army

RALEIGH, N.C. — A U.S. special forces soldier who took part in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro will be released on bond on charges accusing him of using classified information about the operation to win more than $400,000 in an online prediction market, a federal magistrate said Friday.

The magistrate in North Carolina said he would allow Gannon Ken Van Dyke to be released and told him to report to a New York federal courthouse by Tuesday to continue his case there.

Bearded with arm tattoos, Van Dyke said little during the nearly hourlong hearing, during which he was appointed a federal public defender who declined to comment afterward. The $250,000 unsecured bond did not require Van Dyke to put up any money.

Federal prosecutors say Van Dyke used his access to classified information about the operation to capture Maduro in January to win money on the prediction market site Polymarket.

The sites allow people to trade on almost anything — from the Super Bowl to U.S. elections and even the winners of the TV reality shows.

Van Dyke, who is stationed at Fort Bragg near Fayetteville, N.C., was charged Thursday with the unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud and making an unlawful monetary transaction.

He could face up to 10 years on four of the criminal counts, and up to 20 years on a fifth, the government said Friday. A publicly listed phone number listed for Van Dyke isn’t in service.

Van Dyke, 38, was involved for about a month in the planning and execution of capturing Maduro, according to the New York federal prosecutor’s office. He signed nondisclosure agreements promising to not divulge “any classified or sensitive information” related to the operations, but prosecutors say he used what he knew to make a series of bets related to Maduro being out of power by Jan. 31.

“This involved a U.S. soldier who allegedly took advantage of his position to profit off of a righteous military operation,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a social media post.

Polymarket, one of the largest prediction markets, said it found someone trading on classified government information, alerted the Justice Department and “cooperated with their investigation.”

Massive profits from well-timed bets aroused public attention days after the raid in Venezuela and brought bipartisan calls for stricter regulation of the markets.

The sudden rise of these markets has led to growing scrutiny by Congress and state governments. Some lawmakers alarmed by highly specific, well-timed trades on the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran and wagers on President Trump’s next moves have pushed for guardrails against insider trading.

The Trump administration has been supportive of the industry’s expansion. The president’s eldest son is an advisor for both Polymarket and its main competitor, Kalshi,, and is a Polymarket investor. Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, is launching its own prediction market called Truth Predict.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates prediction markets, announced Thursday that it had filed a parallel complaint against Van Dyke.

That complaint alleges that Van Dyke moved $35,000 from his personal bank account into a cryptocurrency exchange account on Dec. 26 — a little over a week before U.S. forces flew into Caracas and seized Maduro.

Van Dyke made a series of bets on when Maduro might be removed from power, according to the complaint. He placed those bets between Dec. 30 and Jan. 2, with the vast majority occurring the night of Jan. 2 — just hours before the first missiles struck Caracas.

The bets resulted in “more than $404,000 of profits,” the complaint says.

“The defendant was entrusted with confidential information about U.S. operations and yet took action that endangered U.S. national security and put the lives of American service members in harm’s way,” said Michael Selig, the commission’s chairman.

Robertson writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Allen G. Breed in Raleigh and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon announced Wednesday that the Navy’s top civilian official, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, is leaving his job.

In a statement posted to social media, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Phelan was “departing the administration, effective immediately.”

Navy Undersecretary Hung Cao will become acting secretary of the Navy, Parnell said.

The sudden departure comes just a day after Phelan addressed a large crowd of sailors and industry professionals at the Navy’s annual conference in Washington, and spoke with reporters about his agenda.

Phelan’s departure also comes just weeks after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the Army’s top officer, Gen. Randy George, as well as two other top generals in the Army.

Phelan had not served in the military or had a civilian leadership role in the service before President Trump nominated him for secretary in late 2024.

Phelan was a major donor to Trump’s campaign and founded the private investment firm Rugger Management LLC. According to his biography, Phelan’s primary exposure to the military came from an advisory position he held on the Spirit of America, a nonprofit that supported the defense of Ukraine and the defense of Taiwan.

Toropin and Finley write for the Associated Press.

TWZ got a personal tour of a U.S. Army UH-60M Black Hawk utility helicopter by its pilot during the Dubai Air Show in November 2025. Sikorsky has built more than 5,000 examples of the Hawk family of helicopters for 36 nations worldwide. Together they’ve racked up more than 15 million flight hours, including five million in combat.

The UH-60M Black Hawk has a maximum gross weight of 22,000 pounds (9,979 kg) and can transport 12 fully-equipped troops (seated). The variant has also been missionized for various roles, including for U.S. special forces as the MH-60M.

Whether used by the National Guard to respond to disasters, delivering humanitarian aid across Europe, supporting relief operations in the Philippines, battling wildfires in the Firehawk version, or hoisting stranded hikers, the Black Hawk is a truly versatile multi-mission helicopter.

Sikorsky’s Black Hawk modernization efforts will enable more power, greater payload and extended range while reducing fuel consumption. 

Furthermore, with a digital Modular Open-System Approach and autonomy for unmanned operations in its new U-Hawk variant, the Black Hawk will be able to support fast capability integration and enhanced survivability through uncrewed battlefield operations.

Check out the full walk-around video below:

U.S. Army UH-60M Black Hawk Tour And Mission Brief With Its Pilots

Contact the editor: Tyler@twz.com

Army officials have shared new details about plans to launch extremely long-range drones from the service’s forthcoming ME-11B High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) surveillance and reconnaissance planes. With ranges of around 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) or more, the uncrewed aerial systems will help keep the Bombardier Global 6500 bizjet-based ME-11Bs as far away from enemy air defenses as possible. In this way, the Army expects to gain a penetrating aerial intelligence-gathering capability without the need for a very stealthy or otherwise highly exquisite and costly aircraft.

“There will be nothing in the world that we can’t touch with a combined range of HADES and what we can launch off of this thing,” Andrew Evans, Director of Strategy and Transformation with the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army, or G-2, told TWZ and other outlets today. “I don’t think anybody’s safe in the future from a sensing perspective.”

Evans comments came at a roundtable with several Army officials about HADES on the sidelines of the Army Aviation Association of America’s (AAAA) 2026 Warfighting Summit.

To take a step back quickly, the Army selected the Bombardier Global 6500-based bid from the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) as the winner of the HADES competition in 2024. Flight testing of the first ME-11B prototype is now slated to kick off this summer. The service is expecting to take formal delivery of that aircraft from SNC before the end of the year. Two other prototypes are currently in various stages of conversion.

Each HADES aircraft will have a built-in suite of sensors, as well as a robust array of communications systems to pass the data it collects along to other nodes in near-real-time. The Army says it is following an incremental approach to integrating systems with the initial trio of prototypes. The service is also using a modular open-systems approach to make it easier to add new and improved capabilities down the line.

Details about what sensors the baseline HADES configuration will have are limited, but we do know it will include a version of the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System-2B (ASARS-2B), something TWZ was first to report back in 2024. ASARS-2B was originally developed for the U.S. Air Force’s U-2 Dragon Lady spy planes, and it features synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and ground moving target indicator (GMTI) modes, as you can read more about here.

