VoteVets, a non-profit group and political action organization that largely supports Democrat veteran candidates, launched a 10-day billboard campaign Monday in 10 U.S. cities that features photos of President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on a fiery background.

“Trump & Hegseth’s Iran War means higher prices for you with no end in sight,” the signs declare.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, senior adviser to VoteVets, told Military Times the effort is intended to connect “affordability with accountability,” linking political leaders’ actions with higher costs at the gas pump and grocery stores.

“[Service members] tend to be married young with children, and when you allow the cost of living — not just gasoline, but the whole business, grocery stores — … it’s a visible increase in prices that we are bearing,” Eaton said during an interview Friday.

Iran and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, killing numerous Iranian leaders, including its top official, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Trump said the strikes were meant to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

“[Iran] attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas and could soon reach the American homeland,” Trump said in a social media post following the attack.

Since the opening salvos, other regional powers have become involved, and the control of the Strait of Hormuz — a vital shipping lane through which roughly 25% of the world’s oil is transported — has fallen into dispute, interrupting maritime commerce.

The conflict has caused natural gas and oil prices to swing, affecting prices of the commodities. But Eaton said the billboards also seek to call attention to the rising national debt, which surpassed $40 trillion this week.

The national debt limit has doubled in the past decade under President Joe Biden and Trump, growing by $8.4 trillion while Biden was in the White House. When Trump took office in January 2025 that debt was hovering at $36.1 trillion.

“That level of accountability to affordability, that linkage is also what we’re trying to make clear to everybody,” Eaton said.

The locations of VoteVets’ billboard campaign include: Dayton, Ohio; West Point, New York; Fayetteville, North Carolina; San Antonio, Texas; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Tampa, Florida; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Tomah City, Wisconsin; and Savannah, Georgia.

The group’s 1,000-plus digital billboards are slated to stay up until Sept. 2.

“We are going where veterans and military families are around our nation’s military installations, and underscoring the cost of Trump and Hegseth’s neocon war to them directly,” the group said in a press release.

The Defense Department’s Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military, released Friday, estimated that 20,492 active-duty service members, including 9,860 women and 10,632 men, were sexually assaulted in the year preceding the fiscal year 2025 survey, down from 29,000 in 2023.

The 2025 figures represent a drop in sexual assaults from roughly 35,900 in 2021.

“The FY 2025 report underscores our ongoing commitment to maintaining high standards, protecting our people, and building a unified, ready, and lethal fighting force,” Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata said in a statement Friday.

The assault estimates were derived from the department’s 2025 Workplace Experiences Survey that polls troops on various topics such as sexual assault and harassment, work climate, leadership and training.

According to the fiscal year 2025 survey, the estimated rate of assaults dropped among active-duty women from 6.8% to 4.3%, and among active-duty men from 1.4% to 1.0%.

At the same time, reports of sexual assaults increased, with 7,998 filed in fiscal year 2025. Given the results of the survey, an estimated one in three individuals filed a formal report of an assault, up from one in four in 2023.

Defense Department officials have long encouraged service members to report assaults as a means to address the issue in the ranks. The Pentagon uses the reports metric to help determine whether department and service sexual assault prevention and reporting initiatives are succeeding.

“Estimated percentage of victimized service members making Restricted and Unrestricted Reports – desired state is increase,” the report stated.

According to the report, the Marine Corps had the highest prevalence of unwanted sexual contact against women, at 6.8% of female Marines. The Navy had the highest prevalence of unwanted contact against men, at 1.5%.

The Air Force had the lowest prevalence of unwanted contact reported by its members at 2.8% by women and 0.7% by men.

The report noted that a majority of service members trusted their leaders to handle the problem, with 72% of women and 80% of men saying that those involved were “treated fairly.”

Trust in the system also has risen since 2023, according to the data, but female members still struggle with confidence in the process.

In 2025, 64% of men and 41% of women said they believed the system would protect their privacy, up from 61% and 41%, respectively.

69% of men and 45% of women said they trusted the military to ensure their safety after a sexual assault, up from 66% and 43% in 2023.

Female service members reportedly expressed more confidence in the resources provided by their sexual assault response coordinators and support team, with more than 60% saying they were satisfied with support from their victim advocates, sexual assault response coordinators and assigned attorneys.

Male troops were less satisfied with the services of their sexual assault teams; however, between 36% and 47% expressed confidence in their victim advocates, response coordinators and counsel.

The military services were required in 2023 to establish independent legal structures to handle serious crimes, including sexual assault, domestic violence, murder and manslaughter. The Office of Special Trial Counsel directly handles investigations and decisions to prosecute such cases, removing the chain of command from a role it historically held in judicial proceedings.

The first survey since the Office of Special Trial Counsel’s creation found that men were “significantly more likely” than women to trust that the office would treat them fairly if they were to experience a sexual assault, with 65% of men reporting favorably. Just 44% of women expressed the same confidence, however.

In the past, service members have hesitated to report incidents of sexual assault out of fear of retaliation from their leadership, peers and/or perpetrator. A 2021 study found that 31% of men and 28% of women said they experienced retaliation after a sexual assault.

The report released Friday found that retaliation continues to be a concern. Among women service members who indicated an experience of Unwanted Sexual Contact (USC), 17% reported saying they experienced retaliation prohibited by law. For both men and women, one of the most common reasons for not coming forward was “worrying about backlash from coworkers and peers.”

Along with the decrease in sexual assault, the prevalence of sexual harassment also declined among men and women. An estimated 4.4%, or 44,656 service members, said they experienced sexual harassment, down from 5.8% in 2023. Among women, 17.5%, or 39,744 service members, said they experienced sexual harassment, down from 24.7% in 2023.

Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group dedicated to promoting equality and ending sexual assault in the ranks, said Friday that its analysis of the 2025 data found that service members experienced 38% more unwanted sexual contacts than a decade ago. The group also noted that the 4.3% rate of sexual assault among military women in 2025 was the same as the rate reported in 2016.

The Defense Department cautions that the survey measure was substantially revised in 2021 and that prevalence estimates from 2021 onward cannot be scientifically compared with estimates from earlier years.

The rate among men, at 1%, was higher than the 2018 rate of 0.7%, the group noted.

The advocates said they have heard from personnel whose prosecutions never occurred or whose evidence and documents were lost, and victims were pushed out of the military without proper medical care, including mental health treatment.

“I wouldn’t take these numbers at face value, and neither should the American public. They are not what we are seeing,“ said Protect Our Defenders Senior Vice President Josh Connolly.

“Survivors are more afraid to come forward than they were two years ago, and this administration has spent the past year giving them reason to be – rolling back whistleblower protections, making it harder to report anonymously, warning people who come forward that they may be punished for it. A number that falls because people stopped talking is not progress,” Connolly said.

In the report, department officials attributed the decline to numerous changes they have made to address sexual assault and harassment in the ranks, which they called harmful behaviors that “act as internal adversaries, eroding the very foundation of our operational readiness and unit lethality.”

According to the department, the DoD assessed Sexual Assault and Prevention and Reporting Offices in Indo-Pacific Command in 2025, engaged at joint bases to improve collaboration across the services, conducted unit evaluations and standardized the workforce to address issues with the program.

“Dignity, respect, and discipline are foundational to the warrior ethos and the overall preparedness of the force. Sexual assault and sexual harassment undermine these values, eroding trust and threatening the mission,” Tata said in the release.

The department sought to fund 90% of its maintenance needs, but the GAO found that the services continue to request funding for only about 80% of their needs, according to the report released Friday. The funding shortfall led to an estimated $285 billion of maintenance backlogs in fiscal 2025.

“DOD has not fully determined the risks to its mission and to the quality of life of its personnel as a result of not meeting its funding goal,” the report reads. “Fully determining and communicating these risks would provide better information to DOD and Congress to weigh budget priorities.”

GAO authors examined Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force military installations across the U.S. and its territories for this report.

The report found that the department does not request the full amount of maintenance funding as recommended by its Facilities Sustainment Model, which estimates the average annual sustainment funding requirement for facilities based on their size, location and other factors.

