“The United States must aggressively adopt AI within its Armed Forces if it is to maintain its global military preeminence while also ensuring, as outlined throughout this Action Plan, that its use of AI is secure and reliable,” the 28-page AI Action Plan document states.

Released on Wednesday — ahead of several corresponding executive orders in the publication pipeline — America’s AI Action Plan broadly promotes more widespread use of AI and machine learning, and seeks to reduce administrative and other hindrances limiting government deployments. 

“The Action Plan’s objective is to articulate policy recommendations that this administration can deliver for the American people to achieve the president’s vision of global AI dominance,” officials wrote.

The strategy prioritizes three pillars: driving innovation, building out infrastructure, and leading in international AI diplomacy and security.

It builds on the American AI Initiative launched under the first Trump administration, and was prompted after the president rescinded a Biden administration AI mandate in January at the start of his second term.

Because of DOD’s “unique operational needs,” the new action plan carves out policy recommendations custom for the department — such as the new AI and autonomy proving ground. The process for that new test range will begin “with scoping the technical, geographic, security, and resourcing requirements necessary for such a facility,” officials wrote.

The plan also directs the Pentagon to develop a streamlined process for classifying, evaluating, and optimizing workflows involved in its major functions and, eventually, a list of its priority workflows for automation with AI.

Personnel are additionally told to “prioritize DOD-led agreements with cloud service providers, operators of computing infrastructure, and other relevant private sector entities to codify priority access to computing resources in the event of a national emergency so that DOD is prepared to fully leverage these technologies during a significant conflict.”

Further, Trump’s framework calls for new talent development programs to meet the Pentagon’s AI-related workforce requirements — and to grow its Senior Military Colleges “into hubs of AI research, development, and talent building, teaching core AI skills and literacy to future generations.”

On a call with reporters Wednesday morning, a senior White House official said that more than 10,000 responses were submitted to the administration’s request for information to inform the action plan’s development.

“It was probably one of the most diverse sets of individuals from across the country and across different sectors — from civil society, to Hollywood, to academia, to the private sector. It really represented and showed the intense interest that the American people had in this and the responses from that RFI ultimately were reflected in the report,” the senior official said.

The guidance does not explicitly name the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office in regards to carrying out any of these new responsibilities.

Editor’s note: FedScoop’s Madison Alder contributed reporting.

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Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton has been selected to receive his fourth star and become the next vice chief of space operations, according to a notice posted to Congress.gov. If confirmed, Bratton would take over the Space Force’s No. 2 spot from Gen. Michael Guetlein, who was recently tapped to lead the Defense Department’s sprawling Golden Dome missile defense effort.

Bratton has been serving as the Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations for strategy, plans, programs and requirements since 2023, where he has been responsible for the service’s overall warfighting strategies, system requirements and budget.

Prior to his current role, Bratton served as the first commander of the Space Force’s Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM), which oversees guardian training, capability testing and creating operational doctrine.

As the Space Force’s vice chief, Bratton would assist Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman in leading the Pentagon’s smallest service and advocating for more resources. In recent months, the Space Force has been given a number of new responsibilities — from critical capabilities moving to the space domain to development of Golden Dome.

Bratton’s nomination confirms that Guetlein will not serve in a dual-hatted position as both vice chief of space operations and direct reporting program manager for Golden Dome. Trump announced in May that Guetlein would lead the DOD-wide effort, which seeks to build a comprehensive missile defense architecture for the U.S. homeland leveraging terrestrial- and space-based systems.

Meanwhile, Gen. Thomas Bussiere has been picked to serve as the next vice chief of staff for the Air Force, a second notice on Congress.gov stated. Bussiere currently helms Air Force Global Strike Command, and previously held a number of leadership positions within the service’s strategic enterprise during his career.

The Air Force has been without a vice chief since February, when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth removed Gen. James Slife from the position. Slife was fired alongside former chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown and former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti.

If confirmed, Bussiere’s extensive experience with the Air Force’s strategic enterprise would be a welcome one as the service works to modernize all of its nuclear capabilities. While some efforts like the B-21 Raider stealth bomber are going relatively well, others like the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program have been troubled by growing cost estimates.

Both nominees must be confirmed by the Senate to become vice chiefs.

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In his new job, Tata will serve as principal staff assistant and advisor to the secretary of defense for force readiness, health affairs, National Guard and Reserve component affairs, education and training, and military and civilian personnel requirements and management.

He will be in position to play a key role in guiding implementation of Trump administration policies affecting the DOD workforce, such as Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiatives.

During his confirmation hearing in May, he told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that he would work with lawmakers on “optimizing” the DOD workforce and military and making sure the Pentagon doesn’t have “personnel gaps” in back offices or on the frontlines.

