The president cited national security concerns for the move, echoing the rationale offered for the roughly $400 million ballroom complex being built on the site of the White House’s former East Wing, which was demolished to make way for the project. He did not identify any specific threats.

The projects are part of Trump’s ambitious effort to reshape Washington, including a push to add his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The plans have drawn criticism from preservationists and others who argue they could alter or diminish historic landmarks.

In a social media post, Trump said that at the “strong request” of the military he had agreed to turn the 250-foot (76-meter) arch “into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.”

The White House and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Federal Aviation Administration said last week that the arch would not pose a hazard to aircraft but would be required to have an “eternal flame” on top, clearing an aviation hurdle for the arch, which Trump proposed to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary.

Aviation experts have raised safety concerns given its proximity to Reagan Washington National Airport, while veterans have sued to block the arch, arguing it would destroy the historic sightline between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

The concern, critics say, is not limited to weapons that can select and engage targets on their own.

At the hearing, titled “Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain: Implications for Human Rights,” witnesses told members of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission that AI can influence human decisions leading to a strike while leaving the individual formally responsible for the final call.

“The approval button alone does not demonstrate the control,” Anna Mysyshyn, a Ukrainian AI-governance researcher, told lawmakers.

The issue comes as the Pentagon pushes to use AI to accelerate military decision-making. The Pentagon’s 2023 AI adoption strategy identified “fast, precise and resilient kill chains” as a desired outcome, while its 2026 AI strategy calls for becoming an “AI-first” warfighting force by redesigning military workflows and operational concepts around current AI capabilities.

Mysyshyn questioned whether a person supervising multiple AI-enabled systems can recognize an incorrect recommendation and intervene fast enough before harm occurs. She cited Ukraine as an example of AI compressing decisions from hours to minutes.

In many scenarios, a human making the final decision does not necessarily have enough information, time or the ability to challenge the system’s recommendation, she said.

The Defense Department’s 2023 directive on autonomy in weapon systems requires autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.

Wednesday’s testimony focused on a broader question: whether that judgment remains meaningful if AI is influencing targeting faster than a human can authenticate.

Amanda Klasing, national director of government relations and advocacy at Amnesty International USA, warned that AI can compress the military “kill chain” in ways that make it difficult to determine whether meaningful human discernment actually occurred before a strike.

Joseph Chapa, a former military officer and scholar of military ethics, argued that the debate should not focus solely on how autonomous a system is. He urged policymakers to consider whether an AI system relies on statistical inference, what happens when it fails in a particular operational environment and whether its decisions can be audited afterward.

Statistical AI systems can fail differently from traditional software, Chapa said, including producing substantially different outputs from relatively small changes in inputs. More complex systems can also make it difficult to reconstruct how a particular recommendation was produced after the fact.

He called for greater AI education across the military, including specialized training for personnel working with targeting and intelligence systems.

Witnesses on Wednesday also pointed to a larger accountability problem: determining what happens when an AI-assisted decision results in civilian harm.

The Defense Department established its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan in 2022, including a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence intended to serve as a hub for analysis and training. Federal law requires the Pentagon to operate the center.

But a Defense Department inspector general review released in May assessed the department’s implementation of the civilian-harm framework and found problems including the loss or reassignment of personnel, the end of funding for a civilian-harm data-management platform and the failure of a senior steering committee to continue meeting.

That matters in the case of AI because, as Klasing noted, the military currently has limited ability to determine whether AI may contribute to improper targeting of civilians.

On the first day of the U.S.-Iran war, a Tomahawk cruise missile struck Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, southern Iran. At least 168 people were killed — more than 100 of them under the age of 12, according to UN and Iranian officials.

The school building sat fewer than 100 yards from a long-time Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval installation and was previously located within the IRGC compound perimeter until a wall appeared between 2013 and 2016, according to an analysis of satellite imagery by Amnesty International.

By the time the U.S. and Israel launched their first strikes on Feb. 28, the school had been established several years prior. It was active on social media and had its own website, a Reuters investigation found.

