sure this regime’s suppression will come to an end," said Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., at the event, which was hosted by the Organization for Iranian American Communities. 

"Iran is projecting only weakness," said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. "Now is the time to think about how we invest more in the core values that we all share: democracy, human rights, justice for everyone."

"I have, for a long time, been willing to call quite unequivocally for regime change in Iran," said Sen. Ted Cruz, R–Texas. 

It was a stronger message than has often recently been heard in Washington, D.C. circles, where there has been little appetite for getting further involved in the Middle East.

"The ayatollah will fall, the mullahs will fall, and we will see free and democratic elections in Iran. Change is coming and it’s coming very soon," the Texas Republican predicted.  

"We will return to a maximum pressure policy," he added, "cut the cruel regime from resources from every direction possible – we are going to shut down nuclear research facilities, we are going to cut off their oil." 

ISRAEL'S UN AMBASSADOR INSISTS NATION IS 'NOT GETTING INVOLVED' IN SYRIAN REGIME CHANGE

"There is a cottage industry in Washington to promote the goals and objectives of this regime," said Marc Ginsberg, former U.S. ambassador to Morocco. "You saw here there were Democratic senators to say to you, ‘We don’t buy this. We can make this a bipartisan effort.'"

The Biden administration has issued Iran sanctions waivers in hopes of future nuclear negotiations, and has expressed no interest in helping to topple the ayatollah. On Wednesday, Biden renewed a sanctions waiver granting Iran access to $10 billion in payments for energy from Iraq. 

And asked if he would like to see Iran change its ruling system, Trump told Iranian American producer Patrick Bet David in October: "We can't get totally involved in all that. We can't run ourselves, let's face it."

"I would like to see Iran be very successful. The only thing is, they can't have a nuclear weapon," he also said. 

But Brownback, a Trump appointee, insisted the U.S. must involve itself in regime change through supporting Iran’s opposition.

"I think we need to support politically the opposition inside of Iran," he said. "Provide them equipment, provide them information… the regime is not just going to walk away. You’ve got to force them out." 

And Iran watchers believe the fall of Assad, who was heavily backed by Iran and its proxy force Hezbollah, is the perfect moment to do that. 

"The tectonic shift in the Syrian government… should mean to the people of Iran that change is in fact possible in the Middle East," said Gen. James Jones, former White House national security adviser and supreme allied commander of Europe. 

"The change in administration has already caused tectonic shifts in geographic alignments," he went on. "Appeasement does not work. Iranian regime does not do nuance."

Maryam Rajavi is president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the main resistance group in Iran.

"The people, who are deeply discontented and angry, along with the resistance units, who are part of the Army of Freedom and the main force of change in Iran, they are preparing an organized uprising," she told the panel. 

Rajavi and her political group have a 10-point plan for regime change that calls for rebuilding an Iranian government based on separation of religion and state, gender equality, abolition of the death penalty and denuclearization. 

"Our goal is not to seize power but to restore it to its rightful owners, the people of Iran and their vote."  

Unlike the first Trump administration, Iran is now facing military attacks on other fronts through its proxies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. It's unclear whether this weakened position would prompt them to bow to U.S. pressure or lash out even further. But one thing is clear: U.S. support for regime change would be a massive escalation in tensions between Washington and Tehran with unknown consequences. 

The House voted Wednesday to pass its yearly defense bill that would give junior enlisted troops a significant pay bump and work to eliminate DEI programs at the Pentagon.

It passed 281-140, with 16 Republicans voting no. Only 81 Democrats voted yes – 124 voting no – a much larger margin than in years passed when the legislation typically enjoyed bipartisan support. 

Many Democrats opposed a provision of the bill that restricts coverage of transgender treatments for minors. 

The legislation now heads to the Senate for passage before heading to President Joe Biden’s desk for signature. 

The 1,800-page bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), details how $895.2 billion allocated toward defense and national security will be spent. It will be voted on more than two months after the start of the fiscal year. 

The $895.2 billion represents a 1% increase over last year’s budget, a smaller number than some defense hawks would have liked. 

A significant portion of the legislation focused on quality-of-life improvements for service members amid record recruitment issues, a focus of much bipartisan discussion over the last year. That includes a 14.5% pay increase for junior enlisted troops and increasing access to child care for service members while also providing job support to military spouses.

The measure authorizes a 4.5% across-the-board pay raise for all service members starting Jan. 1. 

The NDAA typically enjoys wide bipartisan support, but this year’s focus on eliminating "woke" policies could be hard for Democrats to stomach.

