Semaglutide is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat Type 2 diabetes and chronic weight management, but not alcohol use disorder.

VA researchers are studying whether the GLP-1 receptor agonist may affect parts of the brain involved in reward, potentially offering a new treatment option for veterans with moderate or severe alcohol use disorder if proven safe and effective.

The department cautioned veterans not to self-medicate or replace evidence-based alcohol use disorder treatments with GLP-1 medications without first consulting a health care provider.

The study, known as the Cessation or Reduction of Alcohol Consumption in Veterans (CRAVE) trial, will enroll more than 600 veterans ages 18 to 80 at 18 VA medical centers nationwide.

Participants with moderate or severe alcohol use disorder will receive weekly injections of either semaglutide or a placebo for 24 weeks, followed by a safety evaluation. Researchers will measure changes in alcohol consumption, overall health and quality of life.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have increasingly studied whether GLP-1 medications, originally developed for diabetes and later approved for obesity, could also help treat substance use disorders.

VA cited an analysis published in March that found patients taking GLP-1 medications experienced lower rates of alcohol use disorder and other substance use disorders than similar patients taking other diabetes medications.

The department said larger, controlled clinical trials are needed to determine whether semaglutide is safe and effective for treating alcohol use disorder.

In an official statement, VA Secretary Doug Collins said, “By exploring emerging treatment options like the use of a GLP-1 for AUD, we aim to expand the tools available to help Veterans take control of their health and recovery.”

Recruitment began July 28. Veterans interested in participating can contact their local VA medical center or search for the trial on ClinicalTrials.gov.

According to budget documents released this week by the Trump administration, the VA would receive a record $488 billion, including $205.6 billion in discretionary funding for programs and operations and $282.6 billion for mandatory spending — the column that covers disability benefits, pensions, insurance and other requirements.

Highlights in the discretionary spending proposal include $500 million to build permanent facilities for homeless veterans at the new National Center for Warrior Independence in West Los Angeles, $1.3 billion to construct a VA medical center in Manchester, New Hampshire, nearly $2 billion to replace the VA medical center in Indianapolis and $30 million to buy land for a new medical center in San Antonio.

The budget supports the VA’s proposed redesign of its community care contracts and programs and planned changes to the management structure at the Veterans Health Administration. It also funds the restart of the VA’s electronic medical record system program that has been on hold since 2022. The VA plans to restart the initiative this month at four facilities, with an additional nine joining later this year.

The VA estimates that the fiscal 2027 budget would provide disability compensation to more than 7.4 million veterans and support 9.2 million veterans enrolled in VA health care.

According to the VA’s Budget in Brief documents, the proposal would support 443,327 full-time VA employees — roughly 9,000 fewer than in 2025 but up nearly 6,200 from fiscal 2026.

In a statement laid out in the documents, VA Secretary Doug Collins said the proposal will enable the department to deliver timely care and benefits for all beneficiaries.

“This budget request reflects VA’s efforts to find more effective and efficient ways to serve our mission and maximize our resources,” the document states. “The days of measuring VA’s progress by how much money we spend and how many people we employ, instead of how successfully we serve Veterans, are over.”

President Donald Trump’s $2.2 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2027 includes nearly $1.5 trillion in spending for the Defense Department — up 44% from fiscal 2026 levels — and increases for the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security.

It trims several domestic programs, including education, food and energy assistance, housing, the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others.

The proposed VA budget increases spending for VA medical care provided in VA facilities but also increases the budget for community care, the VA’s program for covering the health treatment received by veterans in non-VA facilities.

The budget, which also includes a request for advanced funding for fiscal 2028, ensures that veterans benefits and services are never affected by a government shutdown. In addition, it increases medical care funding, with $96.2 billion requested for care provided in the VA medical system and $42 billion for community care.

As with fiscal 2026, VA officials asked to shift the mandatory funds designated to cover the costs associated with injuries or illnesses related to toxic exposures to the discretionary budget. The request of $52 billion from the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund is likely to raise concerns among Democratic lawmakers, who have argued that the continued use of the funds could jeopardize monies set aside for a specific purpose.

