U.S. National Security and Military News Review

US Navy aims to use robots, AI to reduce ship maintenance

Patrick Tucker — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 06:00:00 -0400

The U.S. Navy and GSA will pay Gecko Robotics $71 million to use its drones and AI to inspect ships, jets, and other gear, part of the service’s effort to reach 80 percent fleet readiness next year and stem its shortage of ships. The company says it can identify repairs up to 50 times faster and more accurately than human inspectors—and do so even before a ship reaches its dock, which will help the Navy get the right people and parts in place.

This work is slated to be carried out across destroyers, amphibious warships, and littoral combat ships. The deal means “any DOD branch can use the AI and robotics,” the company said in a statement.

Justin Fanelli, the Navy’s chief technology officer, said during a February Govini event. "When these American companies, pure-play defense and dual-use companies like Gecko Robotics choose to do hard things and move the needle on our outcome metrics—not by percentage points, but by orders of magnitude—it results in faster, better portfolio management…We're now seeing solutions that make innovation adoption easier and in doing so save time, money and risk.”

Jake Loosararian, the co-founder and CEO of Gecko Robotics, said his company combines visual inspection with predictive maintenance to “predict what things are going to fail and how to fix them fast so that you are down less.”

Gecko Robotics, launched in 2013, builds robots that conduct in-depth inspections of infrastructure—like power plant components—or big pieces of equipment. Some robots climb walls to scour ships’ hulls even ICBM launch tubes for structural or material weaknesses that human eyes might miss. They also make drones that can analyze joints, connections, holes, and other flaws and issues.

Gecko is already working with the Navy to speed maintenance of aircraft carriers and submarines.

Speaking at the Defense One Tech Summit last June, Gecko Robotics president and other co-founder Troy Demmer described how the company speeds up the maintenance process: “We’re leveraging autonomy and AI to deploy technologies prior to a ship or a submarine coming into a dry dock facility so that we have an understanding of, ‘What's the material health of this asset? How do we make targeted, efficient repairs so that we can get that asset back in the fight?”

Under repair

At any given time, a good chunk of the Navy’s roughly 290 battle-force ships are tied up for repair: 52 in January, according to Adm. Jim Downey, NAVSEA's commander. He said just 41 percent of ships completed repairs on time in 2025, well short of the 71-percent goal. “We reset the mark for this year. I'm looking at north of 60 percent, and I'm on plan to make that,” Downey said.

It’s a problem that goes back years. The slowness and cost of maintenance is causing “significant impacts to global operations,” Rep. Ken. Calvert, R-Calif., observed in a 2024 hearing on naval readiness. Maintenance plagues virtually every service. But in a conflict with China, the effects could balloon.

Gecko’s Demmer said Integrating autonomous inspection and AI-repair analysis could help build ships, not just repair them.

“We’re deploying autonomy and robotics as well in the supply chains, way upstream of the shipyards even. So, how do we get forging and castings produced more efficiently,” he said. “Because we are talking millions of dollars being lost when that part has to get scrapped.”

Ideas like this may help the U.S. Navy, which is trying to catch up to China. Today, the U.S. has 287 battle force ships; China, roughly 400. By 2030, when China is on track to have 435 ships, the U.S. Navy is aiming for 381.

But China has far more shipyards and shipbuilding capacity: it accounts for roughly 53 percent of global shipbuilding capacity, compared to less than 1 percent for the United States, according to estimates corroborated by the Office of Naval Intelligence and Georgetown University. China’s ships are newer, require less maintenance, and when needed, that maintenance happens faster due to their robust shipyard infrastructure.

And China is also able to use portions of its commercial fleet for maritime missions. In the event of a major conflict with China, or in order to deter one as tensions rise, could the Navy move to repair or maintain ships in commercial ports? Loosararian said that he hasn’t heard Navy leaders discuss that yet. But “It is clear to me that that advantage is possible on the more commercial maritime side.”

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Europe Rejects Trump’s Demands for Warships to Reopen the Strait of Hormuz

Michael D. Shear — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 05:05:51 -0400

While some European countries said they were discussing ways to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, several rejected President Trump’s calls to send warships.

Admiral’s Comments Undercut Pentagon’s Cluster Munition Policy

John Ismay — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 05:03:46 -0400

The first Trump administration defended cluster munitions as “legitimate,” but on Monday, Adm. Brad Cooper condemned them as “inherently indiscriminate.”

Sucked Into War, Gulf Countries Face the Limits of U.S. Security Guarantees

Vivian Nereim — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 05:01:46 -0400

Barraged by Iranian attacks and questioning the value of security ties with the United States, nations in the Gulf have turned to Ukraine, Australia and Italy for help.