For more than a year now, the Army has also been talking about launching very long-range so-called “launched effects” from the HADES aircraft. This term is a catch-all used to describe drones configured designed to perform a wide variety of missions that can be deployed from aircraft (fixed wing and rotary; crewed and uncrewed) in flight, as well as platforms on the ground or at sea. The process of converting Global 6500s into ME-11Bs includes integrating four underwing pylons, which the aircraft will be able to use to launch drones and carry podded sensor systems.

At the roundtable today, Evans, the Director of Strategy and Transformation, offered a detailed explanation of how the Army arrived at this plan and what it expects to gain from the blend of capabilities in response to a question from our Jamie Hunter.

“So, someone’s going to eventually ask about survivability. It’s going to tie it all together in here,” Evan said. “We did the research. I’ll save you time on doing the research.”

“In 70 or 80 years, there would be 0.1% of the time when you wouldn’t be able to fly ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions] because you would be afraid of the threat, potentially, or the threat would be too high to fly,” he added. “That means that 99.9% of the time of a life of the system, it is a useful system for deterrence, for building pattern of life, target development, and so on and so forth. So we’re building a system that can be used for 99.9% of the useful life of the system.”

“So we’re, I think, wise in the approach, saying, all right, if there’s still that 0.1% of the time where you need to be resilient enough to survive in a situation, how do you do that? Well, how do you combine the best of both? Because there’s no one perfect solution, right?” he continued. “What’s really, really good for conflict is not very good for the 99% of the time you need it for campaigning [routine operations], and vice versa. So what we’ve determined strategically is that there’s a way to combine both of these things.”

This is where Evans says the air-launched drone capability comes in.

“We can have a useful asset for campaigning 99.9% of the time, but we can pair with it launch effects [for] when we aren’t going to put that capital system in harm’s way,” he said. “We’ve already engineered hard points into HADES to be able to receive these launch effects in the future. So once we mature the capabilities and determine which way forward we want – what type of launch effects, what type of performance we need out of these things – and we marry those two things up, now we have the best of both. We have something that’s supremely capable in campaigning and probably the best joint asset in the world at being able to do penetrative launch effects. And now you have a bit of a utopia.”

Furthermore, “we believe that in the role of HADES, there’s also an opportunity to be a bit of a quarterback of an ecosystem of sorts. So you can imagine how that might look,” Evans also noted. “That isn’t going to quarterback everybody’s assets, but the ones that have the most strategic importance and match that type of mission profile. There’s certainly a space for it to do that.”

In terms of the range of drones launched from HADES, the Army has put forward the 620-mile (1,000-kilometer) figure in the past. Speaking today, Evans alluded to even greater potential reach.

There are questions about the scale and scope of coverage that a single ME-11B will be able to achieve using “launched effects” type drones designed to be lower cost, and that will likely have a limited sensor payload. The concepts of operations the Army is putting forward for HADES point to a need for expendable designs, as well. These are drones that, in turn, are most effective when employed in large networked swarms to cover broad areas cooperatively. The ME-11B, at least as it is being presented now with its four underwing pylons, does not seem set to carry very large numbers of uncrewed aerial systems.

“This is important breakthrough technology. so I’m not going to reveal too much about what we’re discovering in this space,” Evans said. “But know that it’s going to change the game. It takes us from a sensing platform to a sensing and platform, and the ‘and,’ I’ll just let you use your imagination.”

Evans’ deliberately vague comments here might point to a broader airborne drone controller role in HADES future. ME-11B crews could potentially oversee larger and more capable drones, including Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) types now in development. CCAs or other heavier types would be able to carry bigger sensor suites and otherwise bring additional capabilities to the table, including the ability to provide close-in defense for HADES itself during missions.

Survivability has certainly been a hot topic of discussion around HADES since the Army first announced its intention to acquire a new fleet of business jet-based ISR aircraft. The service had highlighted growing concerns about the vulnerability of its now-retired fleets of turboprop ISR planes, which had provided key intelligence-gathering capacity globally for decades, tracing back to the Cold War. TWZ and others have repeatedly noted that these concerns are very real, especially in the context of a future high-end fight in the Pacific against China, but also apply to non-stealthy jets like the Global 6500.

For routine operations, the ME-11B does a major leap in capability over the turboprop ISR aircraft the Army previously operated, both in terms of its mission systems and its general performance. HADES can fly higher, faster, and farther, and do so while carrying a bigger sensor payload. Higher altitudes also offer greater fields of view for the aircraft’s sensors. The improved performance also translates to being able to get to and from operating areas more rapidly and the ability to remain on station longer. The underwing pylons will offer additional flexibility beyond the drone launch capability.

“The deployability of this platform, being able to fly 6,000 miles at 0.87 Mach, and go globally without the world will require the ability to rapidly change sensors,” Army Col. Joe Minor, the Capability Program Executive for Aviation within the office of the Program Acquisition Executive for Maneuver Air, also said at today’s roundtable at the AAAA conference. “With those hard points and cleared envelopes for pods, it gives us that ability to rapidly configure and update even more quickly than we could internally or within the canoe [fairing under the fuselage]. So those hard points being built in from the beginning is part of that [sic] building the right platform and air vehicle from the start, with the ability to integrate and evolve very quickly as you move forward.”

Using the Global 6500 as the underlying aircraft offers maintenance and other logistical benefits. This is an in-production aircraft with a significant global user base. This includes the U.S. Air Force, which operates a fleet of E-11A Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) aircraft based on this platform.

The Army says it has already been seeing an important boost in ISR capability with contractor-owned and operated ISR-configured business jets, including Global 6500-based types. The service has been utilizing those aircraft for eight years now as a transitional ‘bridge’ force to lead into the fielding of HADES.

Many of “our previous platforms were centered around the COIN [counterinsurgency] fight,” Army Col. Matt McGraw, head of the 116th Military Intelligence Brigade, the Army’s main aerial ISR unit, who was also at the roundtable today, said. “If you’re flying a platform operating full motion video [cameras], you’re tracking maybe one or two targets at most. A platform today, on these bridge aircraft with MTI and SAR, you’re tracking a couple 100 targets at the same time.”

There do continue to be significant questions about the true extent of what the Army’s ME-11Bs will be able to offer, in any context, given the expected size of the fleet. The Army currently plans to buy just six production HADES jets on top of the three prototypes. The service previously operated dozens of turboprop ISR aircraft.

“We work for the United States Army, on behalf of the United States Army. And so if the Army’s given direction to cap a fleet size based on budget pressure, and of the other things that we have to balance as an army – like, if the Army only built ISR [aircraft], we build 1,000 of these things,” Evans said at the roundtable today. “But we don’t. We build a lot of things. And ISR is an enabler to [the] ground lethality that we deliver.”

“The Army’s got a tremendous amount of budget pressure. The Army has a top line that’s not keeping pace with inflation,” he added. “And so until our top line increases to support the world’s premier land force, then we’re going to be capped inside programs like HADES.”

As it stands now, the Army certainly looks to be hoping that even the small fleet of HADES will be able to punch well above its weight, thanks in no small part to the ability to launch very long-range drones from relative safety deep in hostile territory.

Jamie Hunter contributed to this story.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Field Marshal Asim Munir leaves Tehran while premier Shehbaz Sharif heads home from Turkiye amid hopes of another round of US-Iran talks.