This contributed to the increased backlog of deferred maintenance needs. Even though in 2014 an Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics memorandum was issued to establish a goal of funding regular maintenance at 90% or higher of the amount estimated by the Facilities Sustainment Model, the GAO continues to find that the services are not meeting that goal.

Instead, the Army, Navy and Air Force requested about 80% for fiscal years 2017 through 2020. The Marine Corps requested funding decreased from 80% to 40% over the past five fiscal years, opting to fund more facility restoration and modernization projects in exchange for reduced sustainment funding, the report says.

Maintenance and improvement projects’ backlogs can contribute to service members’ quality of life and negatively affect installations’ missions.

“By requesting less funding for installation maintenance and improvement projects than its models and experts recommend, DOD has chosen to accept some degree of risk that mission or quality of life will be negatively affected,” the report says.

In past reports, the GAO has found that barracks maintenance were “chronically neglected” and resulted in poor conditions of enlisted service members that affected their quality of life. Thousands of service members lived in substandard barracks, with some hosting potentially serious health and safety risks, a 2023 report found.

Of the 31 recommendations issued in 2023, the department implemented 19 as of April 2026. But many remain unaddressed, such as establishing an oversight structure for barracks, the report says.

The GAO found that challenges in hiring and retaining key maintenance workers are seen in remote and isolated locations and other obstacles include private sector employment competition as well as federal hiring, pay and work eligibility practices.

Military departments have not fully identified the extent of maintenance workforce shortages or created plans to address the hurdles.

The GAO also found that installations rely on maintenance work order data systems to respond to needs, but the tracking is limited and the data is generally unreliable for determining the effectiveness of maintenance performed across the services.

In the report, the GAO made 13 recommendations, including strengthening departmental oversight, determining risks associated with funding maintenance below levels proposed and improving maintenance data reliability.

The department fully or partially concurred with 12 recommendations and did not concur with one.

The goal is to create a variant of the SeaSparrow that can be used by the 12 nations in the NATO SeaSparrow Project Office consortium, or NSPO, according to the Navy Sources Sought notice. The deadline is Oct. 19.

The NSPO is looking for a weapon that can be employed against a wide variety of threats. The NSV SeaSparrow “should have capability against current and future threat classes spanning a variety of threat characteristics including velocity (low-speed to high-speed), altitude (sea skimming to high diver), maneuverability (non-maneuvering to high Gravitational (G)-Force maneuvers), and signatures,” the Navy said.

The NSV is also meant to defend the fleet against massed salvos of missiles and function despite jamming.

The weapon “should be able to work in complex natural, contested, Radio Frequency (RF), Electro-Optical (EO), and/or Infrared (IR) environments.”

“The missile should have the capability to discriminate and resolve between multiple closely spaced targets and provide threat-track measurements to support missile guidance, navigation and lethality functions,” the Sources Sought notice continues. “The missile should have the capability to handle threat countermeasures.”

The notice included a graphic that appeared to depict surface ships — including two aircraft carriers — being targeted by a dozen missiles and torpedoes, plus a hostile fixed-wing aircraft and a helicopter. The friendly ships appeared to be using active illumination to paint some threats, while the SeaSparrow used its on-board sensors to intercept others.

NSPO seeks a modular, open-source design that would give the U.S. government “maximum rights in technical data, computer software, and computer software documentation (including source code), design artifacts, and interface specifications.”

“This approach will simplify future upgrades, promote interoperability across consortium platforms, and outpace evolving threats,” the notice said.

The NSPO wants contractors who can provide a complete missile system, including airframe, propulsion, guidance and software. The missile should have no more than a 10-inch diameter and fit inside a Mark 41 vertical launch tube.

The Sources Sought notice emphasized that the missile and its technical data should be releasable to the entire NATO SEASPARROW Consortium: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the U.S. Other users include Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.

The Block II RIM-162 Evolved SeaSparrow is currently manufactured by Raytheon, which doubled production to more than 350 missiles in 2025. Amid naval operations in the Persian Gulf, where Iran has launched numerous missiles and drones against dwindling stocks of U.S. and allied interceptors, future demand for short-range air defense weapons is likely to be brisk.