INFORMATION WARFARE: Social Media Algorithmic Propaganda

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 04:16:40 -0400

PROCUREMENT: Russian Economic Painkillers

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 04:15:48 -0400

Iran/Israel/United States : How Tehran cobbles together targeting intelligence

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 01:00:00 -0400

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United States : US intelligence launches ambitious 'mission AI campaign'

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 01:00:00 -0400

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France : Courts confirm ministry staff's sacking over security clearance

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 01:00:00 -0400

A chief of staff at the French foreign ministry, who was dismissed in October last year after only two weeks [...]

Africa/Russia/Ukraine : Romanian paramilitaries swell ranks of Russian army and Africa Corps

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 01:00:00 -0400

Fighters from the private military firm Asociatia RALF have been on the lookout for new opportunities since the arrest and [...]

China : Xi to deploy CCP 'consultants' to Chinese businesses abroad

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 01:00:00 -0400

The "Xi Jinping" method for channelling and professionalising exchanges between the government and the research community (IO, 09/05/24) is working [...]

Kyrgyzstan : The fall of GKNB spymaster Kamchybek Tashiev

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 01:00:00 -0400

The sudden ousting last month of Kamchybek Tashiev, who had [...]

Here’s What Happened in the War in the Middle East on Monday

Ephrat Livni — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 23:24:35 -0400

President Trump said he might postpone a trip to China to focus on the war. More than a million people have been displaced in Lebanon this month, according to the country’s health ministry.

The US built a blueprint to avoid civilian war casualties. Trump officials scrapped it

Hannah Allam, ProPublica — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 23:00:00 -0400

Images from the missile strike in southern Iran were more horrifying than any of the case studies Air Force combat veteran Wes J. Bryant had pored over in his mission to overhaul how the U.S. military safeguards civilian life.

Parents wept over their children’s bodies. Crushed desks and blood-stained backpacks poked through the rubble. The death toll from the attack on an elementary school in Minab climbed past 165, most of them under age 12, with nearly 100 others wounded, according to Iranian health officials. Photos of small coffins and rows of fresh graves went viral, a devastating emblem of Day 1 in the open-ended U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.

Bryant, a former special operations targeting specialist, said he couldn’t help but think of what-ifs as he monitored fallout from the Feb. 28 attack.

Just over a year ago, he had been a senior adviser in an ambitious new Defense Department program aimed at reducing civilian harm during operations. Finally, Bryant said, the military was getting serious about reforms. He worked out of a newly opened Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, where his supervisor was a veteran strike-team targeter who had served as a United Nations war crimes investigator.

Today, that momentum is gone. Bryant was forced out of government in cuts last spring. The civilian protection mission was dissolved as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made “lethality” a top priority. And the world has witnessed a tragedy in Minab that, if U.S. responsibility is confirmed, would be the most civilians killed by the military in a single attack in decades.

Dismantling the fledgling harm-reduction effort, defense analysts say, is among several ways the Trump administration has reorganized national security around two principles: more aggression, less accountability.

Trump and his aides lowered the authorization level for lethal force, broadened target categories, inflated threat assessments and fired inspectors general, according to more than a dozen current and former national security personnel. Nearly all spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

“We’re departing from the rules and norms that we’ve tried to establish as a global community since at least World War II,” Bryant said. “There’s zero accountability.”

Citing open-source intelligence and government officials, several news outlets have concluded that the strike in Minab most likely was carried out by the United States. President Donald Trump, without providing evidence, told reportersMarch 7 that it was “done by Iran.” Hegseth, standing next to the president aboard Air Force One, said the matter was under investigation.

The next day, the open-source research outfit Bellingcat said it had authenticated a video showing a Tomahawk missile strike next to the school in Minab. Iranian state media later showed fragments of a U.S.-made Tomahawk, as identified by Bellingcat and others, at the site. The United States is the only party to the conflict known to possess Tomahawks. U.N. human rights experts have called for an investigation into whether the attack violated international law.

The Department of Defense and White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Since the post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, successive U.S. administrations have faced controversies over civilian deaths. Defense officials eager to shed the legacy of the “forever wars” have periodically called for better protections for civilians, but there was no standardized framework until 2022, when Biden-era leaders adopted a strategy rooted in work that had begun under the first Trump presidency.

Formalized in a 2022 action plan and in a Defense Department instruction, the initiatives are known collectively as Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response, a clunky name often shortened to CHMR and pronounced “chimmer.” Around 200 personnel were assigned to the mission, including roughly 30 at the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, a coordination hub near the Pentagon.

