The Navy’s initiative to revamp its four public shipyards could come with a price tag nearly ten times higher than initially estimated and take decades longer to complete, according to a new government watchdog report. The Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP) launched in 2018 and aims to upgrade the drydocks and standard equipment at the service’s current four shipyards in Virginia, Maine, Washington and Hawaii that oversee repairs for the Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and submarine fleet. Initially, the service predicted the effort would take roughly 20 years and cost approximately $21 billion, although Navy officials overseeing SIOP efforts told Breaking Defense last year that those estimates were outdated. A Government Accountability Office report released today, however, said that the project could take 50 years and cost $200 billion.

dawg I dunno if the US is going to exist in 50 years, let alone have its shipyards fixed

According to the report, the initial estimate “omitted key costs,” and that factors including commodity prices increases and seismic concerns at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard that require “needed retrofits and construction” are driving up costs and adding time to the SIOP initiative. “Developing the plans and cost estimates to rebuild the Navy’s four public shipyards has taken the Navy years longer — and will cost much more — than originally anticipated due to multiple challenges and changes involved in the program,” the report said. Additionally, the report said that more shipyard construction and repair projects have been added to the SIOP program since 2018, and that the Navy has implemented some design changes stemming from “lessons learned from projects already underway.” “For example, the costs for the dry-dock projects in Portsmouth and Pearl Harbor in total grew by more than $2.5 billion since funding was originally requested from Congress,” the report said.

The GAO also noted that the Navy isn’t mandated to submit a consolidated report to lawmakers on SIOP program costs and other “risks” associated with the effort, but rather, it shares updates on “various aspects” of the SIOP program instead. Ultimately, the GAO recommended that Congress require the Navy to share an annual and standardized report to lawmakers detailing the program’s cost and status. “Without a full picture of how much has been spent, what remains to be funded, and what risks may affect SIOP progress, Congress could make consequential decisions for SIOP based on incomplete information, thus risking billions in taxpayer dollars and a lack of program oversight for the decades to come,” the GAO report said.

this is democracy manifest!

Navy officials previously told Breaking Defense in 2025 that they predict a 10 percent improvement in aircraft carrier maintenance and a 15 percent improvement for submarine maintenance once the SIOP program is complete. Typically, a submarine maintenance availability lasts 25 to 36 months, but improvements stemming from the SIOP program would reduce that by approximately three months, officials previously said. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is pushing for a fifth public shipyard to bolster aircraft carrier and submarine readiness.

While US officials have warned of munitions shortfalls from the Iran conflict, the Navy’s top cyber official identified another key observation from recent military operations: the “cyber magazine” can be vulnerable to exhaustion as well. “Your cyber magazine of these exquisite fires is empty pretty damn quick,” Vice Adm. Heidi Berg, commander of Fleet Cyber Command/10th Fleet, said in response to a question regarding lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and US operations in Venezuela, the Middle East and elsewhere. “How are you going to regenerate and continue to develop accesses and effects to be able to deliver over the course of what will almost always be against a peer competitor, a longer-term sustained conflict?” she added, speaking at HammerCon, hosted by the Military Cyber Professionals Association on Thursday. Berg did not go into details, but officials and experts for years have acknowledged that cyber capabilities and bespoke exploit tools are not limitless, necessarily reusable or easy to come by: once an adversary, or company, patches a flaw in a system, the tactic can become obsolete. They also can’t be replenished like traditional munitions with an infusion of money and production lines, given it requires time and skill to discover exploits and develop the tools to take advantage of them.

Beyond the current conflicts, exploits or hacking methods that were used in the Iran or Venezuela operations may now be burned for any future conflict. A former senior Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said China, for instance, is most likely watching how US cyber operators are performing and observing their tactics. While the debate about a shortfall in physical munitions has splashed across headlines, the status of America’s cyber munitions has remained largely out of the public eye, especially in the context of operations in Iran. Cyber has often been thought of as a persistent, daily contest below the threshold of armed conflict, but now the US has found itself in sustained combat operations in cyberspace since the launch of Operation Epic Fury (OEF). “From an OEF perspective, just to put in perspective, so 28 February, and it hasn’t stopped. Probably for the first time for the cyber force at large, it’s been this constant,” Lt. Gen. Christopher Eubank, commander of Army Cyber Command and the cyber official charged with running cyber operations in the Middle East, said during the same event.

After Epic Fury initially kicked off, experts told Breaking Defense that in one-off operations such as Absolute Resolve that captured Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro — which Berg described Thursday as “the largest and most complex cyber operation that had ever been executed” — perpetual access isn’t always as big a concern as sustaining a military campaign over time. But Jason Kikta, a former cyber operator with CYBERCOM, told Breaking Defense today that access was the “real asset” in cyber operations and agreed that it is “quickly expended and slow to replenish.” With sustained activity in Epic Fury, there will be many missions that will evolve and change parameters and priorities as the battlefield and cyberspace evolves, while American hackers will be working around the clock to find more accesses. But, there’s still always the question of what to do once accesses are gained: continue to gather intelligence, or to break something, which almost certainly eliminates the ability for cyber to impact that target again while also closing any intelligence value. As far as the price tag for developing ever-newer cyber capabilities, US Cyber Command, in an unfunded priorities list sent to Congress earlier this year, requested an additional $229 million for scaling cyber operational capacity and the development and deployment of cyber munitions, according to InsideDefense. Those funds would go toward limitations in CYBERCOM’s ability to generate and sustain cyber effects at speed and scale, the publication reported.

The Air Force has revealed that the service will achieve a years-long goal of producing 1,500 pilots annually, a target that officials say is critical to reduce a shortfall of over 2,000 aviators. But even if the Air Force can keep up that tempo for the foreseeable future, it will be “quite some time” until the service’s pilot shortage is resolved, the Air Force’s top training officer said Sept. 15. “I can’t erase that pilot deficit in a short period of time,” Lt. Gen. Clark Quinn, the head of Air Education and Training Command, said in a roundtable with reporters on the sidelines of the Air & Space Forces Association conference. Predicting how long it would take to make up the existing shortage is complicated by unpredictable retention rates driven in large part by fluctuating economic conditions, Quinn reasoned.

well, good thing the economy isn't going to fluctuate any further!

Additionally, most of the current pilot shortfall is in staff positions, held by people well into their careers. That means replenishing those positions will take a considerable amount of time. “It’s going to take 15 or 20 years to get those types of people. I can make them today, but those jobs won’t be filled for quite some time,” the general said. “I do know that if we don’t make 1,500, we’re never going to get that number down.” The Air Force says that a new pilot training model implemented in 2024 has been key to achieving the 1,500 annual production goal. Under a new framework called the Future of Undergraduate Pilot Training, the service has partnered with civilian-led training programs for early stages, where students earn a private pilot license and learn the basics of flying. Students then move on to a military-led phase of instruction flying the T-6A Texan II, and candidates picked for fighter and bomber slots will also get time with the T-38 Talon. “That new way of doing pilot training has allowed us to make the number of pilots that we need per year, which is the way that we intend to man those new platforms that are coming,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach said in a separate media roundtable Sept. 14, referring to training pilots for forthcoming aircraft like the F-47 fighter jet and B-21 Raider stealth bomber.

The introduction of autonomous platforms like Collaborative Combat Aircraft drone wingmen could also reduce the manpower needed for flying missions, Wilsbach reasoned. “We’re a few years off from having to reduce the number of pilots that we have, but in the meantime, we’re making 1,500 a year,” he said. In the long run, Air Force officials have floated the idea of consolidating flight training onto one platform: the T-7 Red Hawk. Quinn said he believes the aircraft — previously the focus of an investigation by Breaking Defense that found a series of unreported issues with the in-development trainer — will be “an outstanding airplane” that officials are “eager” to receive. Asked about consolidating all training on the Red Hawk, Quinn emphasized that no decisions have been made, adding that doing so would carry “pros and cons.” An upside, Quinn reasoned, would be reducing the footprint necessary to operate more than one aircraft, pointing to elements like logistics and manpower. But a downside, he said, is that “if something ever happens to that aircraft that would prevent it from flying for an extended period of time, I really don’t have a backup plan to that.” Quinn stated that the Air Force needs to give instructors more flying time in the aircraft to determine whether it might be suitable for all stages of pilot training. Up to now, T-7 flights have mostly been led by developmental test pilots, though instructor pilots are starting to get their time in the jet too. “Until I get the confidence that my instructors think that we can do this, that opens the door to then make that decision,” he said.