PENTAGON ANNOUNCES NEW COUNTER-DRONE STRATEGY AS UNMANNED ATTACKS ON US INTERESTS SKYROCKET

The policy proposal to prohibit Tricare, the military's health care provider, from covering transgender services for the minor dependents of service members has raised concerns, prompting the leading Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, to reconsider his support for the bill.

"Blanketly denying health care to people who clearly need it, just because of a biased notion against transgender people, is wrong," he said in a statement. "This provision injected a level of partisanship not traditionally seen in defense bills."

The goal of that provision is to prevent any "medical interventions that could result in sterilization" of minors.

Other provisions, like a blanket ban on funding for gender transition surgeries for adults, did not make their way into the bill, neither did a ban on requiring masks to prevent the spread of diseases. 

The bill also supports deploying the National Guard to the southern border to help with illegal immigrant apprehensions and drug flow. 

Another provision opens the door to allowing airmen and Space Force personnel to grow facial hair; it directs the secretary of the Air Force to brief lawmakers on "the feasibility and advisability" of establishing a pilot program to test out allowing beards. 

HERE IS WHO IS VYING FOR POWER IN SYRIA AFTER THE FALL OF BASHAR AL-ASSAD

Democrats are also upset the bill did not include a provision expanding access to IVF for service members. Currently, military health care only covers IVF for troops whose infertility is linked to service-related illness or injury.

But the bill did not include an amendment to walk back a provision allowing the Pentagon to reimburse service members who have to travel out of state to get an abortion.

The bill extends a hiring freeze on DEI-related roles and stops all such recruitment until "an investigation of the Pentagon’s DEI programs" can be completed.

It also bans the Defense Department from contracting with advertising companies "that blacklist conservative news sources," according to an internal GOP memo.

The memo said the NDAA also guts funding for the Biden administration’s "Countering Extremist Activity Working Group" dedicated to rooting out extremism in the military’s ranks. The annual defense policy bill also does not authorize "any climate change programs" and prohibits the Pentagon from issuing climate impact-based guidance on weapons systems.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., touted $31 billion in savings in the legislation that would come from cutting "inefficient programs, obsolete weapons, and bloated Pentagon bureaucracy."

The compromise NDAA bill, negotiated between Republican and Democrat leadership, sets policy for the nation's largest government agency, but a separate defense spending bill must be passed to allocate funds for such programs.

After a number of key legislative priorities related to cracking down on China failed to make it into the yearly defense bill, Republicans are working on ways to get them signed into law before the end of the year. 

On Wednesday, the House will vote on the sprawling 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which sets policy plans for the Pentagon’s $895 billion budget. That legislation was negotiated between Republican and Democratic leadership in both the House and Senate and typically enjoys wide bipartisan support. 

And while the package will not advance legislation aimed at cracking down on U.S. dollars flowing toward Chinese Communist Party-affiliated companies, Republicans will push to include those provisions, which are a key priority for House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in other must-pass legislation.

With a government funding deadline in 10 days, those measures could be included in a continuing resolution (CR), which would punt the funding deadline down the road and keep budgets at FY 2024 levels, multiple sources familiar with negotiations confirmed to Fox News Digital. 

"During the course of negotiations on the annual defense bill, significant progress was made towards achieving consensus on provisions to counter China and strengthen our economic security. That momentum remains and more time is needed to get that important work done with the goal of passage before the end of the year," Johnson said in a statement. 

One provision that was left out would prevent the U.S. from investing in the development of military technologies, a way to codify a rule put forward by President Biden’s Treasury Department.

The rule prohibits U.S. financing of some China-based ventures and requires Americans to notify the government of their involvement in others. 

BIDEN FINALIZES CRACKDOWN ON US MILITARY TECH INVESTMENTS IN CHINA WITH ONE WEEK TO LAME DUCK SESSION

It restricts and monitors U.S. investments in artificial intelligence, computer chips and quantum computing, all of which have a dual use in the defense and commercial sectors. 

The rule seeks to limit the access "countries of concern," like China, including Hong Kong and Macao, have to U.S. dollars to fund the development of high-level technologies like next-generation missile systems and fighter jets they could then utilize for their own military. It's set to take effect Jan. 2.  

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., demanded that outbound investments piece not be included in the negotiated NDAA, three sources familiar with the negotiations confirmed. 

Some mused that Democrats put up a fight over China provisions because they were frustrated with another provision Republicans insisted on including: a ban on military health care providers from paying for transgender operations like sex changes for dependent minors if it would leave them sterile.

Politico was first to report about the back-and-forth. 

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he would not vote for the legislation – which includes big pay raises for junior troops – over the transgender provision. 

And in a relief for Chinese biotechnology companies, the Biosecure Act, which prohibits the U.S. government from contracting with companies that do business with a "biotechnology company of concern," has been left out of the NDAA. 