Pakistan’s army chief and the prime minister have wrapped up separate diplomatic visits aimed at advancing efforts to end the United States-Iran conflict, with Field Marshal Asim Munir leaving Tehran and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif returning from Turkiye.

Munir met Iran’s leadership and peace negotiators during a three-day visit to Tehran, a Pakistani military statement said on Saturday.

The visit demonstrated Pakistan’s “unwavering resolve to facilitate a negotiated settlement… and to promote peace, stability and prosperity,” the military said ahead of expected US-Iran talks in Islamabad in the coming days.

Munir held talks with the country’s president, foreign minister, parliament speaker and head of Iran’s military central command centre.

Parliament Speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, led the Iranian delegation to Islamabad for peace talks with the US last week, the highest level face-to-face contact between Washington and Tehran in decades.

Those talks ended without agreement, and a ceasefire is due to expire on April 22.

But diplomacy has continued, with Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkiye to push the peace process.

His three-country trip concluded on Saturday, with Sharif and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar departing a diplomacy forum in Antalya, according to statements from both officials.

“I leave Antalya [Turkish city] with fond memories and a renewed commitment to further strengthening the enduring fraternal bonds between our two nations, and to continuing our close cooperation to advance dialogue and diplomacy for lasting peace and stability in the region,” Sharif posted on X.

The flurry of diplomacy comes as further negotiations are expected in Pakistan in the coming days as Islamabad intensifies contacts with regional and global leaders in an effort to sustain momentum towards a US-Iran deal.

Pressure for a deal between the two countries has grown after Iran reimposed restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz, hours after its reopening following the start of a ceasefire in Lebanon. Tehran accused the US of violating a deal to reopen the strategically important waterway.

Donald Trump has said a second round of talks with Iran could be held in Pakistan in the coming days. The New York Post reported that Trump praised Munir, saying he was “doing a great job”.

Reporting from Islamabad, Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder said Munir landed back home on Saturday as Pakistan prepared for another round of US-Iran talks expected “within the next few days”.

“We have also seen a lot of praise from the Trump administration on social media, praising the Pakistani leadership. So all eyes are on Islamabad. Serious differences remain, but there is a flurry of diplomatic activity and a hope and expectation that some sort of breakthrough may happen,” he said.

The U.S. Army is considering configuring at least a portion of its new MV-75A Cheyenne II tiltrotors to be able to refuel in flight using the probe-and-drogue method. This, in turn, has raised the question of how the service will ensure there is adequate tanker capacity to support that capability. Army officials and the MV-75A’s prime contractor, Bell, have both now pointed to a future where tanker drones like the U.S. Navy’s forthcoming MQ-25 Stingray could help extend the Cheyenne II’s reach.

Army Maj. Gen. Clair Gill discussed aerial refueling capability for the MV-75A, as well as other aspects of the Cheyenne II, during a talk yesterday at the Army Aviation Association of America’s (AAAA) 2026 Warfighting Summit, at which TWZ is in attendance. Gill is currently the service’s Program Acquisition Executive for Maneuver Air. The Army plans to replace a substantial portion of its H-60 Black Hawk helicopters with the MV-75A in the coming years.

“Our last chief used to talk to me all the time about aerial refueling. We think that’s something. Maybe we don’t get all of them [the MV-75As] configured for that, but they’ll have the capability,” the Army’s top aviation acquisition officer added. “For industry, I want you to think about how are we going to refuel ourselves, right? One of the challenges, even the Regiment will tell you, and make it top priority – their challenge isn’t you know how good they are on par, their challenge is getting somebody to give them the gas.”

The “Regiment” that Gill refers to here is the Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), also commonly known as the Night Stalkers. The 160th is expecting to eventually receive a special operations-specific configuration of the MV-75, which will include in-flight refueling capability by default, as you can read more about here. Existing Night Stalker MH-60M Black Hawk and MH-47G Chinook special operations helicopters also have the ability to refuel in flight via probe-and-drogue. However, Army Black Hawks and Chinooks assigned to conventional units do not have this capability.

“The Navy’s got some pretty good unmanned ideas there if you want to kind of follow where we’re going,” Gill noted yesterday.

Gill did not specifically name Boeing’s MQ-25, but this is the only uncrewed tanker the Navy is currently pursuing, at least that we know about. Furthermore, Bell released a new computer-generated MV-75 promotional video yesterday around the AAAA conference, seen below, wherein a Cheyenne II is clearly depicted linking up with a Stingray, or an extremely similar-looking variant or derivative thereof.

Meet the Cheyenne II

The MQ-25 is in development now primarily as a carrier-based platform, but there is no reason why it could not also operate from bases on land. Boeing has itself previously presented a concept for an enlarged, land-based derivative of the design that could help meet future U.S. Air Force tanking needs.

The MQ-25 by itself promised to offer very long endurance and extreme range, which could make it attractive in the land-based role, as well as when operating from carriers. TWZ has previously explored how those capabilities open the door to the Stingray being utilized as much more than a tanker, as well.

Currently, the U.S. Air Force provides probe-and-drogue aerial refueling capacity using KC-135 and KC-46 tankers, as well as HC-130J Combat King II combat search and rescue aircraft and MC-130J Commando II special operations tanker/transports. The U.S. Marine Corps and Navy also have C-130 variants that can be employed as tankers, as well as transports. Navy carrier air wings currently rely on F/A-18F Super Hornet fighters carrying buddy refueling stores and drop tanks to provide organic aerial refueling support.

Shortfalls in aerial refueling capacity, even to meet peacetime demands, have been an increasingly concerning issue for years now. The Air Force just recently developed a system that allows A-10 Warthog attack jets to refuel via probe-and-drogue to create new operational flexibility for those aircraft, as you can read more about here. The A-10 was originally designed to refuel in flight using the boom method, which the Air Force prefers for fixed-wing aircraft.

On top of all this, the Army has no organic tanker capacity at present, at all. Furthermore, the formal division of roles and missions with the Air Force means that the service does not operate fleets of larger fixed-wing aircraft like the C-130 that could be readily adapted to this role. All of this would point to an uncrewed platform like MQ-25 as the most viable path to establishing an Army tanker force, which could also align better with its expeditionary air assault concepts of operations.

Army MV-75As could still make use of other tankers during joint operations, as well. There could be other organic air refueling options available to the service, too, including the possibility of adapting MV-75 itself to act as a buddy tanker.

The Army is separately advancing plans to acquire fleets of uncrewed aircraft capable of performing a variety of missions in close collaboration with the MV-75A and its existing fleets of crewed helicopters.

For the Army, demands for greater range and ability that cover those distances faster were key factors in the decision to acquire the MV-75A in the first place. The service sees these capabilities as particularly critical in the context of any future fight against China across the sprawling expanses of the Pacific.

“MV-75, as I mentioned, that’s our signature system,” Gen. Gill said yesterday. “Unmatched range, unmatched speed, unmatched mission flexibility.”

During a separate talk at the AAAA conference yesterday, Army Maj. Gen. David Gardner, head of the 101st Airborne Division, the service’s premier air assault formation, also highlighted a recent training exercise that included Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey tiltrotors. He said that was done specifically “to help our Division understand the operational reach that it will possess with the MV-75 Cheyenne.”