And for anyone wondering "why doesn't he just find where they are now" well if they're standing off just a few hundred km farther away from Iran than they were before, the search space increases massively as the Arabian Sea opens up, it's a herculean task to hunt through thousands of square km of open ocean. Both the Bush and Lincoln circled in a relatively small area for months prior to this. And yeah this will make the IRGC's job of targeting the carriers immensely more difficult assuming the carriers are still within range of their ASBMs

and as to the veracity of the satellite footage:

How is it possible that sentinel-2 are not sanitized for mimitary assets ?

It's probably still being released on a delay, so it's useless for targeting naval assets, and it's really low res anyway. Sentinel 2 heads are always like "hey look at this gray featureless blob that's 2% darker than the last pass maybe something got hit maybe it's a shadow." Not a real threat to anyone. Anyone who wants imagery for something serious is going to have an institutional account with the high res providers or a military sat to provision unlike us OSINTpoors

As the force grapples with supply chain and maintenance issues as well as long aircraft service lives, sustainment funding is becoming increasingly necessary to bridge the gap, service officials said in a panel at the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference. “If I can throw a number out there right now, we have a $14 billion hole in supply,” Commander of Air Force Materiel Command Lt. Gen. Linda Hurry said during a panel titled “Flying and Fixing to Fight and Win.” “Let that sink in for a minute,” she continued. “I know we’re not going to get it all at once, but when we get it, we’re going to have to execute. We’re going to have to execute smartly so we can move the needle.” Hurry said that the service is managing the fleet more globally through partnerships, looking at parts with the Defense Logistics Agency and individual pieces that the force can get from the depot back in the field. “From a supply perspective, our increase in the supply rate, or the number of aircraft that are down from a supply perspective, has increased 87% over the last seven years,” Hurry said.

On average, around 53% of the force’s fleet is over 30 years old, with 55% of the fleet over its “useful” service life, she said. Hurry added that the force is working to receive additional funding for spare parts through advocating for the budget request to pass. In the fiscal year 2027 budget, the Department of the Air Force requested a record $338.8 billion, with $4.2 billion allotted for the Consolidated Sustainment Activity Group, or CSAG, that manages spare parts and maintenance backlogs, according to budget documents. “But once we get even a penny, we have to be ready to execute it,” Hurry said. Hurry also said that the service is striving to improve its “forecasting accuracy” to better understand where the needs are and where to position those assets globally by using artificial intelligence models

I wish the US military a very "Swadian AI from Mount & Blade Warband" future, have fun starting WW3 and finding out your entire airforce was chilling back at home since that's what the AI system decided

and additive manufacturing. On top of those measures, the service is putting long-term contracts in place that build stability in the collective supply chain and multiple sources of supply. “Gone are the days of monopolies; we can’t just have one person producing the one critical part,” she said. “I need five [industry partners] producing them because if we get down to the crunch, we’re going to have to have a healthy shelf so that we can fight globally.”

okay, where are you going to find those five industry partners?

The officials touted the North Star Readiness Campaign, which is meant to increase the number of mission-capable B-52 Stratofortress and B-1 Lancer aircraft by accelerating the delivery of parts, engineering support and depot maintenance. The campaign has been the “number one driver” of improving readiness in the bomber fleet because of the supply increase the force has received, Gen. Stephen L. Davis, commander of the Air Force Global Strike Command, said during the panel. Specifically, Davis said that the campaign has increased B-52 readiness by 40%. “As a commander, you don’t want everything to be a money problem to solve it, but this I think is a money problem,” he said. “We need more money for parts. It’s absolutely the case.”

Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg gave industry leaders until Aug. 26 to submit plans for “significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities,” according to his Aug. 5 memo. Feinberg directed companies to identify ways to accelerate production and delivery, propose capital investments and facility expansions and explain how the Pentagon could enable higher production. The memo identified 16 critical programs under consideration for accelerated production or increased procurement. The responses were intended to inform the department’s fiscal 2028 budget request. The request came as the use of U.S. weapons during the Iran war put pressure on stocks of air-defense interceptors and other precision munitions. U.S. inventories of Patriot interceptors had fallen from about 2,330 before the war to between 759 and 827 by the end of July, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis. THAAD stocks had fallen from 452 to between 234 and 278. CSIS estimated production timelines of about 42 months for PAC-3 MSE interceptors and 53 months for THAAD interceptors.