“It’s clear the DoD has a cyber talent shortage, in part because of stiff competition from the civilian sector where DoD salaries struggle to compete. Building on my understanding of the Cyber Excepted Service workforce, I will, if confirmed, work with cyber leadership to identify and implement enhancements to the program, as needed,” he told members of the committee in response to advance policy questions ahead of his confirmation hearing.

“I believe it is crucially important that the Department seeks to recruit and retain the best technical and digital workforce across the total force, including civilian and Active Duty military personnel. The obvious advantages of uniformed personnel in these roles are they bring a warfighter focus and come at a fixed labor cost. The perceived disadvantages could be frequent reassignment and requirements to deploy. If confirmed, I will assess how we train and assign our Service members to support their ability to maintain currency in constantly changing fields. In addition to balancing the active duty and civilian workforce, I believe we need to assess how we best utilize the talent of our Reserve Component personnel,” he wrote.

The Trump administration is in the process of cutting tens of thousands of DOD civilians as part of a broader DOGE push.

Tata told lawmakers that, if confirmed, he would prioritize assessing civilian workforce morale and identifying challenges that employees face.

“My goal is to ensure we have the right tools and environment to attract, retain, and support the highly skilled workforce essential to the DoD’s critical mission,” Tata wrote. “I recognize that proposed workforce reductions can create uncertainty and impact morale. If confirmed, I will prioritize assessing the effects of any such reductions on the DoD’s civilian workforce and implement strategies to maintain a high-performing and resilient workforce dedicated to the Department’s mission.”

At his confirmation hearing, he vowed to protect DOD personnel’s sensitive personal and health information from potential mishandling by the DOGE team at the Pentagon.

“It’s a massive amount of data,” Tata noted. “If I’m confirmed, before DOGE is able to access anything with regard to personnel and personal protected information, there will be some kind of contract that prevents them from doing certain things. I’m not in there yet, I haven’t worked with DOGE, I don’t know DOGE. But what I do know is men and women in the military and their families deserve to have their privacy protected, and I will commit to them, and I will commit to you, to doing everything possible to get between anyone that wants to get their data and use it for any other reasons.”

He added: “The military health data, the military personnel data — all the records are so critical that we have to have some kind of guardrail in place that helps us prevent improper access to personnel data. And if confirmed, I can commit that I will do my very best to put guardrails in place. And by the way, I don’t suspect that DOGE would try to do anything improper with this information, but sometimes accidents happen, and so we would need some kind of guardrail in place to be able to protect military members’ personal data and their medical data.”

Tata is a West Point graduate who had a 28-year career in the Army and later performed the duties of undersecretary of defense for policy during Trump’s first term.

Since leaving the military, he has made inflammatory statements as a political commentator, including calling former President Barack Obama a “terrorist leader,” among other remarks that critics have panned. During Trump’s first term, the president withdrew Tata’s nomination to be undersecretary of defense for policy in a Senate-confirmed capacity, in the face of political opposition.

In response to questioning from lawmakers at his confirmation hearing in May for the P&R role, Tata said some of his previous comments that have drawn scrutiny were “out of character.”

He told senators that, if confirmed, he would be an “apolitical leader that is trying to take care of the men and women in uniform and their families and the DOD civilians.”

Democratic members of the SASC expressed concerns that he might support a purge of senior military officers who the Trump administration dislikes.

“I would not support any kind of blatant purge,” Tata said at the hearing. “If an officer is not following the constitution, has committed some kind of breach of his or her duty, then that should be investigated, and the investigation should tell us what to do.”

Jules Hurst was performing the duties of undersecretary for P&R prior to Tata’s confirmation.

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The nomination was submitted to the Senate last week and has been referred to the Armed Services Committee for consideration, according to a notice posted on Congress.gov.

A White House announcement and the congressional notice said Caggy was tapped for a “new” ASD position, without providing additional information. A senior congressional official on Tuesday confirmed that Caggy has been nominated to be ASD for mission capabilities. Although the role was created during the Biden administration, it’s still considered “new” in bureaucratic parlance because it’s never been filled by a Senate-confirmed official.

Marcia Holmes was recently performing the duties of ASD for mission capabilities, according to a Defense Department org chart.

If confirmed, Caggy would oversee efforts to develop and support future warfighting concepts and “integrated architectures,” close capability gaps in support of defense modernization, and regularly engage with the joint force and combatant commanders, among other duties, according to a DOD description of the mission capabilities portfolio. The office is tasked with helping execute joint and interagency prototyping and experiments; identifying, developing and demonstrating “multi-domain” concepts and technology; and leveraging multiple prototyping pathways to address “operational gaps” and accelerate capabilities to warfighters.

According to DOD, a key goal for the ASD position is to help get capabilities across the so-called “Valley of Death,” a term used by members of the Pentagon’s acquisition community that refers to challenges in transitioning promising technologies from research and development into production and fielding.

