Secretary Pete Fights Congress
By 
Not yet about the boat bombings, but he’s not making any friends at the Capitol:
The dispute has come to a head at a moment of vulnerability for Secretary Hegseth, who has come under fire for his role in a follow-up strike that killed two survivors of an alleged Venezuelan drug smuggling boat.
Hegseth has given conflicting accounts over the past several days as to his culpability in the attack, which is (by almost every extant legal authority) a clear violation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC).
While the two issues are technically unrelated, they both reveal conflict within the Department of Defense over Hegseth’s leadership.
Of course, it is unclear how much of the Pentagon’s hostility to the F/A-XX stems from Hegseth’s personal evaluation and how much from broader resistance within the Trump administration.
Other links:
- China is putting internationally competitive combat aircraft into service.
- What does China want from its nuclear arsenal?
- And China has EMALS!
- Taking advantage of South Korea’s shipyards.