I - On Defense Podcast

For review:
1. A U.S. F-15E fighter jet was shot down over Iran on Friday, and one crew member from the plane was later rescued by American forces, U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News.  
The F-15E is flown by a two-member crew, and the search for the second crew member, a weapons system officer, is continuing, two U.S. officials said. 
An A-10 Warthog was part of the search and rescue mission when it took fire and was damaged. The Warthog pilot ejected over the Persian Gulf and was successfully recovered, according to the officials.
2. Current mediation efforts led by regional countries, including Pakistan, to broker a ceasefire between the United States and Iran have reportedly reached a dead end.
Iran has officially told mediators that it is unwilling to meet US officials in Islamabad in the coming days and considers US demands unacceptable.
3. US President Donald Trump on Friday claimed that the United States can “easily” open the Strait of Hormuz with “a little more time,” and suggested that Iran’s power plants were next on his target list, as the US military shifted to striking civilian infrastructure.
4. A senior Israeli military official said Friday that while the Israel Defense Forces aims to significantly weaken Hezbollah and remove the threat the terror group poses to residents of northern Israel, the prospect of fully disarming the group was unrealistic and not a “required goal” of the army’s ongoing ground offensive.
The Israeli military later clarified in a statement that it was still committed to a “long-term objective” of disarming the terror group.
5. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday accused Russia of escalating its attacks on Ukraine days before Easter as he spoke by phone with Pope Leo XIV during the latest aerial barrage by Moscow.
 
 "At the very moment of our conversation, the Russians attacked Ukraine yet again," Zelensky said, adding that "the Russians have only intensified their strikes, turning what should have been silence in the skies into an Easter escalation."
 
Ukraine's President Zelensky had said earlier that Kyiv was ready for a truce over the Easter holidays, but the Kremlin said it had not received any proposals. 
6. In the coming weeks, the Pentagon is expected to release in-depth FY27 budget justification documents detailing how it wants to funnel $1.5 trillion to specific programs next year. 
The Department of the Navy, comprising the Navy and Marine Corps, gets the largest share of the planned spending in FY27, with $150 billion — $126 billion in the budget request and another $24 billion planned in reconciliation. 
The Department of the Air Force, which includes both the Air and Space Forces, gets $101.2 billion, with $83.4 billion in the budget request and $17.6 billion in reconciliation. 
And the Army brings up the rear, sitting at $60.5 billion total, of which $36 billion is from the budget request and $24 billion is from reconciliation.

For review:
1. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has asked Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George to step down and take immediate retirement, sources familiar with the decision told CBS News. 
2. The U.S. military is poised to double its A-10 presence in the Middle East, as the  close air support plane plays a key role in combating Iranian boats and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq as part of Operation Epic Fury against Iran.
3. US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Israel and the United States were close to completing their key objectives in the war against the Iranian regime and that the conflict would soon be over, without providing an exact timeline.
4. A US military option to seize some 450 kilograms of highly enriched uranium would reportedly require flying in excavation equipment and building a runway for cargo planes to fly off with the radioactive material.
US President Donald Trump was presented with the plan by his military over the past week, two people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.
5.  Israel came under attack from Iran, Yemen’s Houthis and Lebanon’s Hezbollah on Thursday, as Tehran and its proxies increased their assaults amid the Passover holiday.
6. An overnight Israeli Navy strike in Beirut killed the commander of Hezbollah’s Southern Front.
The strike in the Lebanese capital killed Hajj Yusuf Ismail Hashem, who took over the Southern Front from Ali Karaki in September 2024, after the latter was killed alongside Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli strike.
7. A senior Houthi official warned that the Iran-backed terror group in Yemen could move to shutter the Bab el-Mandeb Strait if any Gulf countries join the US and Israeli strikes against Iran.
The strait, a key shipping chokepoint and narrow passageway that controls sea traffic toward the Suez Canal, is located at the southern mouth of the Red Sea, between Houthi-controlled Yemen and Djibouti.
8. About 40 countries discussed joint action to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to stop Iran holding “the global economy hostage,” Britain said Thursday, after US President Donald Trump said securing the waterway was for others to resolve.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said Iran’s “recklessness” in blockading the Persian Gulf waterway was “hitting our global economic security” as she chaired the virtual meeting, which included France, Germany, Canada, the United Arab Emirates and India, but not the US.
9. The Trump administration plans to propose a $1.5 trillion defense budget for fiscal 2027, broken into a $1.15 trillion base budget request and an additional $350 billion from a forthcoming reconciliation bill, according to a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget.
It will mark the first time the base budget defense spending has hit the $1 trillion mark.

