Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, was killed in action during the detonation of unexploded ordnance at Erbil Air Base, Iraq, a release states.

Lt. Gen. John L. Rafferty, commanding general of Army Air and Missile Defense Command, said in a statement that Swinton died “during an operation to safeguard fellow soldiers.”

The circumstances surrounding his death are under investigation. A second service member was wounded in the detonation and received treatment for a minor injury, U.S. Central Command said.

Swinton enlisted in the Army in 2017 as an Air Defense Early Warning System Operator. He was stationed in Fayetteville and assigned to D Battery, 2nd Battalion, 55th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 108th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command.

Following his death, Swinton will receive the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Combat Action Badge, the Pentagon said. He will be posthumously promoted to staff sergeant.

“His service will not be forgotten, and his sacrifice is not in vain. We will support Sgt. Swinton’s family and his unit during this difficult period,” Rafferty said. “His loss will inspire his fellow soldiers to continue the mission.”

Swinton’s prior awards and decorations include the Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Army Service Ribbon and Combat Action Badge.

Brig. Gen. John L. Dawber, commanding general of the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command, said Swinton “took great pride in his work and the people around him.”

“He answered the call to duty with courage, honor, and selfless dedication,” Dawber said.

Separately, the Pentagon released the identities Monday of two other U.S. soldiers killed in action in recent days in an Iranian ballistic missile and drone attack at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, Jordan.

U.S. Army Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, and 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, from Ewa Beach, Hawaii, died July 17 and July 18, respectively, according to a Department of Defense release.

The deaths bring the toll of American troops killed in the war with Iran to 17.

Currently, the 32 countries that make up the alliance share commercial data through exceptions and workarounds, said Lynch, NATO deputy assistant secretary general for intelligence.

NATO needs new data-use policies, security classification guides, contract frameworks and releasability rules — “unglamorous work” that would have a big impact on military decision-making, he said.

“This past year has made one thing crystal clear: The security environment remains contested, and the advantage belong to those who combine unity of purpose with the speed of action,” Lynch said Monday at the annual GEOINT Symposium, hosted by the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation.

The symposium attracted companies, many of the U.S. military vendors, that among other things track Russian military activity in the Bering Strait, monitor China’s military exercises and last year provided the technology to determine the extent of the damage to Iranian nuclear facilities following Operation Midnight Hammer.

Lynch urged the intelligence professionals present Monday to help NATO update its framework for data-sharing.

Governing commercial intelligence becomes “significantly more complex” when it comes to data processed by artificial intelligence, he said.

“Then, it’s not simply asking who can share what, it’s asking whose model to use on what training data with what documented assumptions with what confidence threshold in what context,” Lynch said, adding that there needs to be one common AI model and interface to be used by commercial and national partners across NATO.

NATO has previously established hundreds of standardization agreements creating common standards for things like air defense, maritime awareness and data formats.

“NATO is quite good at governance,” Lynch said. “The question is whether we apply that same rigor to AI before the technology outpaces the frameworks or after, and the answer will be decided in the next few years.”

Last year, under pressure from President Donald Trump, European NATO members and Canada hit their goal of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense. It marked a 20% increase in overall defense spending, Lynch said, and was the first time the members had met the goal since it was established in 2014.

At the NATO summit in The Hague last year, allies pledged to spend 5% of GDP on defense by 2035.

“Three years ago, that would’ve been considered science fiction,” Lynch said of the spending goal. “The alliance is now actively investing in its own security at a pace and scale we have not seen in a generation.”

However, investing in defense without also putting more money toward intelligence is “capability without awareness,” he said. “More is useless unless information generated gets to the right person in the right form at the right time.”

The company announced April 15 it would establish the Virginia Advanced Propulsion Facilities for mixing, grinding, casting and assembling. The expansion will more than double manufacturing space at the Virginia site, which currently spans 256,000 square feet.

The announcement follows a January deal between L3Harris and the Pentagon, in which the DoD is investing $1 billion in the company’s Missile Solutions spinoff business to expand capacity on critical missile programs. The investment provided up-front cash that L3Harris needed to increase its solid rocket motor production, modernize its facilities and improve industrial resilience, the Pentagon said at the time.