First fielded in 2004, the Evolved SeaSparrow is descended from the 1950s AIM-7 Sparrow radar-guided air-to-air missile.

Though the original Sparrow had a mixed combat record as an aerial combat weapon in the Vietnam War, the Evolved SeaSparrow was intended as a low-cost defense against anti-ship missiles, aircraft, helicopters and fast attack boats. The current version has an estimated range of around 30 miles.

But the services have been unable to complete those requirements because they are hampered by a lack of resources, including a shortage of staff and the technology needed to conduct such assessments, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

In 2024, after extensive reporting by The New York Times on the impact routine weapons training can have on the brain, including traumatic brain injury, the Pentagon issued several policies to protect troops from blast overpressure.

The policies included restrictions on the proximity trainers should have to weapons at firing ranges. They also called for increasing the use of simulators in training, conducting cognitive assessments of all troops and monitoring exposure.

The policies also required new recruits to receive cognitive assessments by the end of 2024. Screening for all active-duty personnel in “high-risk” specialties — such as those who handle howitzers, mortars, M 107 and MK 15 sniper rifles, breaching charges and other weapons — was supposed to be completed by the end of fiscal 2025.

The GAO found that nearly 200,000 recruits were screened in fiscal 2025 and 86% of personnel in occupations at increased risk received assessments, with 87% of Army personnel, 81% of Air Force members and 59% of Navy sailors screened.

But service officials told GAO analysts that they faced challenges fully meeting their obligations and evaluating personnel because of the tight timeline set in memos. They said they did not receive the resources or staff to conduct the assessments and relied on existing resources to meet requirements.

In terms of monitoring service members at regular intervals following their initial assessments, the Defense Health Agency said it did not have enough specialists to meet requirements.

Officials in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness told the GAO that insufficient industrial hygienists were the “primary barrier to DOD achieving its targets for exposure tracking.”

The Pentagon announced in April that it will begin a one-year pilot program to test a new cognitive assessment tool, an app that service members can use to complete assessments. DoD officials said the app will be less “resource intensive” than current assessments and will help improve the services’ ability to track exposures.

GAO officials also said the Pentagon has taken several steps to educate service members and ensure they receive care if they show symptoms.

According to the GAO, the DoD now distributes informational material to service members on blast exposure, instructs leaders to schedule training breaks and encourages troops to seek treatment. The department is working to improve access to specialty care while also educating military doctors on blast exposure.

“DOD has taken critical steps to prevent and mitigate service members’ exposures to blast overpressure, steps intended to help protect their brain health and the readiness of our country’s military forces,” the report stated.

GAO made two recommendations, saying the department should complete an assessment of the resources needed to implement the policies and take steps to ensure the services have adequate industrial hygiene staff support.

In response, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Keith Bass said the department is on its way to completing the resource assessment and has taken steps to meet the industrial hygiene staff requirements.

“DOD estimates it will complete the actions for both recommendations by December 2026,” Bass wrote.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect Keith Bass’s correct title.

The change in the drills comes as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visits South Korea on Wednesday and Thursday for regional security talks expected to cover developments on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, sister of leader Kim Jong Un, late on Wednesday dismissed the move, saying the nature of the exercises remained provocative and aggressive even if the scale and duration had been reduced, according to a statement published by state media KCNA.

The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise, which began on Aug. 17, will now run through Aug. 21, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Pentagon official said, instead of the original end date of Aug. 27.

South Korean Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back said the allies were moving to cancel the drills’ second phase, media said, adding that it had been expected to involve counterattack operations after an initial defensive phase.

At the suggestion of the United States, the countries agreed on partial adjustments to the duration and scope of the drills, the JCS said. Some combined field manoeuvre training would also be scaled back, although details were still being discussed.

A Department of Defense official said the department had substantially reduced the exercise and associated live-training events, with some cancelled or switched to simulations.

The changes would preserve essential readiness and training aims, with no degradation to U.S. training objectives, the official added.

The changes follow Trump’s order on Sunday to “substantially reduce” the U.S. role in the drills, citing his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. On Monday, Trump added that Kim had responded to his steps, without giving any details.