The proposal also seeks to cut what White House officials referred to as “divisive and wasteful diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.” The budget documents did not specify which diversity programs the budget will defund, but officials said the reductions would ensure that “VA funding is used for critical VA missions: providing healthcare; benefits; and cemetery services for America’s veterans.”

The president’s proposed budget represents Trump’s vision for the federal government. It serves as a blueprint for Congress to consider as it starts its fiscal 2027 appropriations process.

In the last 25 years, the VA’s budget has ballooned significantly to address the needs of older veterans as well as the millions who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget proposal represents a 10-fold increase for the VA since fiscal 2001, when the VA’s budget was $45 billion.

“You don’t have time,” Andrii Hrytseniuk, the CEO of Brave1, recalled telling officials in recent years. “Shahed [drones] will come not only to Ukraine, but to other countries. You need to use your time not to stick to previous conventional warfare, but to work on the new era.”

Brave1 was established in 2023 as Ukraine’s state-backed defense innovation hub, which funds, tests, and fast-tracks new military technology from hundreds of Ukrainian startups.

Three years after Brave1’s formation, the Iran war has made Hrytseniuk’s warning prescient.

In the first week alone, the U.S. and Israel struck more than 3,000 targets across Iran while Tehran fired over 500 ballistic missiles and nearly 2,000 drones at U.S. bases and Israeli cities across 12 countries, burning through over 800 Patriot interceptor missiles in three days — more than Ukraine received from allies throughout four years of war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pointed out on Thursday.

“And we are not slowing down,” U.S. Central Command posted on X the next day.

The conflict has since drawn in at least a dozen countries and put Ukraine’s counter-drone expertise at the center of a global scramble, with the Pentagon and at least one Gulf state now in active talks to buy Ukrainian-made interceptor drones, according to Financial Times. An EU envoy, meanwhile, is reportedly brokering introductions between Gulf governments and Kyiv’s manufacturers.

“They are really asking for some help with interceptor drones specifically,” Hrytseniuk told Military Times on Friday.

Ukraine first made the shift to cheap interceptors not by choice, but because Russia’s nightly Shahed waves were burning through Western-provided missiles faster than allies could resupply them.

Last month, Ukrainian interceptors destroyed more than 70% of incoming Shaheds over Kyiv, freeing scarce Patriot missiles for the ballistic threats they were designed to stop.

The irony is hard to ignore: the besieged country that spent four years begging for Patriot batteries to combat a nuclear power 10 times its size has quietly built a new layer of air defense at a fraction of the cost, according to The New York Times — and now Washington, which spent roughly $4 billion on missile defense interceptors in the first week of the Iran war alone, is calling Kyiv for help.

Interceptor drones are small, fast, semi-autonomous unmanned aircraft — often costing between $1,000 and $2,500 each — designed to hunt and destroy incoming drones by ramming into them or detonating alongside them at altitude.

Compact enough to fit inside a duffel bag and fast enough to chase a Shahed in the dark, Ukraine’s interceptors can fly at speeds between 195 and 280 miles per hour, depending on the model.

Most combine thermal imaging with radar tracking and AI-assisted guidance, with a human operator taking manual control for the final seconds of the intercept.

Ukraine now has more than 20 companies producing interceptor drones, the National Security and Defense Council announced in January.

“The most impressive thing is how far we have technically advanced,” Roman Yeremenko, a director at Aero Center, a Ukrainian full-cycle manufacturer that builds both drones and their ammunition, told Military Times earlier this week.

Modern Ukrainian interceptors started with Mavic scouts dropping jerry-rigged grenades — simple, improvised.

Then came FPV drones: first 7-inch frames, then 10, then 12. Aero Center’s first munition, Malyuk (“Baby”), weighed just 450 grams — enough for one or two Mavic drops.

“But the troops kept asking for more capabilities,” Yeremenko said.

Then came “1 kg payloads, 1.5 kg, even bigger,” he said.