“ASD(MC) serves as a transition partner through innovative and efficient experimentation strategies with the end goal of not just prototyping and fielding, but operational sustainment via scalability, producibility, and training,” according to the Defense Department.

Caggy highlighted his nomination in a LinkedIn post over the holiday weekend.

“If confirmed, I’ll bring the same mission first, bureaucracy last mindset that’s driven me my entire career. Collaborating with all to deliver the best American capabilities for the Joint Force. Working with a team of Doers grounded in humility, egos set aside in favor of doing what’s right for Warfighters and, ultimately, the country,” he wrote.

Caggy recently served as an advisor to the Strategic Capabilities Office in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. From 2013 to 2023, he held executive roles at Amazon Web Services (AWS), including general manager and director (L8) for secure connection services, and senior manager for DOD solutions. He also has military experience, having previously served as an Army infantry officer in the active duty and Reserve components for about 20 years, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The Defense Department’s research and engineering directorate is led by former Uber executive Emil Michael, who took the helm as undersecretary for R&E and chief technology officer in May.

Other Trump nominees for senior positions in the directorate are still going through the Senate confirmation process.

Last month, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a confirmation hearing for Michael Dodd, also known as “The DoddFather,” who was tapped to be assistant secretary of defense for critical technologies. The Senate has yet to vote on his confirmation.

In late March, Trump nominated Joseph Jewell, a hypersonics expert, to serve as assistant secretary of defense for science and technology. His confirmation hearing hasn’t been scheduled.

Last week, the president also nominated James Mazol to be deputy undersecretary of defense for R&E. Mazol had been performing the duties of that position in the months leading up to his nomination. Prior to joining the Trump administration, he was Republican policy director for the Senate Armed Services Committee and had responsibility for science and technology policy and programs, according to his DOD bio.

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“The Department of Defense must be able to procure, integrate, and train using low-cost, high-performing drones manufactured in the United States,” President Donald Trump wrote in the directive.

This new EO comes at a time when autonomous systems are increasingly proving to be game-changing on contemporary battlefields. Yet despite major investments, all of America’s military services are confronting serious challenges in adopting and deploying different-sized and affordable drones for widespread use.

DefenseScoop asked former defense officials and national security experts to share their analyses regarding the order, in separate conversations following its release last month.

“At first glance, the EO is directionally sound — it signals a strategic interest in accelerating the adoption of commercial unmanned aerial systems in the U.S. and reducing barriers to their use, particularly for testing and training,” Lauren Kahn, senior research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, said. “That’s a positive step.”

David Rothzeid — a venture investor at Shield Capital, Air Force reservist and Defense Innovation Unit alum — echoed that sentiment, saying he views the EO “as a positive and timely move that supports both national security and the U.S. innovation ecosystem.”

“It sends a meaningful demand signal to American entrepreneurs and primes the broader market to accelerate development,” he told DefenseScoop. “That said, although the EO is well-aimed, its long-term impact will depend on execution.” 

A longtime procurement official, Rothzeid previously led acquisition pathways at DIU. He argued that the DOD at this point needs to “avoid repeating past mistakes where adversaries seized technological leads due to” slow adoption and over-classification postures at the Pentagon. 

“For example, the proliferation of Chinese-created DJI drones in both consumer and defense sectors continues to exacerbate our domestic sourcing. By failing to incubate and scale domestic alternatives earlier, we inadvertently ceded a portion of the Group 1 UAV market to foreign influence,” Rothzeid said, referring to drones on the small end of the spectrum.

Tucked into the new EO is a line that directs the department and military leadership to identify programs that hold potential to be “more cost efficient or lethal” if replaced by drones — and to submit a report to the president on their findings within 90 days of its publication.

“This is included as almost a throwaway because DOD has been doing that during its budget and strategy review,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told DefenseScoop.

He pointed to the Army terminating its Apache attack helicopter replacement program, noting that determination was “likely driven by a desire to use drones.”

“Other examples are the large increase in funding for the [Air Force’s] collaborative combat aircraft — a drone that would accompany manned aircraft — and endorsement of the Replicator program, which seeks to develop drone swarms and was started by the Biden administration,” Cancian said.

In Kahn’s view, that specific provision regarding recommendations on drones to replace legacy weapons “risks becoming a box-ticking exercise if services nominate programs they were already planning to retire.”

“However, if taken seriously and used to spur some of the efforts already underway in the department to accelerate the adoption of cheaper, attritable, drones and other precise mass capabilities, it could help rebalance a force still over-invested in costly, vulnerable legacy systems,” she said.

“As Ukraine and Israel have shown in recent days with Operations Spider’s Web and Rising Lion, low-cost UAS can impose asymmetric costs and scale far faster than exquisite platforms — making them strong candidates to replace select ISR, strike, or base defense assets. Still, systems shouldn’t be replaced just for the sake of it; the goal is a high-low mix where attritable drones complement, not supplant, more advanced capabilities,” Kahn told DefenseScoop.