For review:
1. The US Central Command confirms that CENTCOM chief Adm. Brad Cooper visited Israel this week and met with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir.
2. The aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush deployed Tuesday and is slated to go to the Middle East along with three destroyers, two U.S. officials said. The carrier strike group consists of more than 6,000 Sailors.
3. US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said Iran does not have to agree to a deal to end the ongoing US-Israeli war with the Islamic Republic, as he stated that the United States will probably wrap up the war in two or three weeks.
4. China and Pakistan presented on Tuesday a new initiative for ending the war in Iran that includes an immediate ceasefire and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
5. Gulf allies of the United States, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are urging US President Donald Trump to continue prosecuting the war against Iran, arguing that Tehran hasn’t been weakened enough by the monthlong US-Israeli bombing campaign, according to US, Gulf, and Israeli officials.
6. The day after Spain announced it was closing off its airspace to US planes involved in the Iran war, senior US officials seemingly called into question a fundamental pillar of the NATO alliance: collective defense.
7. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he will ask US mediators to relay his offer of an Easter truce to Russia, halting attacks on the country’s energy facilities, amid an ongoing deadlock in peace talks.

For review:
1. Hundreds of U.S. Special Operations Forces, including Navy SEALs and Army Rangers, are now in the Middle East, as well as thousands of Marines and Army paratroopers, according to sources familiar with the deployments.
The NYT first reported the forces had arrived in the region. 
2. US President Donald Trump said on Monday that progress was being made in “serious discussions” with Tehran about ending the war, but warned that the US would destroy Iranian energy sites and infrastructure if a deal is not reached in the near future.
3. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that the war on Iran has achieved more than half its aims, without putting a timeline on when it would end.
4. A month into the war with Iran, the Israeli military has almost completed bombing all of the targets it defined for itself at the start of the conflict, and has now been ordered by Israel’s political leadership to shift to hitting “economic” targets of the Iranian regime.
5. Israeli PM Netanyahu announced on Sunday that Israel would capture additional territory in southern Lebanon to expand a security zone on Israel’s northern border.
6. Iran on Monday defied Lebanon's expulsion order for its ambassador by saying he would stay.
Lebanese officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 
7. The Japanese destroyer JS Chokai is now capable of launching U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles, making it the first Japanese warship that can strike targets beyond 1,000 kilometers.
Japan committed to acquiring 400 Tomahawks last year to equip its eight Aegis destroyers as part of a larger standoff capability.
8. Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) has rolled out the first production KF-21 fighter jet, less than two years after construction on it began and four years after the first prototype aircraft made it maiden flight.
The KF-21 is considered a 4.5 generation fighter jet and will be equipped with a mix of indigenous and Western sensors and weapons in service, including the KGGB precision glide bomb and European MBDA Meteor air-to-air missile.

For review:
1. US President Trump said Friday “Cuba is next. President Trump did not specify what he planned to do with Cuba, telling the media to “disregard that statement” before repeating “Cuba’s next.”
2.  US Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group & USMC 31st MEU Arrives CENTCOM AOR.
3. Pakistan’s prime minister said he had a “detailed” call with Iran’s president on Saturday, as foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey prepared to meet in Islamabad for talks on the war in the Middle East. The US and Iran are not expected to be present.
Top diplomats from Riyadh, Cairo and Ankara are due in the Pakistani capital Sunday and Monday,” the Pakistan foreign ministry said.
4. Yemen’s Houthis launched a ballistic missile attack at southern Israel on Saturday morning, triggering sirens in Beersheba, in their first offensive action since the start of the war.
5. The Israel Defense Forces assessed on Saturday that it would finish targeting nearly all of Iran’s key military industry sites in the coming days.
6. Two soldiers were seriously wounded and seven others were moderately hurt during clashes with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon on Friday and overnight into Saturday, Israel Defense Forces said, as the terror group continued to pound northern Israel with rocket and drone attacks.
7. Last year represented the first time that all NATO countries met or exceeded the 2 percent benchmark on defense spending, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte revealed during a press conference on March 26, something he largely attributed to US President Donald Trump’s relentless pressure to end allies’ free-riding.
8. The US State Department has approved a proposed sale to Japan of equipment and services to support its program to develop hypersonic weapons.
The Foreign Military Sales (FMS) announcement on Wednesday flagged the possible sale to Japan in support of its indigenous Hyper Velocity Gliding Projectiles (HVGP) program, in a deal that would cost an estimated $340 million.
9. Last year, Army Materiel Command's LTG Christopher Mohan told Breaking Defense the Army was considering jettisoning the mobile cache in the Indo-Pacific, known as APS-3, in favor of dispersing the equipment throughout the INDOPACOM theater.  The reasoning behind the potential decision derived from the Army “doubling down on the INDOPACOM from a theater standpoint,” he said then.
LTG Mohan: “The idea is to put much of that ground based, and we started doing that in several countries overseas,” Mohan said in an interview. “The end state will be that we will have a much, much reduced APS afloat.”
10. The Trump administration will send its fiscal 2027 budget request to Congress on April 3, an Office of Management and Budget spokesperson confirmed today.