Last year, L3Harris began construction of a new solid rocket motor production facility at the company’s Aerojet Rocketdyne campus in Camden, Arkansas. It also opened a new and expansive rocket motor parts plant in Huntsville, Alabama.

“The company’s ongoing investments in new facilities, equipment and processes will enable it to double, triple and quadruple solid rocket motor production rates for a range of key programs,” L3Harris said in a release.

News about the Virginia expansion was made alongside Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, who applauded the investment, along with other state and county leaders. The addition of the Virginia Advanced Propulsion Facilities is expected to create 350 jobs over the next five years.

A United States F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet has been shot down by enemy fire over Iran, U.S. officials confirmed.

One of the aircraft’s two crew members has been rescued, Israeli media first reported. U.S. officials confirmed the reports in statements to CBS News and Axios.

A search for the second crew member is ongoing.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Military Times “the president has been briefed” on the downed fighter jet.

The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Officials in Iran, meanwhile, called for the search and capture of any surviving crew members of the jet, according to reports by the semi-official ISNA news agency and the Young Journalists Club.

The governor of one of the Islamic Republic’s provinces stated that anyone who captures or kills the crew would receive a special commendation.

Video circulating on social media appeared to show a low-flying U.S. Air Force HC-130 refueling a pair of HH-60G Pave Hawks over Iran while conducting a search for the downed crew.

Iranian state media on Friday shared images of aircraft debris alongside claims that Iran had downed a U.S. F-35 fighter jet.

However, images of the aircraft’s tailfin, specifically the red stripe on its vertical stabilizer, are consistent with markings used by the 494th Fighter Squadron, 48th Fighter Wing, based at RAF Lakenheath.

Iran also shared an image of an Advanced Concept Ejection Seat allegedly from the shot down F-15E.

The search-and-rescue effort inside Iran during an ongoing conflict greatly raises the stakes for the United States.

U.S. Central Command on Tuesday issued a statement denying claims that “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps downed an ‘enemy’ fighter jet over Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.”

“All U.S. fighter aircraft are accounted for,” the CENTCOM statement read. “Iran’s IRGC has made the same false claim at least half a dozen times.”

The location of the downed jet has not yet been confirmed.

The shoot-down marks the first time during Operation Epic Fury that a manned U.S. aircraft has been brought down by enemy fire.

A U.S. F-35 fighter jet was reportedly hit by enemy fire during a combat mission over Iran on March 19, but was able to make an emergency landing at a U.S. air base in the region.

Six U.S. airmen were killed on March 12 when their KC-135 refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq during combat operations.

On March 1, three U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets were shot down by a Kuwaiti F/A-18 in a friendly fire incident. All six F-15 crew members ejected and were safely recovered.

A total of 13 U.S. service members have been killed during combat actions against Iran.

As of March 31, 348 U.S. personnel have been wounded, Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, U.S. Central Command spokesperson, told DefenseScoop. Of those injured, the majority have since returned to duty. Six remain seriously wounded.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Aureus Greenway Holdings Inc., a golf course holding company backed by the two eldest Trump sons, is merging with drone producer Powerus Corporation, the companies announced Monday in a release that names Eric and Donald Jr. as “notable investors.”

“We’re huge fans of our backers,” said Brett Velicovich, a co-founder of Powerus. “Eric and Don Jr. have been just fantastic supporters behind the scenes. They see the need for us to build drone technology at scale.”

Their investment will enable Powerus to create a manufacturing strategy and acquire other drone technology companies, Velicovich said.

Matthew Saker, the interim chief executive officer of Aureus Greenway Holdings, said in a statement that the merger was a “compelling opportunity” made “even more relevant by current geopolitical uncertainties.”

“The need for and uses of autonomous technologies, such as those produced by Powerus, are front page news given developments in the Middle East and elsewhere,” he said.

News of the merger came nine days after the U.S. and Israel launched military strikes against Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian leaders.

In the days since, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has launched thousands of one-way drones toward U.S. military bases and diplomatic sites across the region. Trump administration officials conceded that Iran’s Shahed-136 drone, which costs only $20,000 to $50,000 to produce, is proving more disruptive on the battlefield than the Pentagon had anticipated.

