A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., denied Anthropic's emergency request to pause the Pentagon's designation of the company as a supply chain risk, ruling the balance of equities favors the government, citing active military operations with Iran as a reason to let the Defense Department control which AI vendors it uses. The court expedited the case; oral arguments are set for May 19.

The decision deepens a split with a California federal court that had granted Anthropic a preliminary injunction blocking the broader Trump administration ban on Claude across civilian agencies. Anthropic sued in both jurisdictions, challenging a designation historically reserved for foreign adversaries, after the Pentagon demanded unrestricted access to Claude for all lawful uses, including fully autonomous weapons.

The ruling keeps Anthropic locked out of DoD contracts while the case proceeds, even as competitors, including OpenAI and Palantir, move aggressively into the same space. The court noted Anthropic's financial harm appeared "primarily commercial" and suggested the company had actually seen increased downloads amid the dispute, weakening its case for emergency relief.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced at an April 8 briefing that Operation Epic Fury has effectively annihilated the Iranian Navy, with U.S. forces destroying more than 150 naval vessels, including 16 entire warship classes, and eliminating Iran's entire submarine fleet, which she described as once the largest undersea force in the Middle East.

Leavitt also said 97% of Iran's inventory of more than 5,000 naval mines had been targeted and destroyed. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) released imagery showing significant damage to the Shahid Mahallati Naval Boatyard in Bushehr, a primary hub for constructing and maintaining Iran's small vessel force.

The claims come as a fragile two-week ceasefire takes hold, with U.S.-Iran peace talks set to begin Saturday in Islamabad under Pakistani mediation. Confusion over the terms remains, including whether Lebanon is covered, and Iran is now charging ships up to $1 million per transit through the Strait of Hormuz, which the White House disputed as closed.

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions has been awarded an Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) worth up to $446.8 million to serve as prime contractor for the Space Force's Ground Management and Integration (GMI) effort on the Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking (MWT) program. The contract covers design, integration, and operation of the ground architecture for the program's Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellite constellation.

The Resilient MWT system is designed to provide persistent detection, tracking, and custody of advanced missile threats, particularly hypersonic glide vehicles and maneuvering ballistic missiles, which existing early warning systems struggle to track. Kratos will lead a team including Northrop Grumman, Auria, ASRC Federal Systems Solutions, and Rise8 to build primary and backup mission operations centers.

The program will unify legacy and next-generation ground assets into a single scalable global network, connected to the Department of War's Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution (FORGE) platform. It builds on Kratos' existing work supporting Space Force's Command and Control System-Consolidated (CCS-C) Sustainment and Resiliency program and the Space Development Agency's Advanced Fire Control Ground Infrastructure (AFCGI).

Teledyne FLIR OEM has released a major upgrade to its Prism SKR software, transforming it from a standalone automated targeting tool into a closed-loop autonomy platform that manages entire mission cycles from tasking through execution. The update supports guided weapon systems, loitering munitions, air-launched effects, counter-UAS (uncrewed aerial systems) platforms, interceptors, and first-person view (FPV) drones, all through a single software interface.

Key new capabilities include a pixel-lock targeting feature that ensures precision tracking through GPS and signal denial during a weapon's terminal approach, 3D interactive aimpoint selection, and terrain-aware operations for re-identification tracking through signal loss. The platform can scale from human-assisted control to fully autonomous mission execution.

The software is built for rapid OEM deployment on low-power edge hardware, including NVIDIA Orin and Qualcomm-based modules, and is compliant with the Weapon Open Systems Architecture (WOSA) standard. Integration with AI development tools like GitHub Copilot and compatibility with QGroundControl is designed to reduce time-to-field for developers building autonomous weapons systems.

President Trump posted on Truth Social that U.S. forces would "remain in place" until a formal agreement with Iran is reached and implemented, and threatened to resume strikes, "bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before," if Tehran does not comply with the terms he described, specifically requiring no nuclear enrichment and an open Strait of Hormuz.

The opening day of the two-week ceasefire saw immediate complications: Israel continued strikes on Lebanon that killed more than 250 people on Wednesday, Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel on Thursday, and confusion persisted over whether Lebanon was covered by the ceasefire at all. Iran and Hezbollah insist it is; Israel and the U.S. say it is not.

U.S.-Iran peace talks are set to begin Saturday in Islamabad under Pakistani mediation, with Vice President JD Vance leading the U.S. delegation. However, Iran's 10-point peace proposal, which includes full Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, removal of sanctions, and recognition of its right to enrichment, was publicly dismissed by the White House as "literally thrown in the garbage."

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