More than 120 House Democrats sent a letter to the Pentagon on March 12, demanding clarity on whether artificial intelligence, “including the use of the Maven Smart System, [was] used to identify the Shajareh Tayyebeh school as a target.”

U.S. military investigators in the wake of the incident stated that the strike was likely carried out by U.S. forces. The Pentagon, however, has still not released its investigative findings.

Klasing proposed adding information about AI involvement to the Pentagon’s annual civilian-casualty reports required under Section 1057 of the National Defense Authorization Act. The existing reporting requirement calls for information about civilian casualty mitigation efforts and investigations, but does not specifically require the department to identify whether AI contributed to an incident.

Steve Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Pentagon should collect data from military operations and conduct after-action reviews to determine whether AI-assisted systems accurately identified intended targets and whether errors contributed to civilian casualties.

“A bigger question is to what extent is the Pentagon collecting data and verifying the target accuracy of all these 1000s of strikes?” Feldstein said.

Feldstein also cautioned against treating AI itself as the source of every potential problem. AI can be used to help verify intelligence, detect changes in imagery and prioritize defensive responses to threats such as drones and ballistic missiles.

But if a human-influenced system is built around assumptions that certain demographic traits make someone a lawful target, Mysyshyn said, AI would not correct that underlying premise.

Feldstein similarly pointed to the rules humans establish before an AI system is used. If commanders determine that a particular level of civilian harm is acceptable in pursuit of a military objective, he said, the machine is operating within a human-defined framework.

The challenge is particularly acute when systems operate faster than people can meaningfully assess recommendations.

The commission opened Wednesday’s hearing with an example from Iraq. In 2004, Army squad leader Nick Ellison encountered two young men firing a machine gun from a car during a census patrol in Kirkuk.

Ellison made eye contact with one of the men, saw panic and ordered his soldiers to hold fire. The men turned out to be brothers of a newly married groom, and the gunfire was celebratory.

Mysyshyn said testing should examine bias, reliability, civilian protection, realistic time pressure, whether operators can interrupt systems and whether decisions can be traced throughout an AI system’s lifecycle.

Chapa said some AI systems may be difficult to audit after the fact, while Deborah Brown of Human Rights Watch said information about military AI use has often emerged through investigative reporting and whistleblowers rather than government disclosures.

The growing challenge, according to witnesses, is no longer making a machine pull a trigger, but whether the human who approves the trigger pull has enough time, information and authority to make a meaningful choice before disaster.

Military Times reporter Katie Livingstone contributed to this report.

“The trends are moving in the right direction,” Jerry McGinn, who co-authored the study for the Center for Strategic and International Analysis think tank, told Defense News.

However, the study — described as a progress report on reforms to the defense manufacturing and acquisition system — still found numerous problems with ramping up and sustaining wartime production.

For example, “according to several measures — manufacturing lead times, critical munitions and materials stockpiles, and supply chain security — the U.S. industrial base has a long way to go to achieve resilience,” warned the analysis by CSIS’s Center for the Industrial Base.

CSIS did find measurable improvements since November 2025, when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth vowed to “transform the entire acquisition system to operate on a wartime footing.”

Hegseth also promised to “inspire American industry to become a wartime industrial base that focuses on speed and volume.”

Most striking is the number of new companies in the defense field.

“Roughly 10,000 new firms have entered the market in the past two years and nontraditional companies received over $120 billion in contract obligations in FY 2025, adding competition and innovation to the sector,” CSIS noted. “Munitions contract obligations have risen 330 percent since FY 2010. Spurred by this increased demand and depleted inventories, the Pentagon is signing multiyear agreements with munitions producers and suppliers on a historic scale.”

The military is also responding to depleted stockpiles of expensive guided weapons that have been rapidly consumed by the Iran and Ukraine wars.

The Pentagon’s 2027 budget request for munitions allocated 49% to low-cost munitions — defined as costing less than $600,000 apiece — rising to 70% by 2031.

The U.S. is also strengthening its defense supply chain, such as “multiyear procurement agreements, direct-to-supplier investments, and leaner acquisition pathways,” as well as investing in defense companies such as L3Harris Missile Solutions, according to CSIS.