Despite being titled “Delivering Drones to Our Warfighters,” Section 9 of the order spotlights elements that she considers more associated with airspace issues and training — and “less about breaking down challenges the department faces when it comes to acquiring, sustaining, and rapidly scaling UAS, and other emerging capabilities.”

Khan further noted that the EO “entirely overlooks” unmanned surface vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles, and other autonomous and remotely crewed systems.

Meanwhile, “a welcome provision is the push to allow all platforms on the Blue UAS list to operate on military installations without requiring policy exceptions,” she told DefenseScoop.

Managed by DIU, Blue UAS is a Pentagon program that is designed to help the department rapidly pinpoint and approve secure commercial drones for government use.

“That’s the kind of specific change that can have outsized operational impact by enabling more rapid experimentation and deployment. However, it largely emphasizes access to airspace — an essential and persistent issue, particularly when it comes to deconflicting some of the challenges of airspace above military installations that the DOD itself faces,” Khan said, adding that the directive “largely targets known, second-order problems rather than the deeper, more significant structural barriers the DOD faces when adopting UAS at scale.”

Tom Adams, director of public safety at DroneShield, also said the EO marks a step in the right direction, but suggested more needs to be done.

“[There] were some noticeable gaps in the language related to the authorities for public safety, and critical infrastructure, for example, that I believe is meant to be addressed with more formal legislation,” he said. “I’m looking forward to seeing how Congress tackles this issue that is so crucial to the security of the homeland.”

Rothzeid also spotlighted the directive’s Blue UAS provision in his discussion with DefenseScoop. To him, it’s “critical” for DOD to expand that list and update it with newly approved industry-made capabilities more frequently. 

“There are new players with innovative UAS platforms popping up in the space all the time — and while it’s important to make sure UAS platforms are secure and compliant — being more flexible to let new vendors in will accelerate the pace of innovation by widening the number of platforms DOD can procure rapidly,” he said.

Rothzeid offered several other suggestions, beyond what was covered in Trump’s order, that could help the military more rapidly field combat-ready drone systems. 

He recommended DOD improve companies’ access to testing ranges, particularly for drones that are built or modified to withstand interference from electromagnetic sources for emergency response or other purposes.

“Startups consistently face delays and red tape when trying to test their systems in realistic electromagnetic environments. This is a critical gap, especially considering that several U.S. platforms sent to Ukraine failed due to inadequate battlefield resilience,” Rothzeid said.

He additionally urged the Trump administration to ensure that the demand signal from the new EO is supported by budget allocations in the near term to enable its implementation. 

“Ultimately, policy without procurement falls flat. If this EO is to deliver on its promise, DOD will need to match it with funding, contracting pathways, and accountability to ensure real dollars flow to companies building these next-generation systems,” Rothzeid told DefenseScoop.

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Details on the decision are sparse in the documents, but officials wrote that the Chief Digital and AI Office’s CTO “no longer exists or manages resources.” 

President Donald Trump directed federal agencies at the start of his second term to drastically reduce their workforces and assess existing contracts, with aims to ultimately cut back on what his team views as wasteful spending and inefficiencies. The efforts have included initiatives overseen by Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, teams.

While AI is a major priority for the U.S. government under Trump, since then, the Pentagon’s CDAO has seen an exodus of senior leaders and other technical employees.

“As part of broader DOD efficiency efforts, CDAO realized organization efficiencies in FY26, including eliminating the CTO directorate,” a CDAO official told DefenseScoop on Wednesday. “This move has minimal mission impact as CDAO has a strong technical workforce embedded within each of its directorates.”

Budget materials show that the directorate was allocated more than $340 million in fiscal 2024.

The CDAO official declined to share more information regarding how the CTO’s employees, responsibilities and investments were dispersed following the elimination.

Shortly after standing up the CDAO in June 2022, Defense Department leadership hired nearly a dozen senior leaders to serve in its top positions — including Bill Streilein as inaugural CTO. Streilein had previously served as a longtime leader at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and is now back at the lab working as a member of its principal staff.

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“I also have learned that within the executive branch there are very limiting rules of engagement on what Cyber Command can do in response,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said during a June 12 House Armed Services Committee hearing.

Bacon serves as the chair of the panel’s subcommittee that oversees Department of Defense cyber operations, forces and policies, giving him unique insights into this matter.

“I’m the chairman of the committee and I’ve talked to multiple layers, they are restricted based off the rules of engagement. Maybe they’re appropriate. I just hope we relook at them because if China can attack our energy grid, our Wall Street grid, our hospitals, I think we should be reviewing, okay, is our responses adequate? I just want to submit that for you to think about and consider,” he told the committee’s witnesses that day, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine.