Units within the 101st are set to be the first to receive operational MV-75As, with or without aerial refueling capability. The Army had previously said that fielding would begin next year as part of a major acceleration of the program. However, it has now stepped back from any fixed timeline for the first flight of the Cheyenne, let alone when Bell will begin delivering production examples.

“It’s going to happen when it’s going to happen. So we are moving as fast as we can,” Gen. Gill told TWZ and other outlets ahead of the AAAA conference this week. “If I was king, and I had all the money in the world and all the engineers, and there were no limits, we probably would be able to do it in a matter of months.”

As an aside, integrating aerial refueling capability onto the MV-75A, and working to pair it with tanker drones like MQ-25, could make the Cheyenne II, or variants thereof, attractive to other potential operators. The Marine Corps is now early in the process of refining requirements for a successor to the MV-22. The Navy has also said it is leveraging work the Army has done on the MV-75A to inform its plans for a Future Vertical Lift-Maritime Strike (FVL-MS) family of systems to succeed its MH-60R and MH-60S Seahawks, as well as the MQ-8C Fire Scout drone helicopter. Bell has presented concepts for variations of its V-280 Valor tiltrotor, on which the MV-75A is based, optimized for supporting amphibious assault and other naval missions in the past.

As it stands now, the Army does not appear to have made a final decision on the extent to which it expects to integrate in-flight refueling capability in its future MV-75A fleet. That will have a direct impact on any pursuit of an organic tanker capability.

Still, the Army and Bell are already pointing to the MQ-25 as an example of what could be on the horizon to help further extend the reach of the Cheyenne II.

UPDATE: 5:08 PM EDT –

Maj. Gen. Clair Gill has now offered some additional comments on aerial refueling support for the MV-75A to TWZ and other outlets at a roundtable today on the sidelines of the AAAA conference.

“We’re also thinking creatively about if we put aerial refueling – which you’re gonna see on the SOCOM [U.S. Special Operations Command] variants – if we put that on a conventional variant, then how do we refuel it?” he explained. “So we’re thinking through, do we need to develop a requirement for aerial refueling for ourselves now that we have really enhanced our capability?”

“One of the things that our special operations aviators – one of their most challenging tasks is helicopter aerial refueling. A lot of times people say, you’re telling me the challenge is the training of that, because it’s a pretty hard task,” he added later on in response to a direct follow-up question on this topic from our Jamie Hunter, who also called attention to what was seen in Bell’s video. “And I would say yes, but it’s actually the asset, the availability [of the] asset, to do the training. And we don’t have those organic to the Army. So I think we need to solve our own problems, and think about how do we do our own, let’s call it logistical resupply in the air, of an MV-75. So that’s where that concept photo or video was pointing.”

“We don’t have a requirement written right now, but I’ve talked with Army leaders,” Gill also noted.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Some of the reservists accused of sexually assaulting a detainee have already started combat roles, reports Israeli Army Radio.

Israeli military chief Eyal Zamir has authorised five soldiers accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian inmate in the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp to return to reserve service after charges against them were dropped, according to Israeli media reports.

The soldiers, all from the Force 100 unit assigned to guard military prisons, are being reinstated despite an ongoing, internal military inquiry into their conduct.

Israeli Army Radio reported that some of the reservists have already returned to active duty, including deployment to combat roles.

An Israeli army statement, cited by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, said: “The investigation does not prevent them from continuing to serve … the command-level investigation will be completed as soon as possible.”

The reinstatement comes after Israel’s top military lawyer dropped all charges against the soldiers last month, closing a case that had been among the most divisive in Israel’s recent history.

The soldiers had been charged with aggravated assault and causing severe injury, after footage broadcast by Israeli television showed them abusing a Palestinian man in Sde Teiman. The military’s own indictment described soldiers stabbing the detainee with a sharp object near his rectum, causing cracked ribs, a punctured lung and an internal tear.

A doctor at the facility, Yoel Donchin, told Haaretz he was so shocked by the Palestinian inmate’s condition that he initially assumed it was the work of a rival armed group.

Military Advocate General Itay Offir said the indictments were scrapped partly because of “complexities in the evidentiary structure” and “difficulties” arising from the detainee’s release to the Gaza Strip.

Rights groups condemned the decision as a legal injustice, with Amnesty International calling it “yet another unconscionable chapter in the Israeli legal system’s long-standing history of granting impunity to perpetrators of grave crimes against Palestinians”.

“Since the start of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, and despite overwhelming evidence of widespread torture and abuse, including sexual violence, against Palestinians in Israeli detention centers, only one Israeli soldier has so far been sentenced over torturing a Palestinian detainee,” said the rights group in a statement.

Palestinians released from Israeli detention have reported suffering widespread abuse while in custody.

A February report by the Committee to Protect Journalists also cited dozens of formerly detained Palestinian journalists describing “routine beatings, starvation and sexual assault” in Israeli custody.

Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, has arrived in Iran for high-level talks aimed at reviving negotiations between Tehran and the United States. The visit comes as Iran warns it could halt trade across key waterways if a US naval blockade on its ports continues.

Sources tell Al Jazeera that Pakistani mediators are hopeful about a breakthrough on Iran’s nuclear programme.

A high-level Pakistani delegation has travelled to Iran to hold talks focused on arranging a fresh round of negotiations between Iran and the United States, a week before their fragile truce is due to expire.

Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir is heading the delegation that arrived in Tehran on Wednesday evening, according to Iranian state media. It said he came with a new message from the US and plans to coordinate a second round of US-Iran talks, after an initial round in Islamabad ended on Sunday without a deal to end the war.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi is also joining mediation efforts in Tehran, while Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is in Saudi Arabia for the first stop in a four-day Gulf tour.

Pakistan’s diplomatic blitz comes as competing US and Iranian sea blockades strain tensions – and the global economy – but amid indications of progress towards a deal to end the war, which has killed 3,000 people in Iran and spiralled across the Middle East.

“The urgency is being driven by the ceasefire expiring on April 22, and Pakistani officials are hoping they can get that extended,” said Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett from Islamabad. “Sharif will try and convince regional partners to also use their leverage to convince the US to participate in new talks with Iran and make sure there is no diplomatic line-crossing.”

Washington ‘feels good’ about potential deal

The latest mediation appears bolstered by optimistic comments from US President Donald Trump, who said the world should brace for an “amazing two days” as the war with Iran is close to over.

Trump also said his negotiators were likely to return to Pakistan, thanks largely to the “great job” Munir was doing to moderate the talks.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later reiterated that additional talks with Iran would likely go forward in Islamabad. “We feel good about the prospects of a deal,” she told reporters on Wednesday.

Nevertheless, the US military said its naval blockade on all Iranian ports was still in effect, with US forces “present, vigilant and ready to ensure compliance”.

The blockade, which Iran’s military slammed as a violation of the ceasefire, turned nine ships away as of Wednesday, according to US Central Command.

The commander of Iran’s joint military command, Ali Abdollahi, threatened to halt trade in the region if the US did not lift its blockade. He also warned Iran would retaliate by blocking trade through the Red Sea along with the Gulf and Sea of Oman.

