The United States is buying parts of private companies in a new approach to defense spending that the Pentagon says will foster stable demand and competitive prices.

National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang offers a deep-dive examination of a Cato Institute report that says the federal government under President Trump has moved to acquire private equity stakes in more than 20 companies, with the Pentagon spending billions to buy parts of at least four companies. This year’s National Defense Authorization Act would formalize the new approach, giving the Defense Department’s Office of Strategic Capital new authority to take ownership stakes.

Not everyone is convinced it’s the right idea, including some Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I don’t want to pick winners and losers,” Sen. Mike Rounds, South Dakota Republican, told Threat Status this week.

The Pentagon announced new agreements with three defense companies to mass-produce more affordable air-to-ground cruise missiles, including a set capable of being launched out of the back of cargo planes.

The deals, with Virginia-based CoAspire and California-based Anduril Industries and Zone 5, are part of a push for what military officials are calling the “Family of Affordable Mass Missiles,” or FAMMs, that fit within a wider Trump administration effort to show how the Pentagon is now “doing business differently,” according to Under Secretary of War Michael P. Duffey.

The FAMMs are designed to fall into two categories for use by the U.S. Air Force. One design is meant for more traditional application, with the missile attached directly to launch points already installed on an aircraft. The other is meant to be used with cargo planes and would require no modifications to the aircraft. Instead, a pallet carrying the missile would simply be pushed off the rear ramp in midair.

Chinese and Russian officials held secret meetings in China on military cooperation that included plans to shoot down low-earth orbit Starlink satellites from the U.S. company SpaceX that are providing key communications for Ukraine’s army, according to classified documents obtained by investigators at three news outlets: The Insider, Der Spiegel and Le Monde.

The meeting, held in November of 2023, featured talk of space weapons for direct attacks against satellites and integrated air and missile defense systems. The discussions of how to bring down Starlink capabilities, a now-critical piece of military technology for both the U.S. and Ukraine, contradict official Chinese government assertions of neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The Chinese plan calls first for using legal and diplomatic pressure to limit Starlink from expanding the number of satellites, blocking Starlink’s access to physical space with limits on communications bands and orbits, and joint jamming operations in key locations. A second phase of the plan would escalate to destroying the satellite network itself, including by using cyber warfare.

The Pentagon this week awarded a $2.2 billion contract to the Florida-based shipbuilding company TOTE Services for the construction of as many as eight of the newest class of U.S. Navy amphibious assault ships.

Sources tