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Tag: The Pentagon

  • FBI arrests Massachusetts airman Jack Teixeira in leaked documents probe

    FBI arrests Massachusetts airman Jack Teixeira in leaked documents probe

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    Washington — Federal law enforcement officials arrested a 21-year-old Massachusetts man allegedly connected to the disclosure of dozens of secret documents that revealed sensitive U.S. defense and intelligence information, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday.

    In brief remarks at Department of Justice headquarters, Garland identified the suspect as Jack Teixeira, an airman in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, and said he was arrested “in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information.” The New York Times, which first revealed his name Thursday, reported that Teixeira is a member of the guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing.

    Garland said FBI agents “took Teixeira into custody earlier this afternoon without incident.” Before he spoke, a news helicopter flying over Teixeira’s mother’s house in North Dighton, Massachusetts, captured footage of him dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, walking backward with his hands on his head as officers carrying rifles looked on. Teixeira was quickly taken into custody and brought to the back of an armored vehicle.

    Jack Teixeira is taken into custody by federal law enforcement officials in North Dighton, Massachusetts, on Thursday, April 13, 2023.

    CBS News


    The attorney general said Teixeira will appear in court to face charges in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The FBI said in a statement that agents were “continuing to conduct authorized law enforcement activity at the residence.” 

    President Biden was briefed Thursday evening about the arrest, White House officials told CBS News. Mr. Biden is in Ireland this week. Defense Secretary Austin commended the swift arrest and said those with access to classified information have a “solemn legal and moral obligation to safeguard it and to report any suspicious activity or behavior.”

    Pentagon records show Teixeira entered the Air National Guard in September 2019 and worked as a “cyber transport systems journeyman.” In general, the position is responsible for supporting network infrastructure and making sure the communications network used by the Air Force is operating properly, according to a Defense official.

    Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon’s press secretary, called the disclosures “a deliberate criminal act” but declined to comment further at a briefing on Thursday. “This is a law enforcement matter, and it would be inappropriate for me or any other DoD official to comment at this time,” he said.

    Teixeira’s arrest came hours after a story in The Washington Post detailed a small online community on the platform Discord where the documents appeared to have first been shared by the group’s leader over the course of several months. Earlier reporting by Bellingcat traced the documents’ supposed path from that server, known as “Thug Shaker Central,” to a larger Discord community, where they appeared in early March. They then migrated to 4chan, Twitter and Russian Telegram channels just last week, when they first came to the attention of U.S. officials.

    The Post said the person who first shared the documents was known to fellow members as “OG” and worked on a military base. Other members of the group told the Post that OG was not motivated by politics or ideology, and did not intend for the documents to be shared outside the Discord community, which was said to include about two dozen users.

    President Biden said during his visit to Dublin on Thursday that investigators were close to identifying a suspect. 

    The dozens of documents reviewed by CBS News contained details about the war in Ukraine, including information about anticipated Russian airstrikes on specific targets and other Russian war plans. The records offer an unprecedented glimpse into U.S. efforts to support the Ukrainian government, as well as the extent to which U.S. intelligence agencies have penetrated Russian communication channels to the benefit of Ukrainian forces.

    The documents also showed the U.S. keeping close tabs on allies. One document detailed conversations between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his top military official. Another relayed concerns expressed by South Korea’s leaders about sending ammunition to Ukraine. A third said leaders of Israel’s intelligence agency advocated for intelligence officials and Israeli citizens to protest against divisive judicial reforms proposed by the government.

    At least one of the documents appeared to have been doctored to minimize Russian casualties in Ukraine, with changing figures as it spread from Discord to other online platforms. U.S. officials have cautioned that other documents might have been altered, while acknowledging that others matched similar documents distributed to military planners.

    “Photos appear to show documents similar in format to those used to provide daily updates to our senior leaders on Ukraine and Russia related operations, as well as other intelligence updates,” Chris Meagher, assistant to the defense secretary for public affairs, told reporters Monday. 

