Top 5     Trump says Lebanon and Israel agree to extend Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire by 3 weeks (The Associated Press) President Donald Trump said Israel and Lebanon have agreed to extend a ceasefire between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group by three weeks after talks at the White House on Thursday.       US soldier charged with making $400,000 on Maduro removal bets (Military Times) A U.S. Army soldier involved in the capture of Nicolas Maduro has been charged with making $400,000 by betting on the removal of the ousted Venezuelan leader, the Justice Department said on Thursday.       Marine creates ride-hailing app to combat impaired driving among service members (Military Times) A U.S. Marine Corps staff sergeant developed an app meant to combat drunk driving for fellow service members, helping him earn the 2026 James Maguire Award for exceptional achievement in Marine aviation.       US Navy is reviewing cost of future Ford-class carriers to ensure they ‘make sense’ (Military Times) Recently ousted Navy Secretary John Phelan told reporters Tuesday that the service is analyzing the cost and design of two aircraft carriers it is set to procure in the coming years.       US Marine Corps, Navy joins forces to combat insufficient amphibious fleet size (Military Times) The U.S. Marine Corps and Navy are collaborating to boost the nation’s current inadequate amphibious fleet size, according to the top-ranked U.S. Marine Corps officer.   US Strikes in Caribbean and Eastern Pacific     A list of US military strikes against alleged drug-carrying vessels (Military Times) Since early September 2025, the U.S. military has conducted strikes against alleged drug-carrying vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean in support of what the Pentagon has called continued counternarcotics efforts.   Operation Timeline     The human impact of policy changes at the DOD and VA (The War Horse) An ongoing timeline of the Trump administration’s actions focusing on the military and veterans.   Pentagon     Pentagon closes $1 billion investment in L3Harris missile unit (Space News) Deal gives government future ownership in Missile Solutions business.       Pentagon fires Stars and Stripes newspaper’s ombudsman (The New York Times) The newspaper’s ombudsman, Jacqueline Smith, said she had been given no reason for her dismissal.   Congress & Politics     Trump puts out kill order on Iran’s small boats (The War Zone) U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the Navy to attack any Iranian boats mining the Strait of Hormuz. His decree, issued on Truth Social, also claims the U.S. is currently demining the strategic waterway. His announcement comes hours after the U.S. boarded another Iranian-linked vessel in the Indian Ocean and a day after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp fired on at least three ships and seized two of them in the Strait.       Trump picked a fight with Anthropic. Now the administration is backing off. (Politico) The Trump administration is showing every sign of backing down from its noisy public feud with Anthropic.       Iran war has drained US supplies of critical, costly weapons (The New York Times) The Pentagon’s rush to rearm its Mideast forces makes it less ready to confront potential adversaries like Russia and China, administration and congressional officials say.       White House accuses China of ‘deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns’ to steal US AI models (Nextgov) The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on Thursday accused China and other foreign entities of engaging in “deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to distill U.S. frontier AI systems,” and said that the Trump administration will be taking steps to safeguard domestic artificial intelligence products.   Navy     Navy rushing to arm carrier strike groups with Hellfire missiles (The War Zone) The U.S. Navy has shared details about what looks to be a previously undisclosed effort to rapidly arm ships in two carrier strike groups with radar-guided Longbow Hellfire missiles to protect against drones. This reflects a larger push to expand shipboard defenses against uncrewed aerial threats, which now includes four Arleigh Burke class destroyers sailing with new launchers to fire Coyote interceptors.       US-backed war risk cover for Hormuz will have to wait for convoys (The Maritime Executive) The Trump administration has worked out a co-insurance arrangement to provide war risk cover for shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and Arabian Gulf.   AIr Force     Air Force doubles planned F-15EX fleet to 267 fighters (Air & Space Forces Magazine) The Air Force is more than doubling the planned size of its new F-15EX Eagle II fleet, increasing the number of fighters it aims to buy from 129 to 267.   Space Force     Space Force selects reservists to become new part-time Guardians (Air & Space Forces Magazine) Nearly 250 Air Force Reservists with space-related skills have been selected to be the Space Force’s first part-time Guardians, according to an April 22 announcement.   Cyber, Space & Unmanned     In first, Ukrainian unmanned vessel launches interceptor to knock out Shahed drone (Military Times) Ukraine has reportedly unleashed a powerful new defense against Russian Shahed drones that have tied up its air force and traumatized civilians with persistent attacks.       