‘Detractors on all sides’

Mediators in the conflict are pushing for a compromise on three main sticking points – Iran’s nuclear programme, control of the Strait of Hormuz, and compensation for wartime damages.

Iran’s Foreign Minister spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has said Iran is open to discussing the type and level of its uranium enrichment, but his country “based on its needs, must be able to continue enrichment”, according to Iranian state media.

Sources told Al Jazeera that Pakistani mediators are optimistic about a potential major breakthrough on the nuclear front, which is the reason for Munir’s rare diplomatic trip.

“It looks like there is some agreement in the making, but we’ve been cautioned by sources [close to the mediation effort] that there are detractors on all sides,” said Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid from Doha.

He said the detractors include elements “in Tehran, in Washington, DC, and biggest of them all, according to Pakistani sources, is Israel, which does not want a peace deal and wants a perpetual war in the region”.

The Cold War-era Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne might have been plagued with issues, but there’s no doubt it was among the world’s most advanced helicopters of its day. The AH-56 was so fast, and its features so ahead of their time, that the U.S. Army has decided to port over its name for its highly anticipated MV-75 tiltrotor, now officially named the Cheyenne II. The name also continues the Army’s tradition of naming its helicopters after great Native American tribes, and will find its place among icons like the Apache, Chinook, and Lakota.

In 2022, the Army picked a design from Bell, based on that company’s V-280 Valor tiltrotor, as the winner of its Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) competition. In January of this year, the Army confirmed to TWZ that it planned to accelerate its timeline for the MV-75 by multiple years, fielding the first examples in 2027 versus 2031.

The rollout took place today at the Army Aviation Association of America’s Army Aviation Warfighting Summit in Nashville, Tennessee. Speaking to journalists, including TWZ, before that event, Maj. Gen. Clair A. Gill, the commanding general of the Army Aviation Center and Portfolio Acquisition Executive — Expanded Maneuver Air, announced the MV-75’s rollout as “a pivotal moment for Army Aviation, for our soldiers.”

In keeping with other Army rotorcraft, the MV-75’s name also honors a Native American tribe (more accurately, two tribes), the Cheyenne.

As Maj. Gen. Gill explained: This name reflects more than heritage. It reflects identity. The Cheyenne people inhabited the Great Plains for 400 years, adapting to a harsh and unforgiving environment as highly proficient hunters and gatherers. Their way of life required constant mobility, organized around nomadic buffalo hunting, enabling them to assemble, disassemble, and move quickly to meet the demands of their environment. In many aspects, that same ability to rapidly organize, reposition, and operate with precision is reflected in the MV-75 platform.”

“Life in that environment demanded resilience and strength,” Gill continued. “Tribes navigated rivalries, dirt, conflict, and adapted as Westward expansion reshaped the landscape around them. Today, the Cheyenne are represented by the Northern Cheyenne tribe in Montana, in the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes in Oklahoma, whose legacy reflects the proud and enduring warrior tradition, ground and protection, provision and leadership. Those values demand capability, and in today’s fight, that capability comes in the form of speed, range, lethality, and adaptability. That spirit of mobility, resilience, and disciplined strength is what the name Cheyenne II represents.”

As for the other, historical Cheyenne, the AH-56, this was a first-generation attack helicopter drafted during the Vietnam War. Most impressively for the time, the helicopter could hit a 224-mile-per-hour cruise speed and dash at speeds up to 240 miles per hour, driven by a nearly 4,000-horsepower turbine engine and a pusher propeller on the tail boom.

F 03873 US Army Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne multi weapon attack Helicopter

While it boasted incredible performance and was packed full of advanced features, the AH-56 was destined for failure. A combination of technical issues, program management shortfalls, changing procurement priorities, high cost, and a fatal crash in 1969 saw the program terminated. But despite never entering service, the Cheyenne left a profound impact on the concept of close air support and attack helicopter design and today holds a special place in military aviation history.

On the other hand, there are plenty of obvious differences between the AH-56 and the MV-75, not least their missions. They also had different prime contractors, and, the Army must hope, will have very different outcomes.

Maj. Gen. Gill continued: “What the [AH-56] Cheyenne was when it was initially conceived in the 1960s was a transformational leap ahead in technology. It was a rotorcraft when we were still learning how helicopters flew and how we could get the maximum utility, speed, and range out of them. And the Cheyenne, at the time that it was developed, was completely different. It had a pusher prop on it that allowed it to achieve speeds that we hadn’t seen before. You could draw a lot of parallels between going from the current fleet of rotorcraft that we fly, that is really 1960s, 1970s-era technology … to what we’re doing with the tiltrotor technology. Twice as far, twice as fast, vertical takeoff and landing, but flying at airplane speeds. You can certainly draw the metaphor there if you want, between the AH-56 back in the late 1960s and the MV-75 today.”

Continuing on the transformational theme, Brent G. Ingraham, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology, provided his assessment of the MV-75, describing it as “a generational capability for the Army,” and one that “truly fundamentally changes how commanders think about distance, time, and maneuver on the battlefield.”

Ingraham continued: “It combines the vertical lift of a helicopter with the speed and range of an airplane, allowing us to project combat power from safer distances, penetrate deeper into contested environments, and deliver soldiers where they are needed most, faster than we ever have before.”

For the soldier, this means “restoring full-squad insertion at extended range, expanding medevac reach well beyond today’s Golden Hour, enabling large-scale, long-range air assault operations that can reshape the battlefield,” Ingraham added. Just as critically, the Cheyenne II will be able to self-deploy globally, reducing cost, complexity, and response time in a crisis. This is also especially relevant for future operations in the Indo-Pacific region, where operating locations and objectives are likely to be dispersed across large areas with limited options for making intermediate stops.

Ingraham also noted another key aspect of the program, namely the incredibly aggressive schedule to get it into service. Claiming the program as an “acquisition success story,” he described the team moving “with urgency while maintaining discipline.”

The MV-75 is designed around a modular, open-systems approach, with a digital backbone that should make it easier to adapt and upgrade as the program evolves.

“That means we can rapidly integrate new technologies, adapt to emerging threats, and avoid the costly redesigns of the past,” Ingraham said.

Ingraham confirmed that the fielding timeline is being accelerated, which means the first Cheyenne II unit should be equipped in Fiscal Year 2030. Exactly how realistic that ambition is is something that we will discuss in a follow-on story.

As Ingraham said, speed matters, not just in the air, but in acquisition as well.

“We did it through strong partnerships across industry, the requirements community, and our operational units like the 101st [The 101st Airborne Division, the Army’s premier air assault unit, and the first unit set to get MV-75s], ensuring this platform is not just technologically advanced, but operationally relevant from day one. Simply put, the MV-75 Cheyenne II is how we deliver capability at the speed of relevance.”

For a rotary-wing program that puts a lot of emphasis on speed, its new Cheyenne II name is especially appropriate. Let’s just hope its warp-speed development doesn’t end the same way as its partial namesake.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Lieutenant General Susan Coyle has held several senior command roles over her nearly 40-year military career, including during operations in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Australia has announced that its army will be led by a woman for the first time in its 125-year history, as part of a reshuffle of the country’s defence force leadership.

Lieutenant General Susan Coyle, the current chief of joint capabilities, will become the chief of army in July, the government said in a statement on Monday. She will replace Lieutenant General Simon Stuart, who assumed the post in July 2022.