    Asked Monday if the threat to national security has been contained, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said, “We don’t know. We truly don’t know.” 

    The disclosures have drawn comparisons to previous intelligence breaches, including Chelsea Manning’s disclosure of classified information to WikiLeaks in 2010 and Edward Snowden leaking a trove of documents about the National Security Agency’s spying programs in 2013. This disclosure appeared to contain information that was much more recent than information revealed in other instances, with some documents dated as recently as March.

    Military leaders have contacted allies to try to contain the fallout from the revelations over U.S. surveillance activities. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his South Korean counterpart on Monday to discuss the leak and told him he would closely communicate with him and cooperate with the South Korean government on the issue, according to the country’s defense ministry. Austin has also spoken with the NATO Secretary General and his counterparts in the U.K., Germany and Ukraine in recent days.

    Eleanor Watson and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report. 

    Caitlin Yilek

    Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital. Reach her at caitlin.yilek@cbsinteractive.com. Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hausofcait

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  • FBI leads leak investigation as Pentagon narrows access to classified documents

    FBI leads leak investigation as Pentagon narrows access to classified documents

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    The FBI is working to track down who leaked sensitive and secret defense and intelligence documents and shared them on social media, and at the same time, the Pentagon is reducing the number of people who have access to the kind of classified information that has been leaked.

    The number of people on government-wide distribution lists who receive classified updates has been culled significantly since Friday, U.S. officials said. Before the leak was revealed, about 1,000 people usually had access to these types of documents. CBS News has reviewed a number of the leaked documents, all of which are color printouts with text, graphics or maps that appear to have been folded, unfolded and then photographed and shared on social media sites including 4Chan and Discord.

    The Pentagon’s internal review of the matter will be led by Milancy Harris, deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence and security. The review will probe the scope and scale of the leak and the impact on the U.S. and allies’ national security, and examine how information flows and who has access to it.

    The FBI is leading the criminal investigation, which is only in its early stages, according to a U.S. official familiar with the probe. Former officials familiar with leak investigations predicted that identifying the source could happen quickly because “the universe of possibilities is relatively small.” 

    One U.S. official indicated that not all printers are authorized to print classified documents, and those that have this authorization register a unique ID when printing, so this may provide some clues into the search for the leaker.  

    In the intelligence community, spokespeople for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), CIA, National Security Agency and National Reconnaissance Office largely declined to comment on the leaked documents, referring inquiries to the Department of Justice as it conducts an investigation into the source. It’s not yet clear whether ODNI has launched or will launch its own risk assessment. 

    However, CIA Director William Burns, at an event hosted by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy Tuesday evening, briefly referenced the classified documents leak in taking questions after a speech. He called the leak “deeply unfortunate” and a priority “certainly as intense as anything” in his inbox. 

    “It’s something that the U.S. government takes extremely seriously,” he added, and cited the FBI and Defense Department investigation as reason for him not to elaborate further.  

    One senior U.S. intelligence official offered a brief and bleak assessment of the leaks: “It’s not good.” 

    Nonetheless, a U.S. official noted Tuesday that he has seen no indication other than media reports that Ukraine has been forced to change its battle plan as a result of the leaked documents.    

    And several former intelligence officials, including two who served in senior capacities during the Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning leaks, said this disclosure — what is known of it so far — is not entirely comparable in its scale. 

    “In a sense, what this tells you is that the systems that were put in place to prevent massive theft of information on, for example, thumb drives, is working,” one former senior official said. “Here, it appears instead that someone actually took documents out of the building the old-fashioned way.” 

    These officials, who were familiar only with press summaries of the documents and couldn’t speak to their authenticity, acknowledged some of the disclosures appear particularly damaging for signals intelligence sources — electronic accesses that are difficult to create, or recreate once gone — but appear, for now, to have minimal effect for human sources. 

    “I don’t think there’s huge damage here,” one official said, including for battlefield ramifications in Ukraine. “People are assuming this was all new to the Russians — it probably wasn’t.” 