Three sources familiar with the negotiations told Fox News Digital that Reps. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., stood in the way of the legislation’s inclusion in the negotiated defense bill.

Raskin could not be reached for comment on his opposition. 

McGovern opposed the bill when it came up for a stand-alone vote in the House. 

"The Biosecure Act, is a weak bill, and as written, it could actually make the problem even worse," he said in a statement. 

"First, naming specific companies will create a ‘whack-a-mole’ situation where entities can change their name and reincorporate to evade sanctions," he went on. "Second, it’s totally wrong to call out specific companies without any formal investigation or interagency process – that might be how they do things in the [People's Republic of China], but this is the United States of America where we ought to have a thorough, independent investigation."

CHINESE MILITARY COMPANY'S MACHINERY IN USE AT NATION'S TOP SECRET RESEARCH LAB, OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE SAYS

In September, Fox News Digital reported that lawmakers were aware of a machine operated by a Chinese military company in use at the nation’s most secretive government laboratories. 

The machine operated by Chinese biotech company BGI is in use at the Los Alamos lab in New Mexico. 

BGI, among other companies, is included in a ban in the Biosecure Act. 

Also among them is WuXi Biologics, a company that planned to build a $300 million biomedical plant in McGovern’s district. 

Attaching the China outbound investment provision and the Biosecure Act to must-pass legislation would ensure it doesn’t die in the Democratic-led Senate the way House GOP-led bills often do. 

The House is set to vote Wednesday on its must-pass yearly defense bill that would give junior enlisted troops a significant pay bump and work to eliminate DEI programs at the Pentagon.

The 1,800-page bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), details how $895.2 billion allocated toward defense and national security will be spent. It will be voted on more than two months after the start of the fiscal year. 

The $895.2 billion represents a 1% increase over last year’s budget, a smaller number than some defense hawks would have liked. 

A significant portion of the legislation focused on quality-of-life improvements for service members amid record recruitment issues, a focus of much bipartisan discussion over the last year. That includes a 14.5% pay increase for junior enlisted troops and increasing access to child care for service members while also providing job support to military spouses.

The measure authorizes a 4.5% across-the-board pay raise for all service members starting Jan. 1. 

The NDAA typically enjoys wide bipartisan support, but this year’s focus on eliminating "woke" policies could be hard for Democrats to stomach.

PENTAGON ANNOUNCES NEW COUNTER-DRONE STRATEGY AS UNMANNED ATTACKS ON US INTERESTS SKYROCKET

The policy proposal to prohibit Tricare, the military's health care provider, from covering transgender services for the minor dependents of service members has raised concerns, prompting the leading Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, to reconsider his support for the bill.

"Blanketly denying health care to people who clearly need it, just because of a biased notion against transgender people, is wrong," he said in a statement. "This provision injected a level of partisanship not traditionally seen in defense bills."

The goal of that provision is to prevent any "medical interventions that could result in sterilization" of minors.

Other provisions, like a blanket ban on funding for gender transition surgeries for adults, did not make their way into the bill, neither did a ban on requiring masks to prevent the spread of diseases. 

The bill also supports deploying the National Guard to the southern border to help with illegal immigrant apprehensions and drug flow. 

Another provision opens the door to allowing airmen and Space Force personnel to grow facial hair; it directs the secretary of the Air Force to brief lawmakers on "the feasibility and advisability" of establishing a pilot program to test out allowing beards. 

US SCRAMBLES AS DRONES SHAPE THE LANDSCAPE OF WAR: 'THE FUTURE IS HERE'

Democrats are also upset the bill did not include a provision expanding access to IVF for service members. Currently, military health care only covers IVF for troops whose infertility is linked to service-related illness or injury.

But the bill did not include an amendment to walk back a provision allowing the Pentagon to reimburse service members who have to travel out of state to get an abortion.

The bill extends a hiring freeze on DEI-related roles and stops all such recruitment until "an investigation of the Pentagon’s DEI programs" can be completed.

It also bans the Defense Department from contracting with advertising companies "that blacklist conservative news sources," according to an internal GOP memo.

The memo said the NDAA also guts funding for the Biden administration’s "Countering Extremist Activity Working Group" dedicated to rooting out extremism in the military’s ranks. The annual defense policy bill also does not authorize "any climate change programs" and prohibits the Pentagon from issuing climate impact-based guidance on weapons systems.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., touted $31 billion in savings in the legislation that would come from cutting "inefficient programs, obsolete weapons, and bloated Pentagon bureaucracy."

The compromise NDAA bill, negotiated between Republican and Democrat leadership, sets policy for the nation's largest government agency, but a separate defense spending bill must be passed to allocate funds for such programs.