Coyle’s career spans nearly four decades, during which she has held several senior command roles, including during operations in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Her appointment comes as the Australian military seeks to boost the number of female officers in its ranks. It is facing a wave of allegations of systemic sexual harassment and discrimination.

“From July, we will have the first ever female chief of army in the Australian Army’s 125-year history,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement.

Defence Minister Richard Marles called Coyle’s appointment a “deeply historic moment”.

“As Susan said to me, you cannot be what you cannot see,” Marles said.

“Susan’s achievement will be deeply significant to women who are serving in the Australian Defence Force today and women who are thinking about serving in the Australian Defence Force in the future.”

Australia’s army is undergoing a major transformation, equipping itself with long-range firepower, drones and other modern combat tools.

Coyle, 55, stressed her experience in areas such as cyber-warfare. “This breadth of experience provides a strong foundation for the responsibilities of command and the trust placed in me,” she said.

Women currently make up about 21 percent of the Australian defence forces, or ADF, and 18.5 percent of senior leadership roles. The ADF has set a target of 25 percent of overall participation for women by 2030.

Last October, a class action lawsuit was filed against the ADF alleging it failed to protect thousands of women officers from systematic sexual assault, harassment and discrimination.

The government on Monday also appointed Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, the current chief of the navy, as the head of the ADF, succeeding Admiral David Johnston.

The current deputy chief of the navy, Rear Admiral Matthew Buckley, will replace Hammond as head of the branch.

Israeli forces storm camps and villages in an overnight raid across the occupied West Bank arresting more than 22 Palestinians. This comes days after Israel approved 34 new illegal settlements.

RALEIGH, N.C. — An Army veteran has been charged with sharing classified information about an elite commando unit with a journalist, which one official said put the country, members of the U.S. military and the nation’s allies at risk.

Courtney Williams, 40, of Wagram, N.C., is accused of violating federal law, as well as multiple nondisclosure agreements, by sharing details of her work with a “special military unit” at Fort Bragg, N.C.

“Anyone divulging information they vowed to protect to a reporter for publication is reckless, self-serving and damages our nation’s security,” Reid Davis, the FBI special agent in charge in North Carolina, said in a U.S. Justice Department news release.

Williams “swore an oath to safeguard our nation’s secrets as an employee supporting a Special Military Unit of the Army, but she allegedly betrayed that oath by sharing classified information with a media outlet and putting our nation, our warfighters, and our allies at risk,” Roman Rozhavsky, an assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, said in the statement.

Williams, who is specifically charged with violating a provision of the Espionage Act, appeared Wednesday in Raleigh federal court, where a magistrate judge unsealed the case against her, initially filed late last week, according to online court records. She was ordered held by the U.S. Marshals Service pending hearings set for early next week.

Court records didn’t immediately name Williams’ lawyer. A man who answered a phone and identified himself as a family member of Williams declined to comment on the charges Wednesday.

Although the reporter and unit are not named in the court filings, dates and details match an article and book about the Army’s secretive Delta Force written by Seth Harp.

Williams was the focus of a 2025 Politico article with the headline: “My Life Became a Living Hell: One Woman’s Career in Delta Force, the Army’s Most Elite Unit.” It coincided with the release of Harp’s book, “The Fort Bragg Cartel,” which alleges sexual harassment and discrimination.

In a statement published by WRAL-TV, Harp called Williams “a brave whistleblower and truth-teller.”

“Former Delta Force operators disclose `national defense information’ on podcasts and YouTube shows every day, but the government is going after Courtney for the sole reason that she exposed sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the unit,” Harp’s statement read. “This is a vindictive act of retaliation, plain and simple.”

According to an FBI affidavit attached to the complaint, Williams was cleared as a defense contractor in April 2010 and became a Department of Defense employee in November 2010.

She performed duties within the special military unit as an operational support technician responsible for “Tactics, Techniques and Procedures” used in preparation for and during “sensitive missions,” Special Agent Jocelyn Fox wrote in the affidavit.

According to Fox, Williams’ access to classified information was suspended “based on an internal investigation.” Fox said Williams was debriefed in September 2015 and signed a nondisclosure agreement.

The government alleges that Williams had been in contact with the unnamed journalist between 2022 and 2025.

“During this period, Williams and the Journalist had over 10 hours of telephone calls and exchanged more than 180 messages,” the news release said.

Fox cited a text between the two she said occurred on or about the day the book and article were published.

“Other than a few factual errors, I would definitely have been concerned with the amount of classified information being disclosed,” Williams’ text read, according to the affidavit. “I thought things I was telling you so you could have a better general understanding of how the (SMU) was set up or operated would not be published and it feels like an entire TTP (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) was sent out in my name giving them a chance to legally persecute me.”

Fox also cited an alleged exchange between Williams and her mother.

”`I might actually get arrested, and I don’t even get a free copy of the book,’” the affidavit read. “When her mother asked why she may be arrested, Williams responded `for disclosing classified information.’”

Fox wrote that the investigation so far has identified at least 10 batches of documents gathered that Williams intended to provide to the journalist.

Breed and Robertson write for the Associated Press. AP writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

WHO driver Majdi Aslan was killed and a WHO doctor wounded, along with several other Palestinians, medical sources said.

A member of staff from the World Health Organization (WHO) has been killed in Gaza and several others injured when the Israeli army fired on their vehicle, according to sources, including an Al Jazeera correspondent.

WHO driver Majdi Aslan, 54, was killed on Monday. A doctor from the international organisation and several other Palestinians were also injured in the incident in eastern Khan Younis, according to sources at the enclave’s Nasser and Al-Aqsa hospitals.

As the world’s attention remains fixed on the United States-Israel war on Iran, Israel is continuing its attacks on the Gaza Strip, which has seen near-daily Israeli fire and strikes since a fragile ceasefire was reached in October, with more than 700 Palestinians killed since, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Monday’s incident took place in an area close to the so-called yellow line in eastern Khan Younis, reported Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud.

Israeli forces shot “indiscriminately” at people and vehicles moving along the Salah al-Din Street in the southern Gaza Strip, he said.

A commercial vehicle was transporting civilians between southern and central Gaza. It was followed by a car carrying WHO employees, said Mahmoud.

“The driver was shot in the head, and by the time he was transported to the Al-Aqsa Hospital, he was announced dead,” the correspondent reported from Gaza City. Seven or so others suffered injuries, he added.

Translation: Qamar Majdi Mustafa Aslan (54 years old), a resident of Bureij camp, who ascended after being wounded in a shooting targeting a World Health Organization vehicle on Salah al-Din Street east of Khan Younis city.

WHO did not immediately confirm that the man killed was an employee, but said in a statement emailed to Al Jazeera that “this morning, a critical security incident occurred in Gaza that is under review by relevant authorities”.

“As [a] result of this critical security incident, today’s medical evacuation from Gaza via Rafah to Egypt has been put on hold with immediate effect, until further notice,” the statement added.

WHO has been overseeing coordination between Egypt and Israel since the opening of the Rafah crossing, which has allowed small numbers of injured Palestinians desperate for medical aid to leave to seek treatment abroad.