    The documents are said to resemble daily briefing materials for the top members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who usually receive them six days a week. A staff of several dozen people put together a first cut of materials sourced from across government agencies, which can include the kind of graphics and analysis that have appeared in the leaks.

    “U.S. agencies should be out there looking for classified information, doing sweeps of the web, every day,” one official said. “This took way too long to identify.”

    David Martin contributed to this report.

    Eleanor Watson

    CBS News reporter covering the Pentagon.

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  • Justice Department opens criminal investigation into leaked Pentagon documents that

    Justice Department opens criminal investigation into leaked Pentagon documents that

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    Ukrainian soldier reflects on war with Russia


    Ukrainian soldier reflects on war with Russia

    02:24

    The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into the leak of documents that “appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material,” a Defense Department spokesperson said Sunday. The Pentagon was also still assessing the validity of the documents, the spokesperson said.

    “An interagency effort has been stood up, focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on U.S. national security and on our Allies and partners,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement. “Over the weekend, U.S. officials have engaged with Allies and partners and have informed relevant congressional committees of jurisdiction about the disclosure.”

    A document marked “top secret” that shows the daily disposition of forces in Ukraine was leaked and began showing up on social media, a U.S. official confirmed Friday.

    The official said that someone apparently took a picture of the document and posted it on the social media platform Telegram before it was then picked up on Twitter. 

    Several slides pertaining to the war in Ukraine were posted to Telegram on Thursday, and, while the documents appeared authentic, U.S. officials warned some of them appeared to have been altered. One of the slides showed an estimate of 16,000-17,500 Russians killed in action, but U.S. defense officials have publicly said that Russia has suffered over 200,000 casualties. 

    The documents that were posted are also more than a month old. 

    Several more documents purporting to cover other parts of the world, not just Ukraine, continued to leak on Friday. These documents appear to show tensions with South Korea over military aid, the U.S. considering leaning on Israel to provide lethal aid to Ukraine and information on the Wagner mercenary group, according to the New York Times, which first reported the leak. 

    —David Martin and Eleanor Watson contributed reporting.


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  • Pentagon investigating how Ukraine war document marked top-secret appeared online

    Pentagon investigating how Ukraine war document marked top-secret appeared online

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    A document marked “top secret” that depicts the daily disposition of forces in Ukraine was leaked and has shown up on social media, a U.S. official confirmed.

    This official said that someone apparently took a picture of the document and posted it on Telegram, a social media platform that has over 500 million users, and from there, it was picked up on Twitter. Pentagon officials are working to remove the classified information from social media.  

    A second official said the Pentagon is trying to determine how the material leaked and how serious the leak is. 

    And then, on Friday, classified government documents covering not only Ukraine, but other parts of the world started showing up on social media, suggesting that there has been a major compromise of Pentagon secrets.  

    A total of five slides — photographs of documents that had been folded and unfolded — were posted on a pro-Russian Telegram channel Thursday, and they appear authentic, although U.S. officials warned that some of them appeared to have been altered. 

    For instance, one of the slides says there have been 16,000-17,500 Russians killed in action, but U.S. defense officials have publicly said that Russia has suffered over 200,000 casualties. The documents that were posted are also more than a month old. 

    The Telegram account said that the posted documents described “a secret plan to prepare and equip nine brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine by the US and NATO for the spring offensive.”  

    The White House National Security Council and intelligence community declined to comment and referred inquiries to the Defense Department. The New York Times first reported the leak.

    “We are aware of the reports of social media posts and the Department is reviewing the matter,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said. 

    In a second statement provided to CBS News later Friday night, Singh said the Defense Department “has made a formal referral to the Department of Justice for investigation.”

    The leak occurred as Ukraine continues to prepare for its spring offensive against Russia. Earlier this week, the U.S. announced an additional $2.6 billion weapons package for Ukraine, containing munitions and air defense capabilities.