Engineers working long into the night learned to wire warheads directly to flight controllers, built initiation systems and moved into producing kamikaze FPVs.

What’s getting developed now? Heavy bombers carry 5–10 kg of ammunition and fly 25–35 miles regularly, according to Yeremenko.

“This is a war of technology,” he said. “And the one who is ahead will win this war.”

Several Ukrainian companies are now fielding systems with combat records no Western manufacturer can match.

Wild Hornets‘ Sting has been in combat longer than any other Ukrainian interceptor.

A spokesman for the group told CBS News last week that the $2,500 FPV drone has downed 3,900 drones since May 2025 — including, the company says, the first confirmed downing of Russia’s jet-powered Geran-3 and a Shahed fitted with an air-to-air missile.

Reaching 195 mph with a thermal camera and AI-assisted terminal guidance, it can engage targets up to 15 miles away and fits in a standard duffel bag.

At the lowest price point is SkyFall’s P1-SUN, a fiber-optic Shahed hunter on a 3D-printed modular airframe that costs Ukrainian units just $1,000 a pop.

A company representative recently told Reuters that the drone, which SkyFall says has been upgraded to 280-mph capabilities with computer vision and thermal imaging, has downed more than 1,500 Shaheds and 1,000 other drones in four months — and is a hot ticket item internationally since Iran came under fire.

Then there is Ukrspecsystems‘ Octopus, now built under license by more than 15 Ukrainian manufacturers and, since November, at a new factory in the United Kingdom.

It flies at night, cuts through electronic jamming at up to 4,500 meters, and locks onto targets autonomously — the kind of all-conditions reliability that made it the MoD’s pick for mass production.

The UK deal marked the first time a Western government licensed a Ukrainian-designed interceptor for domestic production, a model that five NATO countries — Germany, France, Italy, Poland and the UK — have since agreed to build on by jointly developing affordable interceptor drones of their own, per Militarnyi.

Not every system follows the same blueprint. Aero Center is teaming up with Dwarf Engineering, a software company focused on creating multiplatform mission control systems for UAVs, to build a comprehensive interceptor drone package for Ukrainian units and international partners that includes the drone, payload and software needed to integrate it into current air defense systems.

It’s a different approach to development entirely, Ihor Matviyuk, who heads Aero Center Drones, Aero Center’s subsidiary UAV division, told Military Times.

“An extra 100 grams [on a combat drone] can mean minus two kilometers range,” Vladyslav Piotrovskyi, Dwarf Engineering’s CEO, told Military Times on Friday.

Piotrovskyi added that the trade-off only works if all three components are optimized as one.

But every groundbreaking interceptor system in Ukraine’s arsenal faces the same expiration window.

Russia’s latest strike drone, the feared Geran-5, can reach speeds up to 370 mph — technically fast enough to outrun every Ukrainian interceptor currently in service, according to Business Insider — and they grow deadlier every day.

“The Russians are trying. They are not as stupid as they look,” Yeremenko told Military Times. “They are adapting to our means of destruction.”

Ukrainian and Russian tech becomes outdated every six weeks on average, the drone experts explained, so Ukraine cannot stand still.

Aero Center is now building medium-class drones with payloads up to 10 kilograms and ranges of roughly 25 kilometers — “middle-sized drones, but with the functions and features of big bombers” — designed for a battlefield where the threat evolves faster than any single airframe can answer, the company’s UAV expert said.

Ukraine has already learned how to build and integrate an entirely new air defense system in an asymmetric war. Now, it’s offering the playbook to allies — in exchange for the kind of help Kyiv still cannot produce on its own.

“We are ready to help. We are suggesting help,” Brave1’s CEO told Military Times. “For us, it’s important to have an alliance that is strong — to stop the war and prevent the start of new wars.”

Alongside an image of a burning Shahed posted Friday on X, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense spelled out its current offer to the West:

“We can help you fight against Shaheds. Help us fight against ballistic missiles.”