The CHMR strategy calls for more in-depth planning before an attack, such as real-time mapping of the civilian presence in an area and in-depth analysis of the risks. After an operation, reports of harm to noncombatants would prompt an assessment or investigation to figure out what went wrong and then incorporate those lessons into training.

By the time Trump returned to power, harm-mitigation teams were embedded with regional commands and special operations leadership. During Senate confirmation hearings, several Trump nominees for top defense posts voiced support for the mission. Once in office, however, they stood by as the program was gutted, current and former national security officials said.

Around 90% of the CHMR mission is gone, former personnel said, with no more than a single adviser now at most commands. At Central Command, where a 10-person team was cut to one, “a handful” of the eliminated positions were backfilled to help with the Iran campaign. Defense officials can’t formally close the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence without congressional approval, but Bryant and others say it now exists mostly on paper.

“It has no mission or mandate or budget,” Bryant said.

Spike in Strikes

Global conflict monitors have since recorded a dramatic increase in deadly U.S. military operations. Even before the Iran campaign, the number of strikes worldwide since Trump returned to office had surpassed the total from all four years of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Had the Defense Department’s harm-reduction mission continued apace, current and former officials say, the policies almost certainly would’ve reduced the number of noncombatants harmed over the past year.

Beyond the moral considerations, they added, civilian casualties fuel militant recruiting and hinder intelligence-gathering. Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who commanded U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, explains the risk in an equation he calls “insurgent math”: For every innocent killed, at least 10 new enemies are created.

U.S.-Israeli strikes have already killed more than 1,200 civilians in Iran, including nearly 200 children, according to Human Rights Activists News Agency, a U.S.-based group that verifies casualties through a network in Iran. The group says hundreds more deaths are under review, a difficult process given Iran’s internet blackout and dangerous conditions.

A mourner holds a portrait of students during a funeral held after a school in Iran’s Hormozgan province was bombed. Thousands attended the ceremony. Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images

Defense analysts say the civilian toll of the Iran campaign, on top of dozens of recent noncombatant casualties in Yemen and Somalia, reopens dark chapters from the “war on terror” that had prompted reforms in the first place.

“It’s a recipe for disaster,” a senior counterterrorism official who left the government a few months ago said of the Trump administration’s yearlong bombing spree. “It’s ‘Groundhog Day’ — every day we’re just killing people and making more enemies.”

In 2015, two dozen patients and 14 staff members were killed when a heavily armed U.S. gunship fired for over an hour on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in northern Afghanistan, a disaster that has become a cautionary tale for military planners.

“Our patients burned in their beds, our medical staff were decapitated or lost limbs. Others were shot from the air while they fled the burning building,” the international aid group said in a report about the destruction of its trauma center in Kunduz.

A U.S. military investigation found that multiple human and systems errors had resulted in the strike team mistaking the building for a Taliban target. The Obama administration apologized and offered payouts of $6,000 to families of the dead.

Human rights advocates had hoped the Kunduz debacle would force the U.S. military into taking concrete steps to protect civilians during U.S. combat operations. Within a couple years, however, the issue came roaring back with high civilian casualties in U.S.-led efforts to dislodge Islamic State extremists from strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

The aftermath of the U.S. airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that killed 42 people. Najim Rahim/AP Images

In a single week in March 2017, U.S. operations resulted in three incidents of mass civilian casualties: A drone attack on a mosque in Syria killed around 50; a strike in another part of Syria killed 40 in a school filled with displaced families; and bombing in the Iraqi city of Mosul led to a building collapse that killed more than 100 people taking shelter inside.

In heavy U.S. fighting to break Islamic State control over the Syrian city of Raqqa, “military leaders too often lacked a complete picture of conditions on the ground; too often waved off reports of civilian casualties; and too rarely learned any lessons from strikes gone wrong,” according to an analysis by the Pentagon-adjacent Rand Corp. think tank.

“Do It Right Now”

Under pressure from lawmakers, Trump’s then-Defense Secretary James Mattis ordered a review of civilian casualty protocols.

Released in 2019, the review Mattis launched was seen by some advocacy groups as narrow in scope but still a step in the right direction. Yet the issue soon dropped from national discourse, overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic and landmark racial justice protests.

During the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, a missile strike in Kabul killed an aid worker and nine of his relatives, including seven children. Then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin apologized and said the department would “endeavor to learn from this horrible mistake.”