The Pentagon did not respond to questions about how many companies responded to Feinberg’s request or whether the department had accepted or funded any of the proposals. General Dynamics also declined to discuss its communications with the department. “We are not able to comment on our communications with the Department of War,” a General Dynamics spokesman said. Lockheed Martin, a major supplier of U.S. missile-defense systems, did not provide a specific production timeline in response to questions from Military Times.

really cool how every MIC company is constantly like "dude, we're going to totally, like, quintuple production!", and then when you ask them "okay, when? within what timeframe?" they all go

“We continue to have dialogue with the U.S. government to deliver what the department is asking of us and our team is pushing to do even more, faster,” a Lockheed Martin spokesman said. “We’re making significant investments in our workforce, infrastructure and production capacity and working with key suppliers to accelerate delivery of the critical capabilities that strengthen America’s Arsenal of Freedom.” Lockheed separately announced Thursday that it had received its first PAC-3 MSE housing components from GM Defense, 22 days after the companies signed a production contract. The company said the components, which can traditionally take months or years to produce, were manufactured using GM’s casting and machining capabilities. Lockheed said it is investing $8 billion to $9 billion to expand munitions production, including new buildings, facility expansions and thousands of jobs at more than 20 U.S. sites. The company also said planned expansions will increase its munitions production and warehousing space by nearly 50%. The company did not say whether those investments were submitted as part of Feinberg’s Aug. 5 request.

New agreements

The Pentagon was already using framework agreements and contracts to accelerate production before Feinberg’s deadline. On July 27, the department announced seven-year framework agreements intended to boost production of propulsion components for PAC-3 MSE and THAAD interceptors. L3Harris said its PAC-3 agreement would nearly triple production of certain propulsion products, while its THAAD agreement was intended to quadruple production of key propulsion components. On Aug. 3, the defense department, in cooperation with Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, announced two framework agreements to expand production capacity for critical PAC-3 and THAAD interceptor components. The agreements were intended to support the department’s goals of tripling PAC-3 production capacity and quadrupling THAAD production capacity. On Aug. 14, DoD announced two separate framework agreements with Boeing and RTX to increase production of components for SM-3 Block IB and SM-3 Block IIA interceptors. On Aug. 17, the Pentagon announced a $22.9 billion Navy contract with RTX to accelerate production of Tomahawk missiles. On Aug. 31, five days after the industry deadline, the Pentagon announced additional seven-year multiyear procurement agreements with Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics designed to increase production quantities and accelerate delivery schedules for critical missile subcomponents supporting PAC-3 MSE and THAAD.

The Pentagon separately identified production goals of tripling PAC-3 MSE production capacity and quadrupling THAAD production capacity, with funding subject to annual appropriations from Congress. The public announcements did not identify those agreements as resulting from companies’ responses to Feinberg’s Aug. 5 request. What remains unclear is whether the 21-day exercise changed what the Pentagon plans to buy, how quickly it expects industry to deliver it or what additional funding and infrastructure the department will seek in its fiscal 2028 budget request.

U.S. bases in the Middle East have suffered severe damage as a result of Iranian attacks, images and videos obtained by ABC News show, as the Pentagon surveys the costs of a war the U.S. began more than six months ago. The images, which were recently obtained by ABC News but capture moments in time across the conflict, show damage to buildings and an aircraft at three U.S. bases in Kuwait and a Saudi base that houses U.S. assets, some of which were evacuated amid the danger. CBS News reported earlier this week on widespread damage to U.S. bases in the region. The Pentagon has not provided public information explaining the extent of the damage done by Iranian attacks to U.S. bases in the region in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan, but satellite imagery has consistently captured the impact of strikes. The Defense Department also took preemptive measures to move personnel from bases vulnerable to Iranian attacks before the war.

A senior U.S. service member told ABC News that the damage to the facilities would take “decades” to repair. "I believe the American people are unaware of the extent of the damage that American bases are taking in [the Middle East] right now due to the conflict with Iran,” the service member, who was granted anonymity, told ABC News. "These bases have been irreparably damaged. And if we choose to rebuild them, it's going to be a decades long undertaking,” the service member said. “Like, this is not something that's going to be fixed in six months. We're talking about years and years of construction and rebuilding in order to reestablish what's been destroyed." The Pentagon declined to comment to ABC News. Since the war started on Feb. 28, 18 service members have been killed and 824 wounded, according to the Defense Department. A Pentagon inspector general report found that “hundreds of buildings and structures” had been damaged at American posts across the region. The internal government watchdog, which released its report Monday, estimated the cost of the war at $33 billion, though an assessment from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost at $38 billion.