Israel has, however, continued to limit the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged territory, also shutting the vital crossing in the early days of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Elsewhere on Monday in the southern part of Khan Younis, a Palestinian man with special needs was killed after being shot by Israeli soldiers.

To the north, a drone attack in Gaza City killed one person, Mahmoud said.

“The target was an electric bike … moving in the area that was struck by drone missiles. It killed … a 36-year-old individual who was moving … around the displacement camps,” he reported.

A child was also injured in the attack and is now in critical condition in hospital, the correspondent added.

Two Palestinians were also killed in Israeli drone strikes on the Yarmouk and Shujayea neighbourhoods, according to a medical source at al-Shifa Hospital.

Sources at Gaza hospitals have reported the deaths of eight Palestinians in Israeli air strikes outside areas under Israeli control since Sunday.

WASHINGTON — Merely two weeks had passed since the Iran war began when Gen. Randy George, the Army’s highest-ranking officer, began sounding an alarm.

Touring a weapons depot in North Carolina, George warned lawmakers present that the conflict’s vast and ever-growing list of targets was straining U.S. capacity — “depleting our stockpiles faster than we can replace them,” as one congressman recalled. Since assuming Army leadership, George had made it his mission to strengthen the nation’s industrial base in anticipation of precisely this moment, when the United States would be engaged in a major war with a formidable adversary.

On Thursday, in a brief phone call, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired George. No reason was given, a U.S. official familiar with the matter told The Times.

The forced departure of George in the middle of a war created yet another blow to morale inside the Pentagon, where multiple officials expressed dismay over the state of the department’s leadership. Over the last year, Hegseth has fired five sitting members of the joint chiefs of staff, with only two holdovers remaining in their posts.

“Whenever you have a change in leadership, military or otherwise, there is bound to be some churn in information management,” one U.S. official said, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “So what you’re doing, in the middle of a war, as we are taking U.S. casualties, is you’re taking out the general in charge of making sure the right people and equipment are flowing into the Middle East.”

Inside the building, officials believe that Hegseth’s next target is Dan Driscoll, the Army secretary and an ally to President Trump. Driscoll has been seen by Hegseth’s aides as outshining the Defense secretary on prominent policy initiatives.

Gen. Randy George, U.S. Army chief of staff, speaks with soldiers during training exercises at Lightning Academy at Schofield Barracks in Honolulu on Nov. 10, 2025.

(Christopher Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

It is a purge that Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill fear could have tangible, detrimental effects on the war effort. Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Joni Ernst of Iowa, all members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have expressed private concerns over George’s firing, a second U.S. official said.

Forcing out Army leadership responsible for training and equipping its soldiers, and for ensuring weapons stockpiles continue to meet demand, risks bureaucratic chaos and despair in the ranks at a time when the Trump administration is openly considering a ground operation in Iran.

Others in the Pentagon have raised concern over the U.S. military stockpile, including Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, who last month warned at a defense conference that munitions shortages were a concern even before the war began.

“It was something that we were concerned about even before the operation,” Meink said. “It has just been the fact that we couldn’t see the threat evolving and what we’re facing. So we definitely have to improve on that.”

Trump has denied that the United States faces weapons shortages, even after meeting with the nation’s top contractors last month in a push for them to increase — and on some products, quadruple — their output.

“What interceptors we have for Iran is because of Randy George,” the first U.S. official countered. “He continued to work that problem set up through [Thursday]. It’s a problem set he was working in real time.”

Jerry McGinn, director of the Center for the Industrial Base at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said U.S. forces have reached a stage in the war where they can pivot away from standoff weapons systems. With Iran’s air defenses largely degraded, they can instead rely on weapons such as laser-guided bombs, helping ease pressure on stockpiles.

But Iran’s downing of two U.S. aircraft on Friday suggests that longer-range weapons may still be necessary.

“When the stockpile is stressed, as it was after Ukraine and then now with Iran, any surge in need leads to a backlog as they try to replenish,” McGinn said.

“The three things they’ve been using a whole lot of are Tomahawks, [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] and Patriots, and those inventories were already somewhat depleted after Midnight Hammer last summer,” McGinn added. “You can’t crank those out very fast.”

Beyond his role tending to the nation’s “magazine depth” — making sure the military isn’t firing more weapons than it is able to replenish — George also led the Pentagon’s effort to set up a joint task force last year aimed at speeding up the U.S. military’s ability to counter small unmanned aircraft systems, or drones.

The program has proved critical in the war effort. Tehran now relies heavily on its Shahed drones, with its missile production and launch capacity severely diminished.

Acknowledging the Pentagon expulsions, Iran’s embassy in South Africa posted photos on social media Friday x-ing out portraits of several top U.S. military officials fired in recent months.

“Regime change happened successfully,” the Iranians wrote.

Iran says it is ready to counter any US-Israeli attacks, insisting its military capabilities remain intact despite Donald Trump’s claims they’ve been ‘decimated.’

April 2 (UPI) — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth asked the Army chief of staff to step down from the position he has held for two years and retire immediately.

Gen. Randy George will be replaced by Gen. Christopher LaNeve, who is currently the Army’s vice chief of staff, as acting chief until an official replacement is confirmed by the Senate.

George, who had about one and a 1/2 years left in his four-year term as chief of staff, is the latest high ranking military leader to have been fired by Hegseth since his confirmation as Secretary of Defense.

The Army confirmed to CBS News and The Washington Post that Hegseth had asked George to retire immediately.

“General Randy A. George will be retiring from is position as the 41st Chief of Staff of the Army effective immediately,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement posted on X.

“The Department of Defense is grateful for General George’s decades of service to our nation,” he said. “We wish him well in his retirement.”

George became the Army chief of staff in September 2023 after then-President Joe Biden nominated him for job, which usually carries a four-year term.

Last year, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, the head of the U.S. Navy, the commandant of the Coast Guard, the vice chief of staff for the Air Force, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Air Force chief of staff all were fired or told to retire.

The change at Army chief of staff comes days after Hegseth in a post on X lifted a suspension of the aircrew that flew an Apache helicopter past Kid Rock‘s estate last weekend.

“No punishment. No investigation. Carry on, patriots,” Hegseth said in the post.

The Apache crew was on a training mission, and the investigation was to look into why it was flown near Rock’s property and a nearby No Kings protest.

Rock, whose real name is Bob Ritchie, on Saturday posted a photo to his Instagram of the U.S. Army helicopter hovering near a pool as he waved to the pilots, which triggered the suspension and investigation.

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has asked the Army’s top uniformed officer, Gen. Randy George, to step down, the Pentagon said Thursday, as the United States wages a war against Iran.

A Pentagon official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, confirmed that George has been asked to take early retirement from the post of Army chief of staff, which he has held since August 2023.

The ouster of George is just the latest of more than a dozen firings of top generals and admirals by Hegseth since he first took office last year.

CBS News was first to report the ouster.

George is a graduate of West Point Military Academy and an infantry officer who served in the first Gulf War as well as Iraq and Afghanistan. He also served as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s top military aide from 2021 to 2022, during the Biden administration, before taking on top leadership roles in the Army.