    David Martin

    David Martin is CBS News’ National Security Correspondent.

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  • U.S. carries out airstrikes in Syria after suspected Iranian drone kills American contractor and wounds 5 U.S. service members

    U.S. carries out airstrikes in Syria after suspected Iranian drone kills American contractor and wounds 5 U.S. service members

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    A U.S. contractor was killed and five U.S. service members and one other U.S. contractor were wounded when a suspected Iranian drone struck a facility on a coalition base in northeast Syria on Thursday, the Pentagon said.

    In a statement released late Thursday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said U.S. Central Command forces retaliated with “precision airstrikes” against facilities in eastern Syria used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The Defense Department said the intelligence community had determined the unmanned aerial vehicle was of Iranian origin.

    “The airstrikes were conducted in response to today’s attack as well as a series of recent attacks against Coalition forces in Syria” by groups affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, Austin said.

    Overnight, videos on social media purported to show explosions in Syria’s Deir Ez-Zor, a strategic province that borders Iraq and contains oil fields.

    Iran-backed militia groups and Syrian forces control the area, which also has seen suspected airstrikes by Israel in recent months allegedly targeting Iranian supply routes.

    cbsn-fusion-defense-secretary-lloyd-austin-on-chinese-spy-balloon-thumbnail-1697547-640x360.jpg
    U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin

    CBS News


    Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been suspected of carrying out attacks with bomb-carrying drones across the wider Middle East. In recent months, Russia has begun using Iranian drones in its attacks on sites across Ukraine as part of its war on Kyiv. Iran has denied being responsible for these attacks, though Western nations and experts have tied components in the drones back to Tehran.

    The attack and the U.S. response threaten to upend recent efforts in the region to deescalate tensions, as Saudi Arabia and Iran have been working toward reopening embassies in each other’s countries. The kingdom also acknowledged efforts to reopen its embassy in Syria, whose embattled President Bashar Assad has been backed by Iran in his country’s long war.

    U.S. Army Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the head of the American military’s Central Command, warned that American forces could carry out additional strikes if needed. “We are postured for scalable options in the face of any additional Iranian attacks,” Kurilla said in a statement.

    Syria’s state-run SANA news agency did not immediately acknowledge any strikes. Syria’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    There was no immediate reaction from Iran over the strikes, which come during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Qatar’s state-run news agency reported a call between its foreign minister and Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser. Doha has been an interlocutor between Iran and the U.S. recently amid tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program.

    Qatar’s foreign minister also spoke around the same time with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian.

    Austin said he authorized the retaliatory strikes at the direction of President Joe Biden.

    The U.S. under Biden has struck Syria previously over tensions with Iran. In February and June of 2021, as well as August 2022, Biden launched attacks there.

    U.S. forces entered Syria in 2015, backing allied forces in their fight against the Islamic State group. The U.S. still maintains the base near Hasakah in northeast Syria where Thursday’s drone strike happened. There are roughly 900 U.S. troops, and even more contractors, in Syria, including in the north and farther south and east.

    “As President Biden has made clear, we will take all necessary measures to defend our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing,” Austin said. “No group will strike our troops with impunity.”

    Syria’s war began with the 2011 Arab Spring protests that roiled the wider Middle East and toppled governments in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen. It later morphed into a regional proxy conflict that has seen Russia and Iran back Assad. The United Nations estimates over 300,000 civilians have been killed in the war. Those figures do not include soldiers and insurgents killed in the conflict; their numbers are believed to be in the tens of thousands.

    The Pentagon said two of the wounded service members were treated on site, while three others and the injured contractor were transported to medical facilities in Iraq. 

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  • Drone Strike Kills US Contractor In Syria; US Retaliates

    Drone Strike Kills US Contractor In Syria; US Retaliates

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. contractor was killed and five U.S. service members and one other U.S. contractor were wounded when a suspected Iranian drone struck a facility on a coalition base in northeast Syria on Thursday, the Pentagon said.

    In a statement released late Thursday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said U.S. Central Command forces retaliated with “precision airstrikes” against facilities in eastern Syria used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The Defense Department said the intelligence community had determined the unmanned aerial vehicle was of Iranian origin.

    “The airstrikes were conducted in response to today’s attack as well as a series of recent attacks against Coalition forces in Syria” by groups affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, Austin said.

    Overnight, videos on social media purported to show explosions in Syria’s Deir Ez-Zor, a strategic province that borders Iraq and contains oil fields.

    Iran-backed militia groups and Syrian forces control the area, which also has seen suspected airstrikes by Israel in recent months allegedly targeting Iranian supply routes.

    Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been suspected of carrying out attacks with bomb-carrying drones across the wider Middle East. In recent months, Russia has begun using Iranian drones in its attacks on sites across Ukraine as part of its war on Kyiv. Iran has denied being responsible for these attacks, though Western nations and experts have tied components in the drones back to Tehran.

    The attack and the U.S. response threaten to upend recent efforts in the region to deescalate tensions, as Saudi Arabia and Iran have been working toward reopening embassies in each other’s countries. The kingdom also acknowledged efforts to reopen its embassy in Syria, whose embattled President Bashar Assad has been backed by Iran in his country’s long war.

    Syria’s state-run SANA news agency did not immediately acknowledge any strikes. Syria’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    There was no immediate reaction from Iran over the strikes, which come during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Qatar’s state-run news agency reported a call between its foreign minister and Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser. Doha has been an interlocutor between Iran and the U.S. recently amid tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program.

    Qatar’s foreign minister also spoke around the same time with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian.

    Austin said he authorized the retaliatory strikes at the direction of President Joe Biden.

    The U.S. under Biden has struck Syria previously over tensions with Iran. In February and June of 2021, as well as August 2022, Biden launched attacks there.

    U.S. forces entered Syria in 2015, backing allied forces in their fight against the Islamic State group. The U.S. still maintains the base near Hasakah in northeast Syria where Thursday’s drone strike happened. There are roughly 900 U.S. troops, and even more contractors, in Syria, including in the north and farther south and east.

    “As President Biden has made clear, we will take all necessary measures to defend our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing,” Austin said. “No group will strike our troops with impunity.”

    Syria’s war began with the 2011 Arab Spring protests that roiled the wider Middle East and toppled governments in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen. It later morphed into a regional proxy conflict that has seen Russia and Iran back Assad. The United Nations estimates over 300,000 civilians have been killed in the war. Those figures do not include soldiers and insurgents killed in the conflict; their numbers are believed to be in the tens of thousands.

    The Pentagon said two of the wounded service members were treated on site, while three others and the injured contractor were transported to medical facilities in Iraq.

    Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

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  • Pentagon releases dramatic video said to show Russian jet collision with U.S. drone over Black Sea near Ukraine

    Pentagon releases dramatic video said to show Russian jet collision with U.S. drone over Black Sea near Ukraine

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    The U.S. military on Thursday morning released dramatic video that it said showed a Russian fighter jet intercepting and then colliding with the American MQ-9 “Reaper” drone that crashed into the Black Sea on Tuesday. The U.S. has accused Russia of operating its warplane in an “unsafe and unprofessional” manner during the encounter near Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula.

    On Wednesday, a senior Russian official said Moscow would try to recover the wreckage of the drone. U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the unmanned aerial vehicle had likely broken during the crash and whatever debris was left likely sank to a depth of thousands of feet in the Black Sea.

    “That’s U.S. property,” Milley said Wednesday at a Pentagon news conference. “There’s probably not a lot to recover, frankly.”

    An official told CBS News that the Russians had reached the site of the crash and would probably manage to collect some pieces of the debris, like metal chunks, but Milley said the U.S. had taken mitigating measures to prevent the loss of any sensitive intelligence.

    “We are quite confident that whatever was of value is no longer of value,” he told reporters.