However, while this signals government commitment to defense production, it “also complicates competitive dynamics within the industry as new entrants and established suppliers alike seek to meet rapidly growing demand for munitions at scale.”

Also notable is federal investment in rare earths, which has seen production soar from 95 tons in 2022, to 8,900 tons in 2025. Nonetheless, “the erosion of domestic rare earth manufacturing capacity and the rise of Chinese control took decades to unfold, however, and it will take several years of enduring effort for the United States and its allies to build, scale, and sustain the production capacity of these key defense inputs.”

Exports of U.S. arms, or cooperative multinational projects such as the F-35 fighter, have also become a pillar of America’s defense industry. Foreign Military Sales, or FMS, have more than tripled, from less than $20 billion in 2015 to more than $80 billion in 2025.

The Trump administration wants to take this further with the “America First Arms Transfer Strategy,” launched in February 2026.

“The United States will use foreign purchases and capital to support domestic reindustrialization, expand production capacity, and improve the resilience of the United States defense industrial base,” the White House executive order declared.

Ultimately, the federal government can control defense production through the products it demands, the prices it is willing to pay, and the incentives it offers.

“It’s a monopsony,” McGinn said. “Government sets the market. Government can regulate the market. So, if the government wants different outcomes, it changes how it buys.”

The search comes after dozens of MQ-9s were swatted out of the sky during the Iran war, according to a May 13 Congressional Research Service report.

With the Air Force currently possessing about 135 Reapers — which cost approximately $30 million apiece — such a loss rate is not sustainable, especially against a force like Iran, whose air defenses are less sophisticated than those of China or Russia.

“The Joint Force’s reliance on low-density, high-value ‘exquisite’ (>$30 million) manned and unmanned aircraft is unsustainable against adversaries utilizing layered defenses enabled by increasingly low-cost antiaircraft capabilities,” warned the Defense Innovation Unit solicitation for a new drone, which the Pentagon wants to “execute missions that the MQ-9A performs today.”

Rather than build a better Reaper, DIU is opting for an expendable replacement. The Massed Modular Aircraft, or MMA, project aims to develop a UAV designed to operate in such large numbers that it can absorb heavy losses and still overwhelm enemy defenses.

Particularly of interest is the size of the MMA. Drone swarms may be the next big thing in unmanned warfare, but generally those hordes are made up of small, inexpensive UAVs with limited range and payload.

But the DIU solicitation envisions a drone that has long range and a heavy payload — and is still inexpensive enough for mass production. The solicitation calls for a payload of at least 2,800 pounds, a bit less than the MQ-9’s 3,800-pound capacity.

The MMA should also have an unrefueled combat range of at least 2,300 nautical miles, according to the solicitation, and a one-way transfer range of at least 8,000 nautical miles. Additionally, the drone should reach speeds of at least 200 miles per hour and have the ability to operate from a 6,000-foot runway or improvised airstrips.

The DIU solicitation states that the drone should have “sufficient available size, weight, power (25kW), and cooling (5kW) to host a variety of internal and/or external payloads,” with a level of autonomous operations that would allow one operator to control several drones.

The solicitation does not specify the MMA’s dimensions, though the specifications suggest a drone comparable in size to the MQ-9. It also did not list a desired price point, though presumably it would be less than the $30 million price tag of an MQ-9.

The timeline for the MMA project, meanwhile, is ambitious. DIU is calling for “full-scale prototype flight testing within 21 months of award, with a targeted Initial Operating Capability (IOC) in FY2031. IOC for MMA is envisioned as 20 mission-ready aircraft delivered to an operational unit, able to be deployed.”

Pentagon solicitations continue to reflect a mindfulness of lessons from the Ukraine War, as well as the experiences during the Iran War. In both conflicts, the defender exhausted interceptors before the attacker ran out of drones.

“Keeping a constant airborne MMA presence to launch weapons, gather intelligence, perform electronic warfare missions, or relay communications will force an adversary to stay on the defensive,” DIU said. “This relentless pressure will exhaust the adversary, forcing them to burn through expensive anti-aircraft missiles and resources faster than they can be replaced.”