George survived the initial round of firings last February, which saw the removal of top military leaders, including Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the Navy’s top uniformed officer, and Gen. Jim Silfe, the No. 2 leader at the Air Force, by Hegseth. President Donald Trump also fired Gen. Charles “C.Q.” Brown, then the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the same time.

Since then, more than a dozen other top military generals and admirals have either retired early or been removed from their posts.

Among these departures was George’s deputy, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, Gen. James Mingus, who was in the post for less than two years when Trump suddenly nominated Lt. Gen. Christopher LaNeve for the position. LaNeve was then serving as Hegseth’s top military aide, having been plucked for that post from commanding the Eighth Army in South Korea after less than a year in the job.

Toropin writes for the Associated Press.

March 31 (UPI) — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday that helicopter pilots who conducted a flyby of musician Kid Rock‘s Nashville estate over the weekend would not be punished, an abrupt reversal of the U.S. Army’s decision to suspend the Apache helicopter crews amid review of their conduct.

“@USArmy pilots suspension LIFTED,” Hegseth said on X. “No punishment. No investigation.

“Carry on, patriots,” he said.

He also thanked Rock, whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, a vocal ally of President Donald Trump.

“You’re a disgrace,” Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican House of Representative from Illinois and a retired U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard officer, said in an expletive-laced statement responding to Hegseth’s announcement, in which he called the defense secretary an “unqualified clown.”

Rock published a pair of videos to social media on Saturday showing him cheering on a pair of Apache helicopters flying by and hovering near his Nashville estate, which he has called “The Southern White House.”

“This is a level of respect that [expletive] for brains Governor of California will never know,” Rock wrote in the caption to the videos. “God bless America and all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend her.”

After the videos went viral, the U.S. Army announced Monday that it was conducting an administrative review of the incident.

Army spokesman Maj. Montrell Russell confirmed Tuesday that two Apache helicopters from the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade at Fort Campbell, Ky., located about 60 miles north of Nashville, had conducted a flight in the Nashville area that has attracted media and the public’s attention.

“The personnel involved have been suspended from flight duties while the Army reviews the circumstances surrounding the mission, including compliance with relevant [Federal Aviation Administration] regulations, aviation safety protocols and approval requirements,” Russell said in a statement.

Hegseth offered no explanation for the reversal, which came not long after Trump told reporters at the White House that he had not seen the video.

Asked what he thought of the crews’ suspension, Trump said, “Well, they probably shouldn’t have been doing it.”

“Yes, you’re not supposed to be playing games, right? I’d take a look at it,” he said.

“They like Kid Rock. I like Kid Rock. Maybe they were trying to defend him. I don’t know.”

Rock has long been a vocal supporter of Trump and has appeared at the White House and in a recent Health and Human Services Department promotional video where he is seen working out bare-chested with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy.

He has also lashed out at Trump’s critics, notably California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

NASHVILLE — The crews of two AH-64 Apache helicopters that hovered next to Kid Rock’s swimming pool while he clapped and saluted Saturday have been suspended from flying pending an investigation of their actions, a U.S. Army spokesperson said Tuesday.

The suspension is a discretionary, but not unusual, step when an investigation is underway, Maj. Montrell Russell said.

“The Army has confirmed that on March 28, two Apache helicopters from the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade at Fort Campbell conducted a flight in the Nashville area that has attracted public and media attention,” according to a statement from the Army on Tuesday. The Army is reviewing “the circumstances surrounding the mission, including compliance with relevant FAA regulations, aviation safety protocol, and approval requirements.”

Kid Rock, an entertainer who is an outspoken supporter of President Trump, told WKRN-TV on Monday that it’s not uncommon for helicopters from nearby Ft. Campbell to fly near his home. He said he is a big supporter of the military and he’s performed for troops overseas in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries.

“I think they know this is a pretty friendly spot,” he said. He noted that at Thanksgiving he was at Ft. Campbell, a sprawling Army base on the Tennessee-Kentucky border, with Vice President JD Vance. “I’ve talked to some of these pilots. I’ve told them, ‘You guys see me waving when you come by the house?’ I’m like, ‘You guys are always welcome to cruise by my house, any time,’” he said.

Kid Rock posted two short videos Saturday on social media. Each shows a helicopter hovering alongside his swimming pool while the entertainer claps, salutes and raises his fist in the air. One post included a caption by Kid Rock disparaging Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a frequent Trump critic.

In the videos, Kid Rock stands next to a replica of the Statue of Liberty and a sign by the pool that reads, “The Southern White House.” His home on a hill overlooking Nashville was built to resemble the White House.

The helicopters were on a training mission when they stopped by Kid Rock’s house, said Maj. Jonathon Bless, public affairs officer for the 101st Airborne Division. The helicopters also flew over a “No Kings” protest against Trump in downtown Nashville, but Bless said their presence had nothing to do with the protest.

Kid Rock said he thought it was “really cool” that they stopped to hover at his house.

“If it makes their day a little brighter for their service to our country, protecting us, I think that’s a great thing,” he said.

Asked about possible repercussions for the crews, he said, “I think they’re going to be all right. My buddy’s the commander in chief.”

Loller writes for the Associated Press.

Hezbollah attempts to make Lebanon ground invasion ‘costly’ for Israeli army as it continues its advance.

The Israeli military has said four soldiers were killed in combat in southern Lebanon, where its forces are clashing with Hezbollah fighters after launching a ground invasion of the country.

An army statement on Tuesday named three soldiers from the same battalion who “fell during combat”. In a separate statement, it said another soldier had been killed in the same incident and two others wounded, without naming them.

Ten Israeli soldiers have been reported killed since fighting between Israel and Hezbollah flared up on March 2, following a United States-Israeli joint attack on Iran. More than 1,200 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, and more than a million displaced.

This comes a day after the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said two peacekeepers were killed “when an explosion of unknown origin destroyed their vehicle” near the southern Lebanese village of Bani Haiyyan. Another peacekeeper was killed by a projectile on Sunday near the southern Lebanese village of Aadchit el-Qsair.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday ordered the military to expand its invasion in southern Lebanon, pushing deeper to extend what he calls a “buffer zone” reaching the Litani River.

Israel’s far-right ministers have urged Netanyahu to annex southern Lebanon, as the military destroys bridges and homes to cut the area off from the rest of the country.

Al Jazeera’s Lebanon correspondent Zeina Khodr said Monday night marked a new escalation as Israel opened a new front in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, targeting roads that link towns known to be Hezbollah strongholds and strategic supply lines for the group.

“In the past weeks, [the Israeli army] hit bridges over the Litani, now they are trying to isolate the west Bekaa from southern Lebanon,” Khodr said, reporting from Beirut.

“Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem made it very clear they know the imbalance of power. They are not going to be able to stop this invasion, and the Israeli army will most likely reach until the Litani River, but they will not make it easy for them to consolidate control,” she continued.

“What Hezbollah is trying to do is make this a costly war for Israel.”

The escalation in Lebanon comes amid the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, which has killed more than 1,340 people since February 28.

The Israel Hayom newspaper on Monday reported that Netanyahu told senior US officials that any future agreement between the US and Tehran would not stop Israel’s war in Lebanon.

Israel’s far-right Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich last week said in an Israeli radio interview that the war in Lebanon “needs to end with a different reality entirely”, which includes a “change of Israel’s borders”.