The U.S. Army has rolled out an online drone store for soldiers, effectively cutting out the Pentagon’s behemoth acquisition bureaucracy from being a middleman that slows down the delivery of new tech to soldiers. Alex Miller, the Army’s chief technology officer, says the “UAS Marketplace” is also open to the wider military, federal agencies and some international allies, after the U.S. Army worked on the program with Amazon Web Services.

Mr. Miller told reporters this week the marketplace would have “roughly 100 products across the airborne and counterdrone segments.” The Army isn’t planning to field any UAS-specific units and has shuttered what had been an experimental drone battalion out of the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

Those soldiers have gone back to their traditional airborne infantry roles after over six months focused mostly on drone warfare. Mr. Miller said their purpose was to “learn some of those lessons and then pass them out to the rest of the Army.”

A task force of U.S. Air Force B-52 bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons landed at Royal Australian Air Force Base Tindal last week, a first for the U.S. military treaty ally.

“These missions demonstrate seamless interoperability with our partners and bolster regional security across the region,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Air Force said. “To preserve operational security, we will not discuss specific details regarding future operations.”

Australian leadership has said it plans to host a larger U.S. military presence there. The B-52s landed at a base in northern Australia roughly 2,200 miles from the South China Sea. Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said after a meeting in Washington that the growing U.S. footprint is “important in terms of providing deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, providing for stability and peace in the Indo-Pacific.”

Mr. Trump said Wednesday he believes the Iran war will end after the midterm elections in November. The new timeline from the president comes amid U.S. escalation in the region and economic pressure against Tehran.

U.S. and Israeli military forces began the war on Iran in late February, promising to eliminate Tehran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon by attacking the regime’s enrichment infrastructure and destroying its conventional weapons. What was originally promised to be a conflict that would last only weeks is now in its seventh month.

The U.S. military on Tuesday struck five oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz in response to Iranian attacks on ships. The U.S. strikes are part of the joint military and economic pressure campaign aimed at crushing the Iranian regime or forcing a negotiated settlement of the war.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the 9/11 Commission recommended stricter identity verification measures. But the consensus around securing IDs is fraying 25 years after the attacks. Stalled progress on screening people as they enter and exit the U.S., backsliding on breaking down walls among intelligence agencies and confusion about identifying terrorists are all risks analysts see across the security infrastructure.

The 9/11 Commission’s final report said terrorists’ ability to travel and enter the U.S. was as important to their schemes as their access to weapons or money. If the immigration system had set a higher bar for verifying a migrant’s identity and purpose, the commission concluded, “several” of the airplane hijackers might have been blocked.

“We put the line in the sand that states needed to establish minimal information prior to the issuance of an ID is even more critical now than it was then,” says Janice Kephart, who served as counsel on the commission and was a key architect of its reports. Washington Times Reporter Stephen Dinan examines the situation in an in-depth report marking the anniversary of the horrific attacks. He writes that states, for their part, continue to issue insufficiently vetted IDs.

As the Trump administration warns major U.S. manufacturers not to purchase microchips from China, Gen. Steve Cheney, president emeritus of the American Security Project, writes in an op-ed for The Times that “there may not be enough” non-Chinese chips to buy.

“The United States has spent years talking about semiconductor resilience,” writes Gen. Cheney, a retired Marine Corps brigadier general. “However, to tackle the short- and medium-term memory chip supply crunch that is sending companies into the arms of an economically insatiable China, we should stop thinking about this as an American manufacturing problem alone.

“Recently, our military has discovered that it is severely constrained by the availability of munitions and production capacity. The Pentagon is rapidly attempting to address this issue,” he writes. “Semiconductors deserve the same treatment, so we never have to choose between national security and economic reality.”

• Sept. 10 — 38 North: Engaging North Korea on the Ground, with Jerome Sauvage, Stimson Center

• Sept. 11 — The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks at 25: Assessing the Legacy, Addressing the Future, Brookings Institution

• Sept. 14-16 — AFA National Convention, Air & Space Forces Association

• Sept. 16 — The Transatlantic Watchtower: Iceland’s Role in Great Power Competition, Hudson Institute

• Sept. 17 — A Conversation with Undersecretary of State Jacob Helberg on Securing America’s AI Supply Chain, American Enterprise Institute

• Sept. 22-23 — Nuclear Energy Policy Summit 2026, Atlantic Council

• Sept. 24 — 2026 Intel Summit, Potomac Officers Club

• Oct. 12-14 — AUSA Annual Meeting & Expo, Association of the U.S. Army