Crafted by architect Kengo Kuma in partnership with the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation, the memorial’s design is the culmination of eight years of input from 20,000 Americans, including veterans from every branch of service and every conflict since World War II, according to a foundation release.

According to the memorial’s description, visitors will first encounter steel and stone relics recovered from the 9/11 attacks at each of the site’s three entrances, “marking where the journey began,” the release states.

In a primary section coined “the embrace,” a classically inspired amphitheater rises over the path below and features an arch made of reclaimed steel from the era’s combat operations.

The arch, which will also be adorned with native vegetation, is designed to filter light and will be oriented to align with Section 60 in Arlington National Cemetery, the resting place of roughly 1,000 service members killed in the post-9/11 wars.

Below the arch, a predominantly marble “path of honor” includes embedded boot prints “that represent the weight of war and the varied experiences of those who served and their families,” the release says. The path will also connect to adjacent memorials on the National Mall.

Extending from the footprint paths are shallow reflecting pools in which visitors can dip their feet before stepping back onto the stone to leave footprints of their own, an “interactive component [that] offers visitors the chance to walk alongside a loved one once more,” the foundation says.

“This design was shaped by history and held sacred from the beginning — forged by sacrifice and informed by the voices of warriors and their families,” Michael “Rod” Rodriguez, president and CEO of the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation and a retired U.S. Army Green Beret, said in the release.

“Throughout history, societies have built sacred places to welcome their warriors home, places where a grateful people can say, ‘We see you. We honor you. You are not forgotten.’” Rodriguez added. “The GWOT generations deserve that same enduring tribute. Today, we take one step closer to welcoming them home.”

In addition to input gathered since 2018, a 23-member advisory council comprising Gold Star family members, veterans and their families worked alongside designers to craft what the foundation has called a “living place … that will illuminate at night and invite reflection, healing and unity for generations to come.”

As the site’s architect, Kuma’s work on the memorial resonated on a deeply personal level, he said in a recent interview. The artist lost his close friend Yoichi Sugiyama, who worked for Fuji Bank, in the Sept. 11 attack at the World Trade Center.

“This memorial is not an abstract commission for our team, it is a sacred responsibility,” Kuma said in the release. “Our role was not to impose a design, but to listen. The voices of those who served and the families who stood beside them became our source of inspiration. We wanted to create a place of reflection and connection, a living memorial where nature, light and the materials of this war come together as an embrace for a grateful nation.”

Foundation officials are slated to meet over the coming months with various city planning commissions to finalize design approval, according to the foundation’s proposed timeline.

With approval, the foundation is aiming for a 2027 groundbreaking and a project completion date of late 2028.

In a letter shared with Reuters by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, U.S. Central Command said it had “received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater.”

The message, sent on April 14, offered no further specifics, but CENTCOM’s area of responsibility includes the Gulf, where U.S. forces are facing off against the Iranian military over the Strait of Hormuz.

The disclosure was the first official confirmation that U.S. forces had been targeted in an active war zone, Wyden and a bipartisan group of legislators said in a letter sent on Thursday to the Pentagon.

“Commercial location data can be used to identify where U.S. troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs, as well as for counterintelligence purposes,” the letter warned.

Wyden said in a statement that it was time to “start treating the adtech industry as a national security threat.”

The Pentagon did not return messages seeking comment. The lawmakers said in their letter that their efforts to obtain more information from military officials about the reported targeting had been unsuccessful.

LOCATION DATA TRADE FUELS PRIVACY CONCERNS

Location data is widely used in digital advertising, which is a key source of revenue for many tech companies. Such data is typically collected from smartphones or other devices by apps or service providers before being sold to data brokers who collate and resell the data, sometimes via complex networks of intermediaries.

Although the threat to privacy inherent in selling the details of people’s day-to-day movements on the open market has long been a matter of public discussion, its potential as a national security risk has recently drawn concern as well.