The U.S. has turned to Ukraine for assistance in countering the drones, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said March 5. Engineers in Kyiv have developed a range of anti-drone laser systems, some of which cost as little as $1,000.

“We’re learning we have a lot of gaps in our air defenses, and right now there is a race at high levels to fix it, to pour money into it,” said Velicovich, an Army special operations veteran and Fox News commentator. “I worry that soldiers have a false sense of security, tactically, to what is out there, and that makes me very nervous. We need to get the right tools in their hands.”

Velicovich spent more than a year in Ukraine after Russia invaded the country, taking with him U.S. defense technology on behalf of various defense firms.

“In many cases, it failed miserably,” he said of the technology, adding that U.S. counter-drone systems, in particular, “are a real false sense of security wrapped around a very expensive price tag.”

Powerus intends to bring lessons learned in Ukraine to the U.S. military, Velicovich said.

“There are a number of engagements at senior levels of the Pentagon where they’re trying to find ways to formally bring in Ukranian technology and get it in the hands of soldiers,” he said. “We want to be part of that. We want to provide the Department of War an outlet as a company to connect those dots and add an American face to it.”

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report about the investment made by Trump’s sons. Eric Trump shared the article Monday on X with the comment, “I happen to believe drones will be a much better investment than companies that still print newspapers.”

Eric Trump invested in another defense technology company Feb. 17, according to PitchBook, which tracks private capital markets.

The company, Xtend, developed an AI-driven operating system that enables drones “to execute complex, dynamic missions with immediate operational readiness,” it said in a release, which goes on to say Eric Trump made a strategic investment in the company.

“The demand for systems that keep operators out of harm’s way is surging as the global security environment grows more volatile, and this represents one of the largest market opportunities in defense technology today,” Xtend CEO and co-founder Aviv Shapira said in a statement.

Cavoli’s comments come amid concerns from Congress that the Pentagon is considering reducing the number of U.S. troops on the continent.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said last week that “mid-level” Pentagon leaders were working on what he described as a misguided plan to “reduce drastically our military footprint in Europe.” The Defense Department, however, has not made public any proposal to cut force levels there.

At a House Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, panel chairman Rep. Michael Rogers, R-Mich., asked Cavoli for his recommendation.

The number of U.S. troops in Europe increased by about 20,000 under former President Joe Biden in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. There have been roughly 100,000 troops there since then.

“It’s my advice to maintain that force posture as it is now,” Cavoli said. “Since we originally surged forces forward in 2022, we have periodically reviewed for structure both the military and policy level, and I have consistently recommended throughout that period to maintain the forces we surged forward, and I would continue to do so now if asked.”

The same day Cavoli suggested keeping forces in Europe, his command announced it was shuffling U.S. forces within Poland, away from a Ukraine support hub.

Military equipment and personnel were moving out of Jasionka, Poland, to other sites in the country, said U.S. Army Europe and Africa, which noted that the decision came after months of planning with NATO allies.

Military aid will continue to flow to Ukraine via Jasionka under the supervision of Polish and NATO leaders, with a smaller U.S. military force at the site, the Army said.

“After three years at Jasionka this is an opportunity to right-size our footprint and save American taxpayers tens of millions of dollars per year,” Gen. Christopher Donahue, commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, said in a statement.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

The soldiers, all part of 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, have been missing since early Tuesday, when they were conducting a maintenance mission to recover another Army vehicle during a training exercise, according to U.S. Army Europe and Africa. The training site is the General Silvestras Žukauskas Training Area near Pabrade, north of the capital Vilnius, Lithuania.

Search and recovery efforts have continued without pause since the soldiers were reported missing, the Army said in a statement Thursday. The initial search included military helicopters, Lithuanian diving teams and hundreds of U.S. and Lithuanian soldiers and law enforcement officers looking through thick forests and swampy terrain.

Now, personnel are focusing on the area where the armored vehicle was found.

“We are leveraging every available U.S. and Lithuanian asset to coordinate for and provide the required resources for this effort,” U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, the commanding general of 1st Armored Division, said in a statement.

As of Thursday, thick mud and soft ground were keeping emergency personnel from accessing the vehicle and complicating and slowing the recovery efforts, the Army said. Engineers were creating berms to establish a contained area, from which water and mud could be dredged away to better stabilize the ground.