Trump’s objectives in the order appeared to be to pressure Seoul over the pace of its promised U.S. investments under a trade deal, shift attention away from U.S. challenges in Iran and reopen diplomacy with Pyongyang, one analyst said.

“Trump is trying to catch three birds with one stone here,” said Ellen Kim, senior fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America.

Kim Yo Jong said she was unaware of recent communication between the two but added that Kim Jong Un held fond personal memories and feelings towards Trump.

“The relationship between the two leaders remain excellent,” KCNA quoted her as saying.

North Korea denounces drills

North Korea had earlier on Wednesday denounced the drills and said it would continue exercising its right to self-defense against what it called military threats from Washington and Seoul, KCNA said.

In a commentary, it called the United States and South Korea “warmongers” raising tension on the Korean Peninsula, but stopped short of mentioning Trump, his order or the scaling back.

North Korea’s decision to issue the commentary, rather than a statement by a senior official or a military show of force, may signal an effort to leave room for diplomacy, said Hong Min, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification.

Trump has pushed aides to arrange an in-person meeting with Kim as soon as this autumn, the Wall Street Journal said, citing U.S. officials.

He has discussed holding talks during a possible November trip to Asia for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen, the paper added.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on its approach to North Korea or the military exercises.

Pyongyang routinely condemns joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises as rehearsals for invasion, while Washington and Seoul say they are defensive and necessary to ensure readiness against North Korea’s military threats.

Neither South Korean nor U.S. officials knew in advance about Trump’s order, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, President Lee Jae Myung said the Ulchi exercises were defensive and Seoul had no intention of using them to attack North Korea or heighten tension on the peninsula.

China, North Korea’s only formal treaty ally, has not commented directly on Trump’s remarks, but Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in Seoul that Washington should change its “hostile policy” towards Pyongyang, South Korea’s Yonhap reported.

The U.S. ‌has supplied large amounts of arms to allies while also using munitions in the Iran conflict, raising concerns about inventories of air defense and precision-guided weapons.

“We called on industry to rapidly scale up munitions output, and RTX is delivering,” Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao said in an X post. “This landmark Tomahawk contract ensures our warfighters continue to have the lethal firepower they need.”

In a separate statement, Raytheon said the contract would run for seven years and would allow annual Tomahawk production to increase to more than 1,000 missiles. The company currently makes just 60 a year.

The sea-launched Tomahawk, a mainstay of the Navy’s surface fleet, provides long-range precision strike capability against land targets from ships and submarines.

The formal announcement firms up a framework agreement that the U.S. military and Raytheon signed in February.

The administration of President Donald Trump is brokering multi-year deals with the biggest U.S. defense contractors, giving the companies confidence to invest billions of dollars in new facilities and equipment.

Earlier this month, the military signed deals to ramp up production of Patriot and THAAD interceptor missile parts.

The deals cover avionics and ejector assemblies Boeing supplies to prime contractor Raytheon, an RTX business, for both the SM-3 Block IB and the newer Block IIA. Both variants operate with the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System to destroy incoming missiles outside the atmosphere.

“These agreements ensure our Warfighters get the munitions they need to win,” Michael P. Duffey, under secretary of war for acquisition and sustainment, said in the Pentagon release. “We are stabilizing our supply chains, expanding munitions production and putting our entire defense industrial base on a wartime footing.”

The frameworks run for seven years and allow Boeing to start building components before a contract is in place, while the three sides negotiate a multiyear deal. The long-term commitment is intended to give suppliers enough certainty to invest in added capacity. Neither the Pentagon nor Boeing released dollar figures or quantities.

“This gives us a clear demand signal to build and deliver SM-3 interceptors at the levels needed to counter threats,” Bob Ciesla, vice president of Boeing Precision Engagement Systems, said in a company statement. “The SM-3 is an essential part of the layered air and missile defense architecture that protects the U.S. and its allies worldwide.”

The approach mirrors a seven-year deal Boeing struck in April to triple production of PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement seekers, part of a broader Pentagon effort to lock in supply from key subcontractors alongside the prime contractors.