As far back as 2016, one U.S. defense contractor was able to leverage commercially available location data to track special operations forces from their bases in the United States to a sensitive staging post in Syria, according to an account first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal.

More recently, journalists at Wired and two German news outlets drew on billions of coordinates collected by a data broker to expose the granular comings and goings of people stationed at or around 11 U.S. military and intelligence sites in Germany.

Two groups that represent digital advertisers, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Association of National Advertisers, did not return emails seeking comment.

The letter from U.S. lawmakers to the Pentagon said that, given what military officials know about the trade in location data, they should have acted faster to protect their personnel, for example by disabling the unique advertising ID attached to military-issued devices, automatically turning off location sharing on smartphones in the field and steering staff away from Google’s Chrome web browser toward more privacy-focused alternatives.

One of the letter’s cosigners was U.S. Representative Pat Harrigan, a North Carolina Republican who was formerly a U.S. Army Special Forces officer.

Harrigan said that browsers like Chrome “are built from the ground up to collect and share user data” and that every day they remain on government-issued devices “is another day we are handing our adversaries a weapon against our own troops.”

In a statement, Alphabet’s Google said that Chrome had “industry leading security.” The company added that it had “long advocated for stronger rules and safeguards against data brokers.”

Within weeks of the United States launching its bombing campaign, SpaceX executives met Pentagon officials and argued the military had been paying about $5,000 for connection per terminal while effectively using a higher tier of service worth closer to $25,000, according to two sources familiar with the matter and Pentagon documents reviewed by Reuters.

The disagreement over Starlink’s use on LUCAS suicide drones — a cheap U.S. model comparable to Iran’s Shahed that can circle over a target area before diving to detonate on impact — is part of increasing tensions between SpaceX and the Pentagon over Starlink pricing in recent months, according to interviews with five people familiar with the matter and the documents.

The Pentagon, which is seeking to help Iranian citizens bypass government-imposed communications blackouts, has also been at odds with SpaceX over pricing for a plan to provide the populace direct-to-cell connections with Starlink akin to 5G service, two of the sources said.

The ongoing disputes, which have not previously been reported, underscore how the Pentagon’s growing reliance on SpaceX is handing Musk greater leverage over a critical layer of U.S. national security – at a time when SpaceX is seeking to boost revenue ahead of an IPO next month that could be among the biggest in history.

Unlike consumer Starlink terminals available at stores including Walmart, SpaceX sells a military-specific version called Starshield to the Pentagon under a 2023 agreement. Starshield terminals can connect to both commercial Starlink satellites and a separate, more secure constellation, also called Starshield, according to a person familiar with the matter.

SpaceX argued the LUCAS drones were operating under conditions that aligned more closely with its aviation tier subscription rather than a lower priced land or mobility service. Pentagon officials argued that the $25,000 price tag — a monthly fee — was designed for aircraft, not kamikaze drones that used Starlink connection for a matter of minutes or hours, according to one of the sources.

The Pentagon, which was ramping up strikes on Iran, ultimately agreed to pay SpaceX’s proposed price increase, almost doubling the cost of each LUCAS drone. The Pentagon was initially paying about $30,000 per unit.

SpaceX didn’t respond to a comment request.

The Pentagon declined to comment on Reuters reporting that SpaceX increased its pricing, its decision to pay, or the plan to provide Iranian citizens with Starlink cell service. In a statement, a Pentagon official said the office responsible for acquiring the terminals, the Commercial Satellite Communications Office, is working to find other competitors.

“The Department of War is committed to fostering a competitive environment for commercial satellite communications,” an official said.

After the Reuters story was published, Elon Musk called it “false” without elaborating in a post on X. He added that the civilian Starlink system had been improperly used “for military purposes.” In a separate post, he said “the company” was at fault, not the Pentagon.

A spokesperson for Spektreworks, which makes the LUCAS drone, directed all questions to the Pentagon.

In a post on X, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Reuters reporting was “wrong” without providing further information. SpaceX “remains a strong and valued partner to the Department of War,” he wrote.