He implored them to review the current rules of engagement and consider if they need to be revamped.

In a statement, he later emphasized that while Russia and China are infiltrating systems, rules of engagement are hindering U.S. Cyber Command from responding properly, urging a more aggressive posture.

“China has surpassed Russia as our biggest cyber threat. With malicious intent, they’re attempting to – and largely succeeding in – infiltrating everything from our energy grid and cell phones to our financial institutions, and health care networks. While we have good cyber intelligence, China is no longer deterred in the cyber domain, and I believe our own rules of engagement are holding us back,” Bacon said. “We need to start imposing heavy costs on these cyber actors, including nation states like China and Russia, to establish better cyber deterrence. In some cases, this could mean allowing Cyber Command to fight fire with fire, in other cases this might mean applying targeted non-cyber response like significant economic or diplomatic sanctions or perhaps covert action. Regardless of how we do it, I think everyone can agree that the status quo (of continued cyber attacks) is not acceptable or sustainable: some level of cyber deterrence has to be established.”

When asked if DOD is reviewing its rules of engagement for cyberspace, a department spokesperson on Friday said they had nothing to announce.

For many years, restrictive rules of engagement and improper analogies handicapped the military’s ability to conduct cyber operations. It used to be that U.S. military offensive cyber actions were considered on par with nuclear weapons in terms of requiring presidential sign-off for employment, for fear that effects could lead to escalation and possibly unintended consequences.

The nuclear analogy proved to be a flawed model for cyber, as history has borne out. In 2018, a series of congressional and executive actions cleared the way for smoother cyber operations approval. Those included a clarification that cyber action is a “traditional military activity,” removing interagency barriers that might have previously required an exemption to the covert action statue, effectively allowing Cybercom to operate more freely. Congress also included what essentially boiled down to an authorization to use force in cyberspace against Russia, China, North Korea or Iran to “disrupt, defeat, and deter … active, systematic, and ongoing campaign of attacks against the Government or people of the United States.”

On the executive branch side, the first Trump administration repealed the Obama administration era policy for approvals, issuing what was known as Nation Security Presidential Memorandum-13, which delegated authorities to the secretary of defense to conduct timely cyber operations. The still classified policy also included components to deconflict cyberspace with other government agencies to avoid fratricide among different organizations and equities.

“In line with the shift to a more proactive cyber strategy … NSPM-13 enables faster, more agile decision-making better adapted to the strategic threat. It does so not only by allowing delegations of authority, but by reinforcing those delegations with a coordination and approval process run by the delegee, not the NSC,” Gary Corn, director of the Technology, Law and Security Program and an adjunct professor of cyber and national security law at American University and former Staff Judge Advocate at Cybercom, wrote in a paper in 2021.

Prior to 2018, the military conducted very few cyber operations. Some experts that spoke to DefenseScoop noted that the primary restriction and limitation to engage in offensive cyber action was the lack of clear authorities, but after 2018 it was the lack of a sufficient man, train and equip function to present Cybercom with enough trained, capable personnel to carry out the mission.

The second Trump administration’s pick for assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy noted last month in her confirmation hearing that it’s likely time to begin reassessing some of these authorities from 2018.

“The cyber domain is continuing to evolve and the one constant that I’ve seen in being involved in this domain for over two decades is that the rate of change is exponential. My top priority if confirmed in this role will be to address this change with speed and agility in the department,” Katie Sutton told the Senate Armed Services Committee in May. “As you’re well aware, in 2018 there was a series of activities that enabled the offensive posture that the department is undergoing today; both establishment by President Trump of NSPM-13, the process to do cyber operations, as well as this committee’s definition of traditional military authorities for cyber. I believe we’re at a point where we need to reevaluate those and make sure that we’re postured to be able to respond to the increasing speed of cyber attacks and that we are able to address the incoming impacts of AI.”

Sutton served as a staff member on the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and most recently chief technology advisor to the commander and director of Pentagon operations at Cybercom, giving her relevant insights into cyber operations.

Despite some criticism regarding the current rules of engagement, officials have indicated new rules have significantly increased the ability to conduct cyber operations.

“NSPM-13 is a repeatable, sustainable, agile process that is recognized across the Department of Defense and across the interagency that allows us to move at the speed and agility that’s required based on our intelligence, based on operational requirements, and it has increased our ability to execute cyber operations tenfold,” Lt. Gen. William Hartman, acting commander of Cybercom, told a Senate subcommittee during an April hearing.

Sources that spoke to DefenseScoop noted that after the first Trump administration gave new authorities, the Biden administration came into office with some folks that worked in the Obama White House, and there was still resistance to some actions in cyberspace — which led to efforts to walk back what the Trump team had put in place.

As President Donald Trump was coming back into power for his second term, officials associated with the transition and administration vowed a top priority would be a more aggressive posture in cyberspace to respond to a bevy of activity against the U.S., namely from China.