“Now more than ever, we need to sound the alarm and hear directly from the veterans and VA employees impacted by Musk-Trump’s heartless and heartbreaking cuts, freezes, and firings,” Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee ranking member Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a statement Monday.

“Hearing from veterans and impacted stakeholders firsthand is the first step toward holding this administration accountable for their reckless and lawless directives.”

Blumenthal and other Democratic lawmakers have been fiercely critical of President Donald Trump, VA Secretary Doug Collins and businessman Elon Musk for a series of announced and leaked policies regarding reforms within Department of Veterans Affairs.

The department dismissed nearly 2,400 individuals as part of a probationary employee purge earlier this year but was forced to bring back most of them as their job status remains in legal flux. Collins has said he wants to scale back the VA workforce to 2019 levels, which would involve eliminating more than 80,000 positions.

Democrats on the Senate veterans policy committee have petitioned for hearings on those potential staff cuts plus other contract cancellations and new department policies. But thus far, they have been rebuffed by Republican leadership of the panel.

The shadow hearings — unofficial meetings that will be presided over by Democratic lawmakers — will invite employees impacted by staffing cuts and other outside critics of the department. The first will be held on April 2.

Blumenthal in a statement said that Collins has been invited to come speak at the event.

Collins, who was sworn into office in early February, has been publicly critical of Democratic lawmakers in recent weeks, accusing them of manufacturing controversy and stoking fears amid needed changes at the VA bureaucracy.

In a social media post last week, he wrote that “those saying more money and more employees are the only ways to improve veterans’ health care and benefits are the same people who’ve stood by and watched for years as VA struggled with waste, wait times and backlogs. We’re going to try something different: we’re going to actually fix things!”

The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee has held seven hearings so far this year, but none directly on proposed changes at the department. Two have been confirmation hearings, including one for Collins. Two others have been on pending legislation, and three were annual legislative presentations from veterans advocacy groups.

The committee is generally collegial but remains divided along partisan lines when it comes to legislative votes and support for nominees. Blumenthal voted to confirm Collins to his Cabinet post, but has said in recent weeks that he regrets that decision.

Within weeks of each other, the two largest U.S. commercial space companies abruptly shifted their priorities toward lunar development. The moves came as the Department of Defense accelerates plans for a next-generation missile shield known as the Golden Dome, raising questions about whether America’s return to the moon is as much about defense as it is exploration.

In early February, SpaceX announced it would redirect plans for a future city on Mars to establishing one on the moon. The reversal was striking, as Musk previously insisted Mars was the only meaningful destination.

Just days prior to this announcement, Blue Origin quietly paused its New Shepard tourism program for at least two years to increase focus on lunar development, framing the move as part of the nation’s goal of returning to the moon.

However, the timing may suggest a more strategic approach.

In December 2025, the White House issued an executive order calling for a missile shield prototype by 2028, critical for the Golden Dome initiative.

This order also set a timeline for an American lunar return by 2028, with elements of a permanent moon presence targeted for 2030.

Defense officials, such as Space Force Vice Chief of Operations Gen. Shawn Bratton, have emphasized that commercial partnerships will be essential to achieving these goals.

SpaceX is reportedly in line for a $2 billion Pentagon contract to build a 600-satellite constellation supporting Golden Dome tracking and targeting, though the award has not been formally confirmed.

The project would rely on low Earth orbit satellites capable of rapid, near-real-time missile detection. Such systems improve coverage, but remain vulnerable to anti-satellite attacks from adversaries.

The company’s shift to the moon could change that equation. Lunar-based infrastructure would sit far beyond the reach of most anti-satellite capabilities, offering more resilient communications and sensing layers.

In this scenario, the moon could become a strategic “high ground,” which could offer the Pentagon a more durable and far-reaching view for missile detection and surveillance.

Just 15 days before Blue Origin announced its shift toward the moon, the Missile Defense Agency added the company to its $151 billion SHIELD contract, a Pentagon program allowing firms to compete for Golden Dome-related work.