That incident, along with a New York Times investigative series into deaths from U.S. airstrikes, spurred the adoption of the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response action plan in 2022. When they established the new Civilian Protection Center of Excellence the next year, defense officials tapped Michael McNerney— the lead author of the blunt RAND report — to be its director.

“The strike against the aid worker and his family in Kabul pushed Austin to say, ‘Do it right now,’” Bryant said.

The first harm-mitigation teams were assigned to leaders in charge of some of the military’s most sensitive counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering operations: Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida; the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

A former CHMR adviser who joined in 2024 after a career in international conflict work said he was reassured to find a serious campaign with a $7 million budget and deep expertise. The adviser spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Only a few years before, he recalled, he’d had to plead with the Pentagon to pay attention. “It was like a back-of-the-envelope thing — the cost of a Hellfire missile and the cost of hiring people to work on this.”

Bryant became the de facto liaison between the harm-mitigation team and special operations commanders. In December, he described the experience in detail in a private briefing for aides of Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who had sought information on civilian casualty protocols involving boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea.

Bryant’s notes from the briefing, reviewed by ProPublica, describe an embrace of the CHMR mission by Joint Interagency Task Force 401 has made one of its first major steps to securing interoperable counter-unmanned systems: selecting Anduril’s Lattice command-and-control software as a common platform for any system bought in the government’s marketplace.

The $87 million contract is part of a larger agreement the Army signed with Anduril last week, to the tune of up to $20 billion over the next decade, to authorize any federal agency to purchase Anduril’s commercially available products, the company’s chief business officer told reporters Monday.

“There's going to be a push to centralize other [Defense Department] and federal spending against it, and that will all sort of add into the overall discounts that the government receives,” Matthew Steckman said.

The contract isn’t the first of its kind, Steckman added, as enterprise contracts for IT software have been commonplace. It is just more complicated than previous frameworks, because Anduril makes a wide variety of products, from software to drones to virtual-reality headsets.

The Army alone has 120 existing contracts that will migrate into the new enterprise agreement immediately. Beyond that, new purchases will go through Army Contracting Command instead of requiring the creation of a new agreement.

"The modern battlefield is increasingly defined by software. To maintain our advantage, we must be able to acquire and deploy software capabilities with speed and efficiency," Gabe Chiulli, chief technology officer for the DOD’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, said in a release. "Enterprise contracts are a key part of our modernization strategy, allowing us to consolidate software agreements, eliminate redundancies, and accelerate the delivery of critical tools."

That could include Lattice, which JIATF-401 selected for its counter-unmanned systems, and that the Army is already using to build its next-generation C2 platform.

“In particular, this will affect very positively the new wave of defense companies coming into the ecosystem, where it's just a massive friction reducer,” Steckman said.

Asked whether Anduril will announce every new buy that comes through the enterprise agreement, Steckman said the company will continue to publicize major awards.

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I Was an F.B.I. Agent for 25 Years. Kash Patel Is Playing a Dangerous Game.

Jacqueline Maguire — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 16:37:16 -0400

Let’s hope it doesn’t take another Sept. 11 to snap the F.B.I.’s leadership into action.

Trump en la tercera semana de la guerra: decisiones difíciles

David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt, Tyler Pager, Ronen Bergman and Julian E. Barnes — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:25:14 -0400

A medida que el conflicto con Irán se intensifica, las opciones de Trump —seguir luchando o declarar la victoria y retirarse— conllevan consecuencias problemáticas.

16 Reader Questions on the War in Iran and Our Reporting, Answered

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 09:11:31 -0400

Do the United States and Israel share similar goals? What kind of leadership will Iran have next? How does The Times report on wartime deaths?

U.S. Names Six Service Members Killed In Iraq

Cynthia Silva — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 08:01:02 -0400

The Pentagon has identified the six United States service members who died last week when a refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq. With their deaths, the total number of service members killed in the war with Iran has risen to at least 13.

Trump’s Effort to Target Rivals Stall as Judges Cut Short Basic Investigative Steps

Michael S. Schmidt and Alan Feuer — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 07:43:51 -0400

A ruling Friday that derailed an investigation into the Federal Reserve chair at an exceptionally early stage showed the limits of President Trump’s campaign of legal retribution.

Your Iran Questions

Sam Sifton — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 06:37:26 -0400

We’re answering some of your questions about the war.

INFORMATION WARFARE: Ukrainian CyberWar Deceptions

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 05:02:05 -0400

MALI: March Update

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 05:00:00 -0400

United States : Trump shifts position on key surveillance law as debate heats up in Congress