According to some, while there are standing rules of engagement for combatant commands to respond with force if necessary, cyber is a bit different given the risk profile and some policymakers’ lack of understanding about the digital realm.

As such, over time, certain presidential polices have limited that pre-authorization to use offensive measured except under certain defined circumstances, according to sources.

Legal experts agreed that the president has authority to act as commander-in-chief and respond to activities in America’s self defense. However, for some, response in cyber is a little more opaque.

“There’s been longstanding policy that, consistent with international law, if somebody starts shooting at us, we can shoot back. That is murkier in cyber because of a number of factors, part of which is less than clear lines in international law about what the thresholds are and what types of cyber activities cross those thresholds, and also concerns about escalation dynamics and risks,” Corn said in an interview. “We’ve gotten better at the risk side of it as compared to 10 years ago when there were lots of senior officials who were talking about any out-of-network cyber operations in terms of nuclear conflict.”

Speeding up decision space

One way in which operations under the current framework could be slowed down is if activity needs to be coordinated across the interagency at a time when most civilian government employees are offline and away from their desks.

Cybercom operates 24/7, monitoring threats across the globe and planning for operations. If something were to happen in the middle of the night or on a weekend and the command wants to coordinate with the interagency on the target set to be a good partner, the command could be in a situation where the options are to either violate the framework to complete the mission or delay until personnel are back at work, a former military cyber official explained.

This type of setup can also affect the command’s ability to campaign in cyberspace, that is, looking at sustained and persistent activity to set conditions rather than just conduct one-off operations. The current framework has allowed for those types of one-off engagements, but can hinder ongoing campaigning efforts that require persistence, the former official noted.

Going faster might not necessarily be about changing the framework itself as much as evaluating coordination across the interagency at a faster pace.

“[A]n effective decision-making process should be designed to aid the designated decision-maker in rendering a decision. A process that allows participants to effectively usurp decision authority without the attendant accountability is a design flaw, not a feature,” Corn wrote in 2021. “Imposing process for process’ sake is a fool’s errand, unless the objective is to drive interminable debate and bureaucratic inertia. Process is a means to an end, not an end in itself, and so it should always be designed to fulfill an objective. In the case of national security decision-making, the objective is to achieve the most well-informed decision possible under a given set of circumstances, including acceptable risk parameters and time available. The increasingly complex, fastmoving, and dynamic nature of modern national security threats requires disciplined decentralization of action consistent with centralized intent.”

Also at play now and especially into the future is the speed at which adversaries will likely execute operations employing AI and machine learning capabilities.

Experts referred to the notion of machine-on-machine competition in the future, necessitating the requirement to operate at high speed and be effective in defense and offense. The question for policymakers is if the current policy framework meets those challenges.

As such, some experts noted the need to relook cyber authorities on a more frequent basis than other areas of military operations given the dynamic environment and shifts in tactics.

“Cyber is definitely an area where authorities need to be looked at more frequently than the kinetic space. Obviously, not the idea of layering on more statutory or executive level guidance, but for tightening the OODA [observe, orient, decide and act] loop and coming up with ways to provide the higher level transparency and control that has to be there without sacrificing too much operational capability,” Tom Wingfield, a senior international and defense researcher in RAND’s Department of Defense and Political Sciences who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy from 2019 to 2021, said in an interview. “Part of that would need to be looking at the role AI can play in providing that transparency and tightening the OODA loop. There’s a lot of opportunity there to know what we’re talking about and to build in limitations so that we don’t have clunky 20th century techniques for reporting and waiting for permission.”

Corn noted that there’s a need to constantly assess if authorities and policies are fit for purpose given the risk environment, but acknowledged that lawmakers helped clarify some things a few years ago.

“What Congress did in the end of 2018 was more about clearing some hurdles that were perceived to exist in law from a domestic law perspective, like lifting a potential interagency objection to something that would constitute covert action versus a traditional military activity,” he said.

Ultimately, the more operations cyber forces conduct, the more comfortable national level leadership will be, similar to many of the other domains of warfare.

“The three main problems that really drive most of the oversight [in cyber] are first, the ability to know what needs to be hit. The second is having a weapon or an access that’s able to hit it. And the third is the ability to limit the knock-on effects of that attack to just the immediate area of the attack,” Wingfield said. “Each of those three things is a capability that, as it gets sharpened, would require less oversight and fewer packing peanuts around an operation. So as you do those three specific things better, then you can move much more quickly, much more like the kinetic areas of warfare.”

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The event marked the first-ever operational employment of the weapon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmed Sunday during a press briefing at the Pentagon.

The 30,000-pound GBU-57 bomb, also known as the MOP, is designed to be capable of attacking underground targets. It can reportedly hit locations hundreds of feet below ground level.