While no specific awards are guaranteed, the timing is noteworthy. Blue Origin is now putting lunar logistics front and center, pausing the New Shepard program to focus resources on that effort.

The company’s Blue Ring vehicle is designed for orbital maneuvering and refueling, capabilities that could one day support sensor deployment and flexible positioning beyond Earth’s orbit, where they are less vulnerable to attack and can provide broader global coverage.

Meanwhile, its Blue Moon MK1 and MK2 landers can deliver multi-ton payloads to the lunar surface, which could be enough to deploy communications systems, sensors or other infrastructure to remote locations, potentially supporting Golden Dome-like operations.

Taken together, these developments could suggest a broader transformation in the strategic landscape of space, one that increasingly intersects with homeland defense and global security.

The elimination of 585 “non-mission-critical or duplicative contracts” comes a week after department officials touted plans to terminate around 875 wasteful contracts with an estimated savings of $2 billion, only to halt the effort a day later because of public concerns about the potential impact of the cuts.

Previously, VA Secretary Doug Collins had labeled all of the targeted contracts as wasteful and superfluous. But after a week of further review, about 300 contracts were removed from the list of immediate cuts, and estimates of the savings were revised downward by more than $1 billion.

Officials still have not provided a public list of what contracts are being ended. In an announcement, VA officials said the deals to be terminated cover “administrative services that VA can perform on its own, such as staff mentoring, leadership coaching, preparation of meeting agendas and meeting minutes.”

Department leaders also said many of the newly canceled contracts were duplicative, allowing them to end one and keep another without disrupting any operations.

“VA is focused on becoming more efficient, responsive and accountable to the veterans, family members, caregivers and survivors we are charged with serving,” Collins said in a statement. “We are putting veterans first at VA. That means finding new and better ways to do our jobs and focus our resources.”

The original list of contracts to be cut included 14 business arrangements concerning veterans suicide prevention and 19 with veterans homelessness assistance, although not necessarily providing direct support to individual veterans. Other contracts provided indirect help with benefits processing and memorial services.

It was not clear if those kinds of contracts were among the roughly 300 saved in the one-week reprieve. A VA spokesman said in a statement that “there will be no negative impact to VA health care, benefits or beneficiaries,” a vow that was made after the earlier announcement.

A significant number of the contracts also involved businesses owned by service-connected disabled veterans, according to the initial list of contract cuts.

Collins has come under fierce criticism from congressional Democrats for his cost-cutting moves thus far. Several have accused him of betraying veterans by scaling back department resources, including agreeing to dismiss nearly 2,500 workers so far as part of White House moves to shrink the federal government.

Collins has defended the decisions, saying that savings can be redirected into better care and services for veterans and their families. The department is currently reviewing more than 90,000 contracts costing more than $67 billion.

Officials said VA career subject-matter expert employees were given the option to stop any of the latest round of cancellations “if they felt it would negatively impact health care, benefits or services.” However, sources within the department have called that claim into doubt, saying terminations were made with little to no consultation with key staffers.

The current department budget is more than $350 billion, with about 475,000 employees after the recent dismissals. Collins has not publicly stated how much either of those totals should be decreased, if at all.

Department officials said they anticipate additional savings to be announced as the contract audit continues in coming weeks. They also promised more specifics on how leadership plans to “put these resources to work” in increasing medical care and benefits processing.

Monday’s announcement came about 30 hours before President Donald Trump was scheduled to address Congress about his first six weeks in office, including a host of government efficiency and reform efforts that have brought condemnation from federal unions and Democratic lawmakers.

Veterans Affairs leaders this week touted $2 billion in savings for department efforts from canceled government contracts they insist were not providing real benefits to veterans, but critics are warning the efforts could seriously jeopardize some health and benefits services.

By Wednesday afternoon, however, VA leaders had paused those actions, saying they were going through the contracts “line-by-line” to ensure that veterans would not be harmed by the cost-cutting moves.

The confusion over department contracts began with a video message posted to social media Tuesday from VA Secretary Doug Collins, who said the contract cuts were just the first step in broader efficiency efforts at the department.