But no other company provides a comparable alternative to Starlink, which has become an increasingly critical tool in modern warfare since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The satellite network provides global coverage, enabling battlefield communications and precision targeting even in remote areas. SpaceX’s constellation of roughly 10,000 satellites accounts for more than 60% of those in orbit — dwarfing the constellations being built by other companies, including OneWeb and Amazon Leo.

The risks of reliance on Starlink were first thrown into sharp focus during the Ukraine war, when Musk ordered Starlink service switched off in parts of the country in 2022 as Ukrainian forces advanced on Russian positions, disrupting a key counteroffensive, Reuters previously reported. More recently, U.S. Navy tests were disrupted last summer when a global Starlink outage cut off connection to unmanned military boats, leaving them bobbing in the ocean.

SPACEX HAS U.S. GOVERNMENT ‘OVER A BARREL’

Unlike traditional defense contractors, SpaceX holds greater leverage over the Pentagon because it also has a large commercial market for Starlink, alongside its rocket launch and artificial intelligence businesses, said Clayton Swope, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a national security-focused think tank. SpaceX generates about 20% of its total revenue from the U.S. government, according to an SEC filing.

SpaceX “certainly has the U.S. government over the barrel,” Swope said.

At the outset of the Iran war, Starlink was already a core part of U.S. military operations. In testing and early deployments, it supported a range of systems, from aerial attack drones such as the LUCAS to unmanned surface vessels used for maritime surveillance and strike missions. When the U.S. launched its bombing campaign, Starshield terminals were being used across more than a dozen drone systems, according to a source familiar with the matter.

But tensions between the Pentagon and SpaceX emerged quickly after the U.S. launched its February 28 assault on Iran. On March 1, SpaceX chief Elon Musk responded on X to a user’s post featuring an image of the LUCAS drone that said it “appears to have an integrated Starlink” terminal.

“It is a violation of commercial Starlink terms of service to use the terminal for weapon systems. This applies to all users and is shut down when discovered,” Musk posted. “There is a separate network called Starshield, which is operated by the US government.”

The Pentagon official, in a statement to Reuters, denied any violation of its agreement with SpaceX.

In the days that followed, SpaceX executives met Pentagon officials and argued the military was underpaying for the service, two sources familiar with the matter said.

Although the Pentagon initially agreed to the higher fee for satellite Wi-Fi connections used by attack drones, senior officials including Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg remained uneasy about the arrangement, one of the sources said. Pentagon officials, during an April ceasefire, met to revisit the pricing with Terrence O’Shaughnessy, a retired four-star Air Force general who now leads SpaceX’s defense business.

Still, the Pentagon is currently considering an additional purchase of more than 3,500 Starshield terminal subscriptions, including 100 with the higher-priced aviation tier, according to Pentagon documents reviewed by Reuters. The deal could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue for SpaceX, though Reuters could not determine whether an agreement has been finalized, or what price is being discussed.

SPACEX PRICES IRK PENTAGON

Starlink has also proved crucial to other operations. After Iran cracked down on protests in January, killing thousands of people, the Trump administration smuggled in more than 6,000 Starlink terminals to provide internet access to citizens, the Wall Street Journal previously reported.

As the war intensified, however, Iranian authorities confiscated the terminals and deployed jamming devices across major cities to disrupt connections, according to a source familiar with the matter. Within a week of the conflict beginning, Pentagon officials began discussions with SpaceX about deploying direct-to-cell service that could bypass those disruptions, two people familiar with the matter said. The capability, similar to a 5G connection, would allow users to connect without terminals on the ground.

SpaceX, which generated $11.4 billion in revenue from Starlink in 2025, proposed charging as much as $500 million to launch the capability, along with a $100 million monthly fee to operate it, according to one of the people and Pentagon documents – prompting alarm from defense officials over the price.

Reuters could not determine whether an agreement has been reached.

Led by Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, the group will visit Canada, Greenland, Norway and Iceland to “examine U.S. and allied Arctic security, infrastructure and research capabilities amid growing geopolitical competition in the region from Russia and China,” according to a press release.

The itinerary is set to include briefings at Pituffik Space Base in Greenland on Arctic defense and strategic competition in the region.