“MOP is a large, GPS-guided, penetrating weapon with the ability to attack deeply-buried and hardened bunkers and tunnels. The warhead case is made from a special high‑performance steel alloy and its design allows for a large explosive payload while maintaining the integrity of the penetrator case during impact,” according to an Air Force description of the system.

Due to the bomb’s size and design, it can only be carried by the B-2 bomber. Each B-2 can carry two GBU-57s.

Early testing of the MOP began about 20 years ago under a technology demonstration effort led by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency before the technology was transitioned to an Air Force “quick reaction capability program,” according to a service fact sheet. Boeing was contracted in 2009 for MOP-aircraft integration efforts. In 2017, the MOP transitioned to an Air Force program of record, according to a report by the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation.

Notably, in fiscal 2024, the Air Force conducted two full-scale tests to “verify fixes to a B-2 integration issue,” according to a DOT&E annual report.

The Air Force has been pursuing a MOP modification program to integrate a “smart fuze” capability into the weapon. The so-called Large Penetrator Smart Fuze is intended to provide “increased probability of kill” against hard and deeply buried targets “by mitigating the risk of target intelligence uncertainty,” according to the DOT&E report. Defense officials on Sunday did not say whether the MOPs used in Midnight Hammer were equipped with the smart fuze capability.

Seven B-2s and a variety of other assets were involved in Midnight Hammer, which included U.S. attacks on Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan in Iran, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at Sunday’s press briefing.

Hegseth said the aim of the mission, which was ordered by President Donald Trump, was to “destroy or severely degrade” Iran’s nuclear program. Western officials were concerned that the Iranian regime could use the country’s nuclear materials and know-how to build weapons of mass destruction.

“At approximately 6:40 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, 2:10 a.m. Iran time, the lead B-2 dropped two GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator weapons on the first of several aim points at Fordow,” Caine said. “The remaining bombers then hit their targets as well, with a total of 14 MOPs dropped against two nuclear target areas. All three Iranian nuclear infrastructure targets were struck between 6:40 p.m. and 7:05 p.m. Eastern time … with the Tomahawk missiles [launched from a submarine] being the last to strike at Esfahan to ensure we retain the element of surprise throughout the operation. Following weapons release, the Midnight Hammer strike package exited Iranian airspace, and the package began its return home.”

Fighter jets went in ahead of the bombers to guard against enemy fighter aircraft and surface-to-air missiles. The Defense Department is unaware of any shots being fired at the U.S. military aircraft on their way in or out of Iran, Caine noted.

About 75 precision guided weapons were employed during the operation, including the 14 MOPs, according to Caine.

Dozens of air refueling tankers were also involved in the mission, he noted, as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, and hundreds of maintenance and operational personnel.

On Sunday evening, Trump posted on Truth Social that the B-2 pilots who took part in Midnight Hammer had safely returned to their base in Missouri. The mission from Whiteman Air Force Base to Iran and back lasted about 36 hours, with the help of aerial refueling, according to U.S. Strategic Command.

Senior U.S. officials touted the operation as a success.

“The damage to the Nuclear sites in Iran is said to be ‘monumental.’ The hits were hard and accurate. Great skill was shown by our military,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Hegseth described the mission as an “incredible and overwhelming success.”

Caine noted that a final battle damage assessment will take “some time” to complete. However, initial battle damage assessments “indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” he told reporters.

Officials in the Trump administration over the weekend said they now hope to have a negotiated settlement to the conflict. They were waiting to see how Iran would respond.

On Monday, Iran launched missile attacks at a U.S. military base in Qatar.

“I can confirm that al Udeid Air Base was attacked by short-range and medium-range ballistic missiles originating from Iran today. At this time, there are no reports of U.S. casualties. We are monitoring this situation closely and will provide more information as it becomes available,” a U.S. defense official said in a statement.

Updated on June 23, 2025, at 2 PM: This story was updated to include comment from a U.S. defense official about an Iranian missile attack on al Udeid Air Base on Monday.

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The role is currently held by Navy Adm. Christopher Grady, who is nearing the end of his scheduled term in that position.

Trump submitted Mahoney’s nomination for the role to the Senate on June 17, and it’s been referred to the Armed Services Committee for consideration, according to a notice posted on Congress.gov.

The vice chairman of the JCS plays a key role in the Defense Department as chair of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council and a senior adviser on technology-related initiatives.

Mahoney is currently serving as assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, a role he’s held since November 2023. For several months, he also performed the duties of commandant while Gen. Eric Smith was recovering from a cardiac arrest episode and open-heart surgery. The Marine Corps commandant is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He previously served as deputy commander of U.S. Marine Forces Pacific; director of strategy and Plans at HQMC; deputy commander of U.S. Forces, Japan; commanding general of 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing; and deputy commandant for programs and resources, HQMC, among other assignments.