The Pentagon has consistently downplayed Iran’s offensive ability in the war. The deadliest Iranian attack of the war came on its second day, when six U.S. soldiers were killed in Port Shuaiba in Kuwait. The soldiers, who had been moved from another location to Port Shuaiba to better protect them, were at a largely unfortified location, surrounded only by six-foot concrete walls. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that the U.S. makes force protection its top priority, but that Iran would be able to penetrate defenses at times. “Every once in a while you might have one, unfortunately we call it a ‘squirter,’ that makes its way through,” he said when asked about the Kuwait strike in March. “And in that particular case, it happened to hit a tactical operation center that was fortified, but these are powerful weapons.” Among the photos shared with ABC News is what appears to be an E-3 Sentry aircraft, damaged in late March, on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The E-3 is a surveillance aircraft that is deployed for early warning and is valued at $270 million.

Fighting between the U.S. and Iran has been intermittent since an April ceasefire ended full-scale conflict, which included Israeli forces. The U.S. and Iranian militaries have continued to trade strikes for days or weeks at a time, with the U.S. largely striking targets along the coastline of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran firing at U.S. bases primarily in Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq, and Qatar. Three U.S. service members in Jordan, and one in Iraq, were killed in July by Iranian attacks. The service member who spoke to ABC News said the Pentagon is not being transparent about ongoing warfare. "It's being kept a secret, and we're acting like it's no big deal, but, you know, there are drone strikes and ballistic missile strikes actively landing on bases every day," the service member said.

This image independently obtained by ABC News shows damage to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, from an Iranian attack.

This image independently obtained by ABC News shows damage to a U.S. aircraft at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, from an Iranian attack.

This image independently obtained by ABC News shows damage to at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, from an Iranian attack.

The US has warned allies to expect delays of as much as five years in key weapons deliveries as it rebuilds its own depleted munitions stocks. Multiple European nations are expecting deliveries of key missile and air defense capabilities to be pushed back as a result of the US military exhausting its own arsenal in the Iran war, officials said. Germany has asked the US to speed up delivery of the long-range Tomahawk cruise missile and the ground-based Typhon launcher, but depleted US stocks of the powerful weapon means its manufacturer, RTX Corp.’s Raytheon, is unlikely to fulfill the order in the next five years. Two other officials said some Eastern European nations also reliant on US weapons systems have experienced delays since soon after the US and Israel launched a war against Iran on Feb. 28. The Defense Department didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment. The Pentagon’s decision to prioritize its own stockpiles is also straining Ukraine’s push for the US to send it more Patriot air defense interceptors ahead of what is expected to be a difficult winter for the war-torn nation. The issue of Ukraine’s badly needed air defense will be a key topic at next week’s United Nations meetings in New York.

President Donald Trump earlier this week told reporters that he’s talking to Ukraine about either sending them a “far less sophisticated version” of the Patriot system, or granting licenses for Europeans to build the weapons. The US is estimated to have used more than half of its most advanced Patriot missile variants, a third of its Tomahawk missiles and almost half of its precision strike missiles and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, interceptors in Iran. The Congressional Budget Office said the US had probably used as much as two-thirds of its inventory of missile defense interceptors since June 2025. The military fired so many munitions at Iranian targets during the first few months of the war that it “has resulted in strategic inventory shortfalls and revealed industrial base bottlenecks for munitions resupply,” Pentagon officials acknowledged to its inspector general. Officials are now working to stockpile critical components and selected munitions, as well as streamline production lead times, the watchdog office said in a report released this week.

Defense firms are ramping up production, with Lockheed Martin Corp working to increase annual capacity from around 600 to 2,000 of the most advanced PAC-3 MSE, or Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement. The stockpile shortages aren’t just impacting the US and Europe. In April the US told Japan its Tomahawk deliveries would be delayed by as much as two years. Saudi Arabia has also urged allies, including the US, to provide military support to help counter attacks from the Houthis in Yemen. Washington has not said if it will provide extra assistance. Still, the US continues to deliver weapons bought by European allies for Ukraine through NATO and European Union initiatives, the people said. Europe’s main concern is that the US continues to provide Ukraine with battlefield support. European leaders plan to lobby Trump on providing Ukraine with more Patriots next week as world leaders attend United Nations meetings. EU officials also hope to push the US to grant European nations licenses to build their own Patriots that could eventually be provided to Kyiv.