“Due to the terrain, this is an incredibly complex engineering effort. The team on the ground is working to remove enough water and mud for rescue teams to safely reach, stabilize, and access the vehicle,” Maj. Robin Bruce, 1st Armored Division Engineer, said in a statement. “The team is exploring every available option to speed up this process.”

Families of the soldiers are being updated about the recovery efforts, the Army said. The service has not yet released the names of the four troops.

NATO on Wednesday clarified comments Secretary-General Mark Rutte made earlier that day, when he suggested the soldiers had died, even though the U.S. Army said their fate was not yet confirmed.

“The search is ongoing,” NATO said in a statement posted on X. “We regret any confusion about remarks @SecGenNATO delivered on this today. He was referring to emerging news reports & was not confirming the fate of the missing, which is still unknown.”

During a trip to Warsaw, Rutte told reporters that he had received word of the deaths of the four soldiers while he was delivering a lecture, and that his thoughts were with their families and with the United States.

“This is still early news so we do not know the details. This is really terrible news and our thoughts are with the families and loved ones,” Rutte said in Warsaw.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The statement also called on Congress to increase funding for a Navy plan to revitalize public shipyards, add to the Coast Guard’s fleet of polar icebreakers and spend more on producing munitions to prepare for a “possible great power conflict.”

The nonprofit, which supports the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine, releases policy statements every other year to help guide lawmakers as they make decisions about maritime power.

In the wake of territorial disputes in the South China Sea, an ongoing fight against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea, an escalating NATO-Russia contest in the Baltic Sea, increased competition between the U.S. and its adversaries over Arctic sea lanes and a looming Chinese threat to Taiwan, the Navy League focused its priorities for 2025 and 2026 on building up the fleet, as well as the shipbuilding industry’s ability to maintain more ships — and do it faster.

“America is undoubtedly a maritime nation, and our safety, security and prosperity depend on strength in this domain,” retired Rear Adm. Sinclair Harris said on a call with reporters Thursday. “American seapower is essential to global security.”

Challenges facing the country’s seapower “continue to grow with each passing day,” added Harris, the national vice president of the Navy League.

The nonprofit isn’t expecting an easy pathway to sway Congress toward huge investments in maritime power, said Jonathan Kaskin, the Navy League’s chair of Merchant Marine affairs. The policy statement would “give the Hill the background needed to provide additional resources,” he said, adding the caveat that they “will be very challenging to obtain in this fiscal environment.”

The nonprofit’s recommended $40 billion per year for battle force ships matches the cost associated with the Navy’s newest proposal to Congress. Under that proposal, the service would need to spend $40.1 billion on shipbuilding every year through 2054, for a total of more than $1 trillion, according to analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.

Over the next 30 years, the Navy wants to grow its fleet of battle force ships to 381 to face swelling global threats, the Navy’s proposal states. There are currently 295 in the fleet, and that number is expected to drop to 283 ships in 2027, when the Navy is planning to retire 13 more ships than it will commission.

The Congressional Budget Office described the cost of the shipbuilding plan as high when compared with both recent funding levels and historical standards. Funding for ship construction has climbed in the past 10 years, reaching the highest levels since former President Ronald Reagan pursued the idea of a 600-ship Navy in the 1980s, the office said.

In addition to more funding, it would take a larger shipbuilding workforce to make the Navy’s plans for the future fleet a reality. The country’s shipyards would need to drastically increase their productivity from what they’ve achieved over the past decade, the Congressional Budget Office said. The shipbuilding industry has faced cost overruns and labor shortages that have set the production of some ships years behind schedule.

The Navy League plans to lobby lawmakers to again take up the SHIPS for America Act, a bipartisan bill introduced at the end of the previous congressional session that the nonprofit said addresses the maritime industry’s weak points.

The bill would create the position of a maritime security adviser in the White House, establish a trust fund the maritime industry would pay into through duties and fees, launch a Center for Maritime Innovation with hubs around the country and aim to bolster the shipbuilding workforce by launching a new recruiting campaign, among dozens of other measures.