Mahoney, a TOPGUN graduate, rose through the ranks of the Corps’ aviation community and has over 5,000 hours of flight time in the A-6, F-5, F-18 and F-35. He’s held command at the squadron, group and wing levels, and is also a qualified forward air controller and parachutist, according to his official bio.

He has noted the importance of the U.S. military improving its networking capabilities and focusing on software-driven technologies.

“There are more networks out there than probably a Cray computer can count. There needs to be unification of a network concept. And there needs to be a change in the way we think about hardware so that … it’s the software that drives the hardware, not the hardware that drives the software,” Mahoney said last year at a Hudson Institute event.

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In February, Trump fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti as CNO and the administration has been looking for a permanent replacement. Adm. James Kilby has been serving as acting CNO since Franchetti was removed.

On June 17, the commander-in-chief submitted Caudle’s nomination for the role to the Senate and it was referred to the Armed Services Committee for consideration, according to a notice posted on Congress.gov.

Caudle is currently serving as commander of Fleet Forces Command, Naval Forces Northern Command and Naval Forces Strategic Command.

The admiral comes from the Navy’s submarine community. He previously served as commander of Submarine Forces, Submarine Force Atlantic, Allied Submarine Command and Submarine Forces, Pacific Fleet. He was also commanding officer of the USS Jefferson City (SSN 759), USS Topeka (SSN 754) and USS Helena (SSN 725), and commanded Submarine Squadron 3, among other assignments.

At the Pentagon, he served on the Joint Staff as vice director for strategy, plans, and policy, J-5, and assistant deputy director for information and cyberspace policy, J-5, according to his Navy bio.

If confirmed as CNO, Caudle would be in a position to shape the fate of high-tech initiatives such as Project 33, which aims to accelerate the fielding of robotic platforms and AI enablers to deter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific.

“The right way, in my opinion, to think about robotic autonomous systems, uncrewed, unmanned systems, is how we package them to solve our problems and where they are best-suited,” Caudle said in January at the annual Surface Navy Association symposium. “They can be best-suited where the acceptable level of risk of loss of life is too high, the depth of water too shallow, the air domain too complicated, [or] the mission is just not worth a manned combatant.”

He added: “We are still nascent in figuring out those … robotic autonomous system force packages … The way we fight in the Navy is through units of force that are packaged to make them lethal packages, OK. We build together a composite system knowing the how we’re going to be countered and knowing what we need to actually win against that hypothetical scenario. That’s the work that’s ongoing right now is how we build out those force packages.”

He’s also advocated for accelerating the fielding of new weapons to shoot down one-way attack drones instead of expending expensive munitions for that task.

At the SNA symposium, Caudle said the Navy should be “embarrassed” that it hasn’t fielded directed energy systems, such as high-energy lasers, faster.

During a meeting with reporters in March, Caudle laid out some military use cases for artificial intelligence.

“I kind of put these into kind of three-plus-three bins of capability of exploiting AI. In the first part … think about the ability for a sensor to see a thing and actually, you know, understand what that thing is. The second one is enhanced data search, sort and processing in a large-scale way against where no analyst can look at that amount of data … And then the last one that’s becoming more is the generative AI piece. So having AI do things for me in which I would have to spend time doing but I can have the artificial intelligence kind of go after that,” he said, according to a video posted by TV news station WTKR.

AI capabilities could aid personnel readiness, materiel readiness and warfighting readiness, including decision-making, he noted.

The technology could even have a role in the U.S. military’s nuclear deterrence mission, Caudle said, including by presenting “optimizing response options.”

“We have, you know, [ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles] that are alert, we’ve got ballistic missile submarines that are alert, and we have the capability to generate and place bombers on alert. Like any warfare area, there are targets and there are weapons that have to be matched to those targets, and even in the nuclear parlance, that’s true. U.S. Strategic Command is responsible for making those options to the president. So that optimization of our current number of missiles, the warhead on board, the destructive capability, the actual placement, the height in which detonation occurs — all of that complexity for a given optimized response option to the president can be enhanced by artificial intelligence. The speed in which I need to generate an order to a firing unit could be a generative AI process. Once I make a decision, then I turn on a machine and that order with high degree of accuracy is given to a potential firing unit. So AI has a role there,” Caudle said.

However, decisions about whether to launch a nuclear attack aren’t expected to be left to AI systems, he noted.

“There is no desire for that. This is a human decision. At the end, when you’re using strategic-level weapons, the president is owed a fulsome discussion between his most subject matter expert combatant commanders and their teams to advise him on the use of nuclear weapons because of their size, scale and scope and destruction capability. So this is going to be a human decision. This is not going to be any type of automated decision using an algorithm. But can that decision be enhanced by AI technologies? Certainly,” he said.

Caudle’s nomination to be the next CNO must be confirmed by the Senate.

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