The future of U.S. troop levels in Europe has divided the Trump administration for months and came to a head in June in the run-up to a meeting of NATO defense ministers. The Pentagon had planned to inform the ministers about a dramatic cut to U.S. forces in Europe involving tens of thousands of troops, but the move was headed off by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who got wind of the plan at the last minute, according to multiple current and former U.S. and Western officials. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the planned presentation. Since June, the State Department has been fighting to stay in the administration’s discussions with mixed success, as the Pentagon doesn’t view the question as a diplomatic issue but purely as a military matter, according to a person with knowledge of the State Department’s efforts. In August, a questionnaire sent by the Trump administration to European allies asked about defense budget targets and weapons production — but also asked whether the governments supported Trump’s foreign policy priorities. In his speech to NATO defense ministers in June, Hegseth said the administration’s examination of future force levels in Europe would not be a superficial exercise. “This will be a real review. It will be designed to ensure that NATO is moving fast and irreversibly toward Europe leading, stepping up to take primary responsibility for the defense of Europe,” he said.

The U.S. military presence in Europe grew out of the aftermath of World War II and during the Cold War, as the United States led a trans-Atlantic alliance to safeguard Europe from the threat posed by the Soviet Union. The American footprint, which peaked at more than 400,000 troops in the 1950s, was dialed back after the Cold War, but the U.S. deployed additional troops and military hardware to the continent after Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Grynkewich, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Europe, told lawmakers in March that having bases, troops and weapons in Europe enables the U.S. military to operate in other parts of the world more efficiently. “It is having capabilities in Europe, munitions in Europe that allow us to help U.S. Africa Command to target terrorists in Africa, or to help U.S. Central Command as they execute Operation Epic Fury,” the general told lawmakers, referring to the war against Iran. “The distances are shorter, it’s less expensive and it’s much easier to project power,” he said.

The Pentagon is weighing a drastic plan to pull planes, ships, weapons and tens of thousands of U.S. troops from Europe, despite warnings from NATO allies about the growing threat of Russian aggression, according to seven current and former U.S. and Western officials. The reduction could be roughly one-third of all U.S. troops in Europe, or about 25,000. A U.S. official and another person with knowledge of the deliberations say it could be even larger — as much as half, or up to 40,000 troops. If carried out, it would be the most significant scaling back of the 80,000-strong U.S. military presence in Europe since the aftermath of the Cold War in the 1990s. The prospect of such dramatic cuts has alarmed lawmakers from both parties and European governments concerned about emboldening Russia. Such a withdrawal could radically reshape America’s relationship with its major allies and force European countries to forge new partnerships at a volatile moment, with wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Countries affected would likely include Germany, Italy and Spain, according to three U.S. officials, a Western official and a former U.S. official with knowledge of the matter. The three nations host the bulk of U.S. troops in Europe, but leaders of all the countries have also clashed with President Donald Trump over the war with Iran. Since the beginning of his second term, Trump and his deputies have argued that Europe should take the lead in its own defense, backed by America’s nuclear arsenal, and that U.S. forces are needed to tackle more urgent threats from China, Iran and drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere. In recent months, Trump, who has long questioned the value of the NATO alliance, has lashed out at European partners over their refusal to join the United States in its war against Iran. The Pentagon announced a six-month review of the American military’s presence in Europe in June. Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the supreme allied commander and the head of U.S. European Command, is expected to provide his analysis to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday, according to the U.S. and Western officials. The analysis by Grynkewich will likely outline four courses of action that could include cuts to American aviation, naval personnel and ground troops, or other capabilities, and possibly shifting some forces within Europe to countries on NATO’s eastern flank. Hegseth is due to receive a final recommendation on Nov. 6, which would then be presented to the president. Any withdrawals would happen after that.

