All six U.S. Air Force crew members aboard a KC-135 Stratotanker that went down in western Iraq on March 12 are now confirmed dead, CENTCOM announced Friday morning. The aircraft was supporting aerial refueling operations for Operation Epic Fury when the crash occurred near Turaibil, along the Iraqi-Jordanian border. CENTCOM confirmed the loss was not caused by hostile or friendly fire, and the search that had been designated an active rescue operation concluded with no survivors.

Officials believe the incident involved a mid-air collision between two KC-135s. The second aircraft sustained damage but declared an in-flight emergency and landed safely, with flight tracking data showing it put down at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport Thursday evening. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility for shooting down the aircraft, but U.S. military investigation has contradicted that assertion.

The loss of all six crew brings the total U.S. service member death toll in Operation Epic Fury to 13, including six forces killed in an Iranian strike on Kuwait and one non-combat death in Saudi Arabia. The KC-135 is the fourth manned U.S. aircraft lost in the theater since operations began February 28, following three F-15E Strike Eagles downed in a friendly-fire incident on March 1 in which all pilots ejected safely.

The U.S. Army has completed the first flight test of the Precision Strike Missile Increment 2, demonstrating a new multi-mode seeker designed to track and engage both moving land targets and vessels at sea. The missile flew 350 kilometers after launch from a HIMARS platform, collecting performance data while validating the seeker's ability to pursue time-sensitive and relocating threats.

Increment 2 marks a meaningful departure from prior versions of PrSM, which were primarily optimized for fixed land targets. The new seeker expands the system's role into sea-denial missions, positioning land-based Army fires as a contributor to anti-access/area denial operations across maritime environments. Importantly, Increment 2 retains full compatibility with existing HIMARS and M270A2 launchers, preserving the current fleet and avoiding additional logistics complexity.

Lockheed Martin executives framed the test as a deliberate push to accelerate delivery timelines without sacrificing reliability. The program is using modular design and digital engineering to iterate quickly. Additional flight tests are planned later this year, and the milestone comes as PrSM has already seen combat use in Operation Epic Fury in its Increment 1 configuration.

Raytheon has completed a $115 million, 26,000 square-foot expansion of its Redstone Raytheon Missile Integration Facility in Huntsville, Alabama, increasing the site's missile integration and delivery capacity by more than 50%. The facility, opened in 2012, produces nine variants of the Standard Missile family and brings RTX's Alabama-based workforce to more than 2,200 employees.

The expansion translates directly to faster delivery timelines for one of the most critically consumed interceptor families in the current fight. Standard Missiles, including the SM-3 and SM-6, have seen accelerated demand across the U.S.-Israel campaign against Iran, particularly as adversary ballistic missile and drone volumes have placed sustained pressure on theater air defense inventories.

This project fits within a broader production ramp RTX announced last month: five framework agreements with the Pentagon covering Tomahawk cruise missiles, AMRAAMs, SM-6, PAC-3, and THAAD production increases at facilities in Alabama, Arizona, and Massachusetts. The Huntsville expansion represents the first of those commitments to come fully online.

The U.S. Navy and the Defense Innovation Unit selected Anduril Industries for the Combat Autonomous Maritime Platform program, the Pentagon's effort to field a new class of extra-large unmanned underwater vehicles. Anduril was chosen following completion of the longest XL-AUV demonstration on record and will conduct an extended demonstration of its Dive-XL platform within four months of contract award.

The Dive-XL runs on an all-electric powertrain, can travel in excess of 2,000 nautical miles submerged, and carries up to three modular payload bays simultaneously. These can include smaller unmanned underwater vehicles, enabling the Dive-XL to function as an undersea mothership capable of deploying surveillance or strike drones at depth. The system fits into standard commercial freight containers and can be transported by truck or rail.

Anduril's Shane Arnott framed the selection in terms of theater math: the Pacific and the Arctic require autonomous underwater systems to supplement the limited number of crewed submarines the Navy can place in contested areas. The CAMP win follows Anduril's formal adoption by the Royal Australian Navy for its Ghost Shark autonomous submarine program, positioning the company as the leading Western developer of production-ready XL-AUV platforms.

The U.S. Navy conducted live-fire tests of its prototype electromagnetic railgun at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in February 2025, according to a recently surfaced Naval Surface Warfare Center year-in-review document. The Navy had effectively shelved the railgun program in 2021 after a multi-year effort hit technical hurdles, and there had been no publicly disclosed testing since. The three-day campaign at White Sands was a joint effort between NSWC Port Hueneme and NSWC Dahlgren, conducted for the Navy's Joint Hypersonics Transition Office.

The purpose of the test remains ambiguous. The involvement of the Joint Hypersonics Transition Office raises the possibility that the railgun was used not as a weapon system per se, but as test infrastructure to accelerate high-velocity launch data for hypersonic development programs. Whether the Navy intends to pick up where it left off with the BAE Systems prototype, or pursue a new design, has not been disclosed.

The tests take on new significance given the Trump administration's push to field railguns aboard the future Trump-class battleships, designated BBG(X). Construction of the lead ship, to be named USS Defiant, is not expected to begin until the early 2030s. General Atomics, which has separately developed railgun technology for the Army, has publicly expressed interest in competing for the BBG(X) railgun work. Meanwhile, Japan has advanced further than any other ally, having already conducted live ship-mounted railgun tests against a real target vessel.

Lt. Gen. Jeth Rey, the Army's deputy chief of staff for the G-6, announced that the service is standing up the Army Data Operation Center, a new organization intended to address what he described not as a data shortage, but a data management failure. The center will coordinate how information flows from partner networks through joint forces to combatant commands, acting as a centralized traffic control layer for the military's expanding digital infrastructure.

Rey described the ADOC's forthcoming rollout in terms his audience could feel: it will be the "9-1-1 for how we move data." The timing is notable. AI systems require consistent, clean, accessible data pipelines to function effectively, and the Army has been dealing with siloed systems that bottleneck information flow in precisely the moments commanders most need speed.

The ADOC will draw personnel from across the service during a six-month build-out phase, with potential expansion beyond the Army to the broader Pentagon. The initiative connects directly to larger next-generation command-and-control modernization efforts, and Rey suggested the center's mandate could grow as its utility in joint operations becomes clearer.

Pentagon officials disclosed to senators in a classified briefing this week that the first six days of Operation Epic Fury cost approximately $11.3 billion, a figure that one lawmaker described as "roughly accurate" while noting the actual running total is now significantly higher. The disclosure came as Democratic members of Congress introduced war powers resolutions seeking to force troop withdrawal without formal authorization, efforts that have so far failed in the Republican-led House and Senate.

The $11.3 billion figure omits a range of war-related expenses, meaning the true cost is materially higher. CSIS analysts had estimated the first 100 hours alone at roughly $3.7 billion, with air defense munitions costs potentially accounting for a large share of that. CENTCOM reported that U.S. forces had struck approximately 6,000 targets inside Iran since operations began February 28.

The cost disclosure lands as the Pentagon comptroller confirmed the administration is developing a supplemental funding request expected to exceed $50 billion. The Pentagon's acquisition chief signaled the package will not simply replenish legacy systems but will include new-entrant platforms, attritable strike capabilities, and cost-effective interceptors, an acknowledgment that the current war has exposed gaps in the munitions cost calculus that existed before the first strike was ever launched.

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