President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to expand Washington’s strategic footprint in Greenland. Earlier this year, Trump suggested that U.S. forces could seize the semiautonomous Danish territory on national security grounds.

His push elicited a sharp rebuke from officials in both Greenland and Denmark, with the latter rejecting any potential for negotiation or territorial acquisition. The episode also roiled relations between the Trump administration and traditional European allies more broadly.

The all-female delegation that sets off on Friday is also expected to meet with U.S. military personnel, Indigenous communities, allied officials, Arctic researchers and regional leaders on emerging operational and strategic dynamics across the region.

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire make up the Democratic side of the delegation, while Sens. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Katie Britt of Alabama, and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi represent the GOP.

Rubio, speaking to reporters following a meeting with foreign ministers in Sweden on Friday, contended that the raison d’etre of NATO was undermined when allies refused to allow the U.S. to use installations on their soil during a war.

“One of the arguments I always made was that these bases in the region provided us logistical options that we wouldn’t otherwise have,” Rubio said. “And when some of those bases are denied to you — during a conflict that we’re involved in — then you question whether that value is still there.”

The U.S.-NATO relationship has been increasingly strained in the wake of the war in Iran, which began on Feb. 28. President Donald Trump believes that NATO allies should have offered much more assistance, especially with regard to reopening the Strait of Hormuz. In basic terms, several of those nations say the war, started by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu without their consultation, is not their problem.

“I was never swayed by NATO,” Trump said in an interview in April. “I always knew they were a paper tiger.”

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has moved to scale back its military footprint across Europe, a shift Rubio emphasized predated tensions over Iran.

But some contradictory signals have been sent. On Thursday, Trump announced that the United States would deploy 5,000 additional troops to Poland — the same number of troops the Pentagon said earlier this month would be withdrawn from Germany.

Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski welcomed Thursday’s reversal, while his Swedish counterpart, Maria Malmer Stenegard, told reporters the U.S. position “is confusing indeed, and not always easy to navigate.”

Rubio, for his part, asserted that the United States military has global commitments in the Indo-Pacific, Middle East and Western Hemisphere that it has to meet — and that this requires a constant reevaluation of force posture.

“It’s well understood in the alliance that the United States’ troop presence in Europe is going to be adjusted,” Rubio said, underscoring that the process is already ongoing. “I’m not saying they’re going to be thrilled about it, but they are certainly aware of it.”

“This is not a punitive thing,” he insisted.

Regardless, Rubio said that Trump’s “disappointment” with the alliance’s response to U.S. operations in Iran will “have to be addressed” at the next NATO leaders’ summit, set for Turkey in July. He suggested that the gathering in Ankara will rank among the most consequential in NATO’s history.

In a short statement, the Defense Commissary Agency said only that the change took effect Wednesday and applied to commissaries worldwide. Commissaries in states or localities that mandate bags fees would still have to comply with those laws.

“The policy, introduced on April 6, which required commissary patrons to pay for single-use plastic and paper bags, has been rescinded,” the statement reads.

In a separate statement, Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., a former Navy helicopter pilot, took credit for the reversal, saying the commissary agency’s decision followed months of advocacy.

Kiggans penned a letter to Anthony Tata, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, and she spoke about the issue directly with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee last week, she said.

“I was deeply frustrated when DeCA announced it would impose a charge for paper and plastic bags — an added cost that complicates a benefit intended to support our service members, retirees and their families,” Kiggans said in a statement. “I appreciate Secretary Hegseth for listening to my concerns and taking swift action to eliminate this fee.”

The policy required commissary customers to pay 5 cents each for plastic bags and 10 cents for paper bags.

Providing the single-use bags costs the commissary agency $17 million per year, spokesperson Keith Desbois said when the agency announced the policy in March.

The commissary agency receives about $1.5 billion per year in taxpayer dollars to operate these discounted grocery stores as a benefit for the military community.

The Defense Department’s goal is an overall savings of 25% compared to commercial stores outside the gate.

Military Times reporter Karen Jowers contributed to this story.