    The video released Thursday by the Pentagon (above), captured by a camera on the MQ-9, first shows a fighter jet pass by at close range before making another pass during which it allegedly hit the drone’s propeller. The camera view is lost briefly after the apparent collision but it comes back to show what the Air Force said was damage to the propeller from the strike.

    The Russian jet “dumped fuel upon and struck the propeller of the MQ-9, causing U.S. forces to have to bring the MQ-9 down in international waters,” the Air Force said in a statement accompanying the video.

    The video released by the U.S. military’s European Command was “edited for length, however, the events are depicted in sequential order,” the statement said.

    dod-mq-9-drone-russia-collision-black-sea.jpg
    An image taken from video released on March 16, 2023 by the U.S. military shows what the Pentagon said is a Russian fighter jet approaching a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 drone over the Black Sea just before colliding with the drone, forcing it to be brought down, on March 14, 2023. The image was captured by a camera on board the MQ-9, the Pentagon said.

    U.S. Military handout


    Speaking to reporters this week, Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder wouldn’t say whether the drone was armed, and he referred to the unmanned aircraft as a MQ-9, but not by its other name, the Reaper. The U.S. uses Reapers for surveillance and strikes and has operated the aircraft from Europe to the Middle East and Africa.

    U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday, speaking alongside Milley, that he had spoken with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu after the incident over the Black Sea, but the American defense chief didn’t provide details of the conversation.

    “The United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows, and it is incumbent upon Russia to operate its military aircraft in a safe and professional manner,” Austin told reporters.

    A MQ-9 Reaper drone flies by during a training mission at Creech Air Force Base on November 17, 2015, in Indian Springs, Nevada.
    A MQ-9 Reaper drone flies by during a training mission at Creech Air Force Base on November 17, 2015, in Indian Springs, Nevada.

    Isaac Brekken/Getty


    Russia’s Defense Ministry said Shoigu had told Austin that the collision was the result of “increased [U.S.] intelligence activities against the interests of the Russian Federation” and “non-compliance with the restricted flight zone” declared by Moscow amid its ongoing war in Ukraine. Ukraine’s southern coast is on the Black Sea, and Crimea, occupied by Russia since 2014 and claimed as its sovereign territory, sticks out into the body of water.

    Ukraine-Russia map

    Created with Datawrapper


    The Russian ministry said it would react “proportionately” to any more U.S. “provocations” in the region, warning that “flights of American strategic unmanned aerial vehicles off the coast of Crimea are provocative in nature, which creates pre-conditions for an escalation of the situation in the Black Sea zone.”  

    “Russia is not interested in such a development of events, but it will continue to respond proportionately to all provocations,” the defense ministry said.

    CBS News’ Eleanor Watson contributed to this report.

    Tucker Reals

    Tucker Reals is the CBSNews.com foreign editor, based at the CBS News London bureau.

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  • U.S. military academies see increase in reports of sexual assaults, Pentagon report finds

    U.S. military academies see increase in reports of sexual assaults, Pentagon report finds

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    U.S. military academies see increase in reports of sexual assaults, Pentagon report finds – CBS News


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    A new report released Friday by the Defense Department found that the number of reports of sexual assaults and sexual harassment at U.S. military academies increased significantly in the 2021-2022 academic year.

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  • U.S. could face possible weapons shortage as it continues to supply military aid to Ukraine, war game shows

    U.S. could face possible weapons shortage as it continues to supply military aid to Ukraine, war game shows

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    With the war in Ukraine entering its second year — and the U.S. continuing to provide the embattled country with military aid in the form of rockets, guns and ammunition — the Pentagon is stepping up production of critically-needed supplies.

    “For a couple of key items, the stockpile is getting low,” retired Marine Col. Mark Cancian, with the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS), told CBS News.

    Cancian said Ukraine’s use of artillery shells far outstrips the Pentagon’s capacity to make them.

    “They’re using about as much in a month as we produced in the year,” Cancian said.