No decisions have been made yet, according to a senior Defense Department official and two other officials. Hegseth directed the six-month review of forces in Europe to “ensure our posture aligns with President Trump’s commonsense, America First strategy,” a senior Defense Department official said in a statement. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment, and the White House referred questions to the Pentagon. During the NATO summit in Turkey in July, Trump said he “was very disappointed with NATO” and again criticized the alliance for not acknowledging American prowess. “Why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars, and they’re not there for us?” Trump said. “We’ve always been there for them.” A month earlier, during a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office, Trump was asked what he wanted from allies and answered: “Just be loyal.” “I just want their loyalty. We don’t need their money. We don’t need anything. We have the most powerful military in the world by far, but I just want loyalty,” he said. Opponents of slashing U.S. forces in Europe say it will leave NATO allies vulnerable and invite Russian aggression, sow doubts among U.S. partners in other parts of the world and deprive the American military of logistical hubs that enable the United States to move its forces quickly to the Middle East or Africa.

European officials have asked Washington, both before and after the six-month review, for a more gradual drawdown that would give their governments enough time to build up sophisticated military capabilities that have long been filled solely by the United States, including long-range missiles, satellite surveillance and aerial refueling tankers. Germany, which for decades has been an anchor for the U.S. military in Europe, hosts multiple U.S. bases, with about 36,000 troops, the largest American deployment in the region. In May, the Pentagon announced plans to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany after the country’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz said: “An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards.” After the announcement, Trump said he would go “a lot further” than that, threatening to cut more troops. Italy is home to major U.S. air bases and about 12,000 troops. Spain hosts significant U.S. air and naval hubs at Spanish bases in the country’s south. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government in March refused to allow U.S. warplanes carrying out potential strikes on Iran to use a base in Sicily without parliamentary approval. And the Spanish government angered the White House early in the war when it denied access to military bases for U.S. air attacks on Iran. European leaders were upset they were not told in advance of the decision to attack, with some saying they do not want to escalate the conflict and expressing concern about the economic consequences.

The possible cuts have already generated deep concern not only among Democrats, but also among many senior Republicans. “A 25,000-troop cut is not acceptable in any way,” said one congressional Republican, citing the reduction of two rotational brigade combat teams from Germany last year amid concerns that Russian aggression in the region is only increasing. “You can’t do Russian deterrence on the cheap.” Withdrawing troops from Europe and rehousing them within the United States or elsewhere in the world could carry a significant price tag, which could give Congress leverage. Lawmakers could block or restrict major force changes in Europe by denying the Pentagon funds to pay for the redeployment of troops and weapons.

lol, given this administration's record they wouldn't exactly be bothered if they had to just dump the redeployed troops at some port and tell them to figure their housing situation out themselves. forage, that's what real manly masculine men do!

In legislation adopted in December, Congress prohibited the use of certain Defense Department funds if troop levels in Europe dip below 76,000, or if the U.S. divests from sites in the region or relinquishes the role of an American senior officer serving as the top allied commander. But defense insiders and former officials say there could be ways around the law, including by explaining troop withdrawals as temporary moves as part of rotational deployments.

Russian threat

The Trump administration’s troop review follows repeated warnings from European governments that Russia poses an acute threat to Europe and the world. European leaders say Russia has ramped up a campaign of sabotage, cyberattacks, assassinations and drone flights across the continent designed to undermine military aid to Ukraine and divide the NATO alliance. Germany this month blamed Russia for an attempted attack at an airport in Leipzig involving a drone armed with an explosive.

well, I guess that explains it - false flags to desperately get the US to reverse course on their drawdown?

And over the weekend, a drone struck a train near the Ukraine-Poland border, minutes after a diplomatic delegation including former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt rode through the same station. A second drone strike hit near a separate border crossing between Poland and Ukraine. European officials accused Russia of staging the drone attacks to intimidate governments providing military aid to Ukraine. Russia dismissed the accusations. Since June, NATO says aircraft patrolling the skies over the alliance’s eastern flank have downed multiple drones believed to have been launched by Russia. Italian fighter jets shot down drones over Lithuania and Latvia, a French warplane shot one down over Latvia, a Spanish fighter downed a drone in Romanian airspace, and a Romanian aircraft shot another down over Romania. The fallout from Russia’s full-blown invasion

at least it's a bit of variety, full-blown instead of full-scale for once

of Ukraine and Trump’s threats to pull defensive support have already pushed Germany and some other NATO allies to dramatically increase defense spending. Germany increased its military budget by 25% this year, and the country’s defense minister said during a visit to the Pentagon on Wednesday that NATO allies were ready to do more. “We Europeans want to take some of the burden off the U.S. and assume primary responsibility for conventional deterrence in Europe over time,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said as he stood alongside Hegseth, his American counterpart.

cont'd in response