Earlier this month, the Missile Defense Agency awarded Raytheon a $745 million contract to produce fully assembled SM-3 Block IIA interceptors for the United States and Japan.

Demand for the interceptor traces back to April 2024, when Navy destroyers first fired SM-3s in combat, helping to thwart an Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel. Far more interceptors have been launched since, including those fired in Operation Epic Fury.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated the SM-3 inventory at 414 as of December 2025. A May analysis from the center put wartime expenditures between 130 and 250 missiles and warned that replenishment will take years.

Congress has stepped in to keep the Block IB line open, the cheaper of the two variants covered by Friday’s agreements, after the Missile Defense Agency proposed ending new purchases in the fiscal 2025 budget request.

National security officials in Washington widely view Baker, who also served as a national security adviser to Vice President JD Vance, as a low-key but influential figure inside the White House.

A former State Department official, academic and Vance adviser when the vice president was in the Senate, Baker had historically advocated for a more restrained American foreign policy that questioned the wisdom of long-term foreign conflicts.

He was also among the figures who helped craft Vance’s speech to the Munich Security Conference last year, during which the vice president warned European leaders that alleged censorship and democratic backsliding posed risks as severe to the continent as external threats, like those posed by China and Russia.

“I’m proud of everything we’ve achieved and, of course, am incredibly grateful to the President, Vice President and Secretary Rubio,” Baker wrote in a statement provided to Reuters. “I’ll never be far away.”

In separate statements, Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised the outgoing deputy national security adviser, whose departure was first reported by Axios.

Staff Changes

Baker, who has a young family, stayed on at the White House months longer than originally planned to help with some key staff transitions, according to a person close to him.

Mike Needham, a high-ranking State Department official close to Rubio, joined the White House in late May as another deputy national security adviser alongside Baker, the person noted. Cliff Sims, a White House and intelligence official during Trump’s first term, succeeded Baker as national security adviser to Vance at around the same time.

There have been additional staff departures at lower levels of the White House’s national security team in recent months. The top officials on the National Security Council overseeing Europe and Latin America both departed in June.

The broader significance of the turnover is unclear. While Baker was present at some high-level talks and was considered far more influential than some of his peers, the Trump administration has often dealt with its biggest foreign policy challenges at the principal level, delegating relatively little responsibility even to its highest-level staff.

Outside the national security space, the White House has in recent days announced the impending departure of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and White House counsel David Warrington.

Task Force Falcon Strike will utilize one-way attack drones composed of unmanned systems from above, on and below the sea, managed by U.S. military support staff and regional partners, according to a Thursday release.

The move to launch this unit follows CENTCOM’s establishment of Task Force Scorpion Strike in December 2025, a Middle East-based task force equipped with one-way attack drones as the military strived to integrate drone technology across the services.

“Task Force Falcon Strike will expand on Scorpion Strike’s success given the tremendous innovation happening among our regional allies and partners,” Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander, said in the release. “Integrating and deploying our new capabilities together will help us rapidly realize the new possibilities that are on the horizon.”

Scorpion Strike was the first to launch an aerial attack drone from a U.S. Navy warship last December, the month of its announcement. The unit also deployed one-way unmanned aerial systems during Operation Epic Fury and during strikes on Iranian port facilities in July with unmanned attack vessels at sea, the statement highlights.

CENTCOM began consulting with and officially inviting regional partners to join Falcon Strike, aiming to expand attack-drone capabilities across the Middle East into a “unified multi-domain, multinational deterrent.”

“The United States military has a lot of strong partnerships and friends in the region,” Cooper said. “We are collectively stronger when we integrate and deploy new capabilities together.”

The release did not specify which regional partners CENTCOM is working with on the unit.

Personnel from the U.S. Special Operations Command Central, located at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, will lead Falcon Strike’s staff of U.S. and regional representatives after it launched Scorpion Strike, the release states.

The announcement comes as the U.S. continues its war with Iran, which has depleted the U.S. munitions stockpile and caused military leaders to weigh the possibility of developing cheaper anti-drone technology at a faster pace.