    Ukraine war
    Soldiers of the Ukrainian National Guard are being trained for combat at a military training ground outside the capital of Kyiv on Feb. 23, 2023. 

    Kay Nietfeld/picture alliance via Getty Images


    Precision-fired munitions for the long-range HIMARS system are another need, so Lockheed Martin is gearing up to turn out one new rocket every 10 minutes at its plant in Arkansas.

    The U.S. has committed $30 billion in weapons to Ukraine — but just a fraction of the Pentagon’s staggering $858 billion defense budget.

    “This is darn close to being the biggest defense budget that we have ever had,” Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a public policy think tank, told CBS News.

    Since World War II, the only time the U.S. has spent more on defense than it is now was at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, according to Thompson, nearly one-third of the current defense budget is spent on weapons.

    “That is an amount of money that outstrips the entire economy of most European countries,” Thompson said.

    And with the U.S. struggling to keep Ukraine supplied in its fight against a decrepit Russian military, there is concern about what could happen if the U.S. were to become involved in a conflict with China. CSIS recently conducted a war game that showed that the U.S. would run out of a key weapon — Long Range Anti Ship Missiles (LRASM) — while trying to stop a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

    “The U.S. ran out of these missiles in the first few days of the war,” Cancian said of the war game.

    Even though it ran out of some missiles, the U.S. was still able to stop the Chinese invasion in the war game. Dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft and thousands of troops were lost, however, Cancian said. 

    David Martin

    David Martin is CBS News’ National Security Correspondent.

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  • UFO Reports Rise To 510, Probably Not Aliens But Still A Threat To U.S.

    UFO Reports Rise To 510, Probably Not Aliens But Still A Threat To U.S.

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. has now collected 510 reports of unidentified flying objects, many of which are flying in sensitive military airspace. While there’s no evidence of extraterrestrials, they still pose a threat, the government said in a declassified report summary released Thursday.

    Last year the Pentagon opened an office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, solely focused on receiving and analyzing all of those reports of unidentified phenomena, many of which have been reported by military pilots. It works with the intelligence agencies to further assess those incidents.

    The events “continue to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace, highlighting possible concerns for safety of flight or adversary collection activity,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in its 2022 report.

    The classified version of the report addresses how many of those objects were found near locations where nuclear power plants operate or nuclear weapons are stored.

    In this image from a 2015 video provided by the Department of Defense, an unexplained object called “Gimbal” is seen as it soars high along the clouds, traveling against the wind. (Department of Defense via AP)

    The 510 objects include 144 objects previously reported and 366 new reports. In both the old and new cases, after analysis, the majority have been determined to exhibit “unremarkable characteristics,” and could be characterized as unmanned aircraft systems, or balloon-like objects, the report said.

    But the office is also tasked with reporting any movements or reports of objects that may indicate that a potential adversary has a new technology or capability.

    The Pentagon’s anomaly office is also to include any unidentified objects moving underwater, in the air, or in space, or something that moves between those domains, which could pose a new threat.

    ODNI said in its report that efforts to destigmatize reporting and emphasize that the objects may pose a threat likely contributed to the additional reports.

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  • Pentagon releases latest UFO sightings report

    Pentagon releases latest UFO sightings report

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    Pentagon releases latest UFO sightings report – CBS News


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    In a report released Thursday, the Pentagon said that 366 additional UFO sightings have been investigated since its last report in 2021. While some of those sightings appeared unusual, officials said they have found no evidence that any are extraterrestrial.

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  • Pentagon 9/11 survivor recalls rescue effort after attack

    Pentagon 9/11 survivor recalls rescue effort after attack

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    Pentagon 9/11 survivor recalls rescue effort after attack – CBS News


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    One of the hijacked jetliners on 9/11 was American Airlines Flight 77. It crashed into the Pentagon, killing 59 passengers and crew on board along with 125 military and civilian personnel inside the building. Those victims will be remembered at a ceremony at the Pentagon Saturday morning. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin has the story of one survivor who helped others escape.

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