BAE will receive an additional $23.5 million, according to a release. That amount comes in addition to its original $47 million contract, bringing the cost of the project to over $70 million.

The company will extend the barrel of the Mk 45 to 62 calibers and strengthen the gun mounts. It will also incorporate a fully digital control system. The upgrades will allow the Mk 45s to fire more modern munitions that have 50% greater firing energy, BAE said in the release.

The work is expected to be completed by the end of 2028.

Brent Butcher, vice president of weapon systems at BAE, said the events in the Red Sea last year emphasized the need for modernized weapons systems in the Navy’s fleet. Starting in late 2023 and continuing through 2024, Iran-backed Houthi rebels launched attacks against commercial and naval ships in the Red Sea, leading to U.S. naval and air strikes against the group.

The situation “underscored the importance of firepower aboard U.S. Navy ships,” Butcher said.

“Equipped with the latest configuration of the [Mk 45] gun system, the men and women in the Navy have the capabilities to protect themselves at sea,” Butcher added. “We continue our commitment to providing the latest naval gun technology, including advanced munitions, to U.S. Sailors and their allies.”

BAE said the upgrades would come at a lower cost than introducing a new gun system altogether. The work on the Mk 45s will be completed at the company’s production facility in Louisville, Kentucky.

Over the next 30 years, the Navy wants to grow its fleet of battle force ships to 381 to face swelling global threats, according to the service’s most recent proposal. There are currently 295 in the fleet, and that number is expected to drop to 283 ships in 2027, when the Navy is planning to retire 13 more ships than it will commission.

“The pace of shipbuilding would be fastest in the early 2030s, reflecting the service’s desire to increase the size of the fleet as quickly as feasible,” the Congressional Budget Office said of the Navy’s proposal.

The office, which provides cost estimates of proposed legislation, estimated the plan for the future fleet would require Congress to fund the Navy at levels 46% higher than the average annual funding the service has received over the past five years.

By 2054, the Navy would need a total yearly budget of $340 billion — one-third more than its $255 billion budget today. About $40 billion of that increase would be spent on continued shipbuilding, while the remaining $45 billion would go toward the costs of operating and maintaining the existing ships and purchasing weapons for them.

The estimates from the Congressional Budget Office came in 8% to 16% higher than the Navy’s own projections. The office said it took into account that some ships have taken longer and been more difficult to build than the Navy has previously anticipated, and the designs have proved more complicated to complete. The Navy’s cost estimates for some ships were also unrealistically low, the analysis says.

The Congressional Budget Office described the cost of the shipbuilding plan as high when compared with both recent funding levels and historical standards. Funding for ship construction has climbed in the past 10 years, reaching the highest levels since former President Ronald Regan pursued the idea of a 600-ship Navy in the 1980s, the office said.

“Since 2015, lawmakers have appropriated an average of $2.5 billion more per year for shipbuilding than the president has requested, partly because of concerns that the fleet is too small to perform all of its missions,” the analysis says.

In order to make plans for the future fleet a reality, the country’s shipyards would also need to drastically increase their productivity from what they’ve achieved over the past decade, the Congressional Budget Office reported.

Navy shipbuilding is in “a terrible state” — the worst in a quarter century, Eric Labs, a longtime naval analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, told The Associated Press in August.

“I feel alarmed,” he said. “I don’t see a fast, easy way to get out of this problem. It’s taken us a long time to get into it.”

The shipbuilding industry has faced cost overruns and labor shortages that have set the production of some ships years behind schedule.

That was the case with the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier George Washington, which began its midlife refueling in August 2017. The refueling occurs halfway through a carrier’s 50-year service life to refuel the nuclear power reactor and conduct significant repairs and upgrades. While a refueling typically lasts four years, Newport News Shipbuilding didn’t complete the work until nearly six years later, in May 2023, according to a Navy statement.

The carrier underwent inspections and certifications for 10 months, and in November it arrived in Yokosuka, Japan, as the United States’ only forward-deployed aircraft carrier, the Navy said.

Under the Navy’s newest proposal for its fleet, aircraft carrier construction would remain fairly steady, the Congressional Budget Office said. But the tonnage of submarines, surface combatants and amphibious warfare ships under construction from 2030 to 2054 would be 50% higher on average than it is today.