Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer ripped Sen. Tommy Tuberville, Alabama Republican, for holding up hundreds of military promotions over the Pentagon's end-run around regulations that prohibit the Defense Department from providing abortions except in cases of rape, incest or saving the woman's life.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sought Friday to tamp down any discord between the U.S. and its allies over the massive U.S. leak of classified documents, as he met with defense leaders from around the globe to coordinate additional military aid to Ukraine.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told lawmakers that he has "no regrets" about how the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan was carried out, despite the quick toppling of the U.S.-backed government and the August 2021 suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport that killed 13 U.S. troops and at least 170 Afghan civilians.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is on Capitol Hill to press Congress to approve the Biden administration's fiscal 2024 request for the Pentagon, which he calls a "strategy-driven budget" focusing on the country's strategic competition with the People's Republic of China.
The U.S. and Russian militaries scrambled Wednesday to locate the wreckage of the American MQ-9 Reaper drone that crashed into the Black Sea after being hit by a tailing Russian fighter jet a day earlier, with the Pentagon's top military officer suggesting that the U.S. may ask regional allies to help retrieve the unmanned, high-tech craft from an increasingly dangerous, disputed body of water.