- Trump’s new defense chief Pete Hegseth warned the Pentagon’s own bureaucracy — not foreign powers — could trigger a Soviet-style decline, calling for acquisition and contracting reform.
- The USS Gerald R. Ford suffered a laundry-room fire that sent smoke through vents, sickening ~200 sailors and highlighting chronic problems like sewage failures after an overlong deployment.
- A GAO audit found a $285 billion maintenance backlog across 700,000+ DOD facilities, chronic staffing shortages, lost inventory and persistent funding misallocation.
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