Exploding shells may turn the Apache helicopter into a drone hunter (Defense One) The Army thinks its Apache helicopters, developed a half-century ago to kill Soviet tanks, might offer a solution to enemy drones two or three orders of magnitude smaller.       The Pentagon replicated a Ukrainian-style drone attack in Florida. Now it’s changing its counter-drone strategy (Defense One) In a September exercise on a Florida airfield, members of the 10th Special Forces Group launched a drone assault that mirrored the “spiderweb ” attack that Ukraine had recently staged against Russia. The defenders were counter-drone troops from across the U.S. military, trained for a week on tech that the Pentagon has spent billions to develop.   Defense Industry     Lockheed Martin CEO sees Trump’s Pentagon as ‘golden opportunity’ for growth (The Guardian) Jim Taiclet spoke in earnings call as company expands contracts with the U.S. government amid the Iran war.       SpaceX wins $57 million US military contract for satellite crosslink demo (Space News) The contract is to demonstrate space-based data links using the Link-182 standard that will support Golden Dome.       Iran war delays US weapons deliveries to Estonia, raising defense concerns (Stars and Stripes) Delays in U.S. missile deliveries caused by the war in Iran are pushing NATO ally Estonia to look for alternative ways to maintain its defenses, a top official told the country’s public broadcasting network.   Ukraine     As Iran saps US focus, the troop math for monitoring a Ukraine peace deal looks grim (Defense News) The Pentagon has surged tens of thousands of service members to the Middle East since the war with Iran began, raising questions here about how involved the Trump administration could get in securing a peace agreement in Ukraine when the time comes – even if it wanted to.       $106 billion loan reflects EU's view that peace in Ukraine is far away (The New York Times) Unlike previous European assistance packages, this one is heavily weighted toward military spending, meant to put Ukraine on solid footing for a long fight.   Military Culture & History     Could the US military handle a monster invasion? Monarch: Legacy of Monsters begs the question (Military Times) Season 2 of “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” wraps on Apple TV+ on May 1, and the show will spend ten episodes doing what Pentagon strategic planners have presumably never done: war-gaming a Kaiju event.   Commentary & Analysis     Inside China, artificial intelligence is a snake eating its own tail (Defense News) China’s greatest technological ambition and its greatest political obsession are quietly destroying each other.       ‘Got to get fixed:’ Billing delays, coverage issues still plague Tricare patients and providers (The War Horse) Nearly every day for months, Lorelei Evans, a major in the U.S. Army Reserve, received a call or text from a doctor’s office trying to collect on some of her family’s $86,000 in unpaid medical bills.       If I tried to escape, I would be killed (The Atlantic) I remember screaming, though I don’t know what words I screamed. And I remember resisting, though there was little I could do in heels against two military-trained men intent on shoving me into the back seat of their vehicle.       Anthropic Mythos - We’ve opened Pandora's box (The Cipher Brief) For a decade the cybersecurity community was predicting a cyber apocalypse tied to a single event - the day a Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computer could run Shor’s algorithm and break the public-key cryptography systems most of the internet runs on. We braced for a one-time shock we would absorb and adapt to. The National Institute for Standards and Technology has already published standards for the first set of post-quantum cryptography codes.       Seeing the cyber in economic statecraft (War on the Rocks) Americans lost nearly $21 billion to cybercrime in 2025, a new record for cyber-enabled economic losses. Private sector losses to malicious cyber activity regularly exceed $200 billion in a given year. Alongside criminal groups, state-sponsored hackers are increasingly targeting America’s pocketbook. Neither the economic sphere nor cyberspace are classic terrestrial warfighting domains. Yet war is being actively waged through both realms and national cyber security is vital to the prosperity and protection of today’s hyperconnected economy.       How the F-35 is changing Marine airpower (Task & Purpose) After decades of flying the AV-8B Harrier II and the F/A-18 Hornet, the Marine Corps is going all in on the F-35.       A formal defense pact in the Indo-Pacific is the wrong answer (War on the Rocks) The debate over how best to deter China in the western Pacific has reached a new level of ambition. Ely Ratner, a former senior defense official in the Biden administration, proposed a “Pacific Defense Pact” — a legally binding multilateral treaty among the United States, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines. This reflects serious concerns over China’s rise and its potential future use of force along the first island chain. The underlying diagnosis is sound: Existing U.S. alliances in the region lack an integrated command and control structure and the collective responsiveness required to credibly deter China in a high-intensity conflict.