The United States Navy’s next-generation ballistic missile submarine is more than halfway complete, according to the lead defense contractor. General Dynamics Electric Boat, which is building the submarine, announced in an October 2025 earnings call that its first Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine (SSBN), the USS District of Columbia, was 60% complete. General Dynamics Electric Boat is a subsidiary of defense contractor General Dynamics. “By the end of this year, we’ll have all the major modules at Groton [manufacturing headquarters] ready for assembly and test,” Phebe Novakovic, General Dynamics’ chief executive officer, said. “We’re working very hard to move that ship…
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The United States has reaffirmed support for an almost $270 billion agreement to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. U.S. President Donald Trump said the 2021 deal, part of the trilateral security partnership among Australia, the United Kingdom and U.S. known as AUKUS, is going full steam ahead after an October 2025 meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the White House. The agreement seeks to “bootstrap Australia’s outdated submarine force into part of a credible, western barrier to Chinese expansion in the Indo-Pacific,” according to the Hartford Courant newspaper. The U.S. government put the AUKUS deal under review in…
Today’s complex global landscape demands robust and effective strategic cooperation among like-minded Allies and partners who value a stable and open international system. The United States, NATO and Indo-Pacific Allies and partners have never been more focused on maintaining peace as China, Iran, North Korea and Russia increase their attempts to disrupt the international world order. “Today, our region and the broader international community confront challenges of an unprecedented magnitude. The need for frank and open dialogue among defense leaders has never been greater,” Japan’s then-Minister of Defense Gen Nakatani said in May 2025 at the Shangri-La Dialogue defense forum.…
Japan Ground Self-Defense Force Lt. Gen. Nobutaka Minamikawa, Chief of Staff for the Japan Self-Defense Force Joint Operations Command, spoke with Sentry during the 2024 United States Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium in Omaha, Nebraska. He talked about a Free and Open Indo-Pacific, Japan’s engagement with regional partners, and the importance of the Japan-U.S. alliance to ensure deterrence. At the time of his interview, Nobutaka was a major general serving as Japan Joint Staff, Director General Defense Plans and Policy Department. He has since been promoted. SENTRY: Why is deterrence important for Japan? NOBUTAKA: As Russia’s aggression against Ukraine attests, the…
United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt told a national radio audience on December 29, 1940, that the U.S. must come to the aid of a Great Britain under siege from Adolf Hitler’s bombers and become the “great arsenal of democracy.” A little less than a year later, the U.S. would be at war, and its industry — mobilized from commercial to military production — would become that arsenal. Now, the U.S. is again taking decisive action to expand its defense industrial base (DIB), develop advanced weapons systems and confront global challenges that threaten a stable and open international system, including…
Attend any conference or meeting of military leaders and one topic likely will materialize: discussion about the incorporation of artificial intelligence in warfighting. For nuclear command, control and communications (NC3), the implications are significant, presenting opportunities for enhanced analysis for decisions while raising concerns about human control. “If we don’t think about AI, and we don’t consider AI, then we’re going to lose, and I’m not interested in losing,” United States Air Force Maj. Gen. Ty Neuman, director of Strategic Plans, Programs and Requirements at Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC), said during a March 2025 panel on NC3 architecture…
When Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in May 2025, he called the bond between the two countries “unbreakable.” China and Russia, Xi said, should be “friends of steel.” Xi was in Moscow to help Putin celebrate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, an appearance that experts said was heavy on projecting a unified relationship between Beijing and Moscow, with the pomp and circumstance of a huge military parade in Red Square as a backdrop. The two leaders signed what CCP state media called…
In January 2024, Canadian and United States forces deployed across the Atlantic Ocean and joined NATO Allies to secure the continent’s western flank, extending to the Arctic. The move was the first phase of Steadfast Defender, the Alliance’s largest exercise since the Cold War, sending more than 90,000 troops from all 32 NATO nations to conduct combined exercises for four months. Steadfast Defender involved more than 50 ships, 80 aircraft and 1,100 combat vehicles, and tested enablement and deployment of Allied forces across all domains in the European theater. NATO officials called Allies’ performance in Steadfast Defender “an impressive display of…
In a rapidly changing world where emerging technologies reshape the landscape of global security, NATO has embarked on a journey to digitalize defense mechanisms and ensure its readiness for future threats. This endeavor is encapsulated in the NATO Digital Transformation Implementation Strategy, an initiative aimed at revolutionizing the Alliance’s operational capabilities. The road map — designed to complement the NATO 2030 vision for a ready, strong and unified Alliance in an era of increased competition — outlines a path for development in four key areas: people, process, technology and data. “Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous systems and quantum…
United States President Donald Trump picked a design for the Golden Dome for America missile defense system and named a leader of the $175 billion defense program. The aim is for Golden Dome to leverage a network of hundreds of satellites circling the globe with sophisticated sensors and interceptors to knock out incoming enemy missiles after they lift off from countries like China, Iran, North Korea or Russia. In April 2025, the U.S. Department of War asked military contractors to design and build a network to disrupt intercontinental ballistic missiles during the “boost phase” just after liftoff — the slow…