“These are things that we’re saving now that we can put back into health care, benefits, making sure that we’re doing what the VA is supposed to do,” Collins said.

He described the contracts as costing millions “to create things like PowerPoint slides and meeting minutes” as well as “coaching and training.”

VA officials declined a request to release the full list of contracts canceled, which Collins appeared to be holding in his video message. If accurate, the $2 billion in savings would represent about 0.5% of the entire VA budget for fiscal 2025.

A VA spokesperson on Wednesday said that the contract review “will not be eliminating any benefits or services to veterans or VA beneficiaries, and there will be no negative impact to VA health care, benefits or beneficiaries.”

Capitol Hill staffers were told about 875 contracts were canceled, but only about 30 are listed on the Department of Government Oversight’s web page of wasteful and redundant government contracts.

They include a contract of about $123,000 for a telehealth outreach service to women veterans and about $45,000 for COVID-19 health care services. Washington Technology reported that at least 20 of those contracts were for veteran-owned businesses, several of which are run by service-disabled veterans.

Senate Veterans Affairs Committee ranking member Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said that his office has seen canceled contracts related to military records processing for VA disability claims, National Cemetery Administration outreach efforts, hospital recruiting of doctors and medical staff and inspections of medical equipment.

“To say abruptly cancelling these services won’t impact veterans’ care and benefits is another unrealistic promise from Collins,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “This is just another reckless cost-cutting decision that will harm veterans and taxpayers for years to come.”

Collins in his message dismissed criticism from lawmakers and the media over the cuts as off-base. But by Wednesday afternoon, internal emails to VA agency heads instructed them to “halt any contract terminations that are in progress” while leadership reconsidered the moves. However, the VA secretary’s social media message claiming $2 billion in savings was not retracted or rescinded.

The contract cuts came just one day after the latest round of VA staff dismissals, which now total close to 2,500 individuals since President Donald Trump took office. Collins said to expect more efficiency moves in coming weeks.

On Saturday, the Office of Personnel Management sent an email to more than 2 million federal workers with the subject line “What did you do last week?” demanding a five-point summary of their accomplishments last week to justify their continued employment.

Musk, who has an undefined leadership role within President Donald Trump’s new administration, posted on social media that workers’ failure to respond to the email by Monday evening “will be taken as resignation.”

The move drew confusion and concern among federal worker groups, lawmakers and outside advocates. By Monday morning, numerous agencies — including the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI — had instructed staffers not to reply to the message.

But leaders at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has nearly 480,000 employees, have instructed their workforce to compile summaries of their accomplishments last week and get their responses in.

In a message to the workforce Monday, VA Chief of Staff Chris Syrek verified the email is “valid” and cautioned workers that “in responding to the email, please do not send any classified, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or personally identifiable information, links or attachments.”

Staffers were also asked to copy their immediate managers on their responses.

No information was given on what will happen to VA workers who fail to respond, or whether individuals with limited access to email — like surgeons or staff on leave — will be punished for nonparticipation. By late afternoon Monday, various agency heads reported being told by OPM officials that responses are voluntary, not required.

In a letter to department heads Monday, more than 100 House Democratic lawmakers called the dismissal threat by Musk “reckless, cruel, unlawful and unenforceable.”

They also asked all department heads — including VA Secretary Doug Collins — to instruct staff not to respond until more detailed instructions of goals of the inquiry are made public.

“We urge you to immediately inform federal workers at your agency that [Musk’s] missives do not constitute official orders and that federal employees should not interrupt their service to the public to respond to OPM’s mass email,” they wrote.

About 1,000 VA employees were dismissed earlier this month as part of government-wide efforts to trim the number of probationary employees and reduce the size of the federal workforce.

Roughly two-thirds of the VA workforce has been exempted from a separate federal hiring freeze, but staffers have reported confusion and delays with onboarding new personnel because of the recent White House actions.

Some veterans groups and outside advocates not employed by the federal government also received the “last week” email Saturday. VA officials instructed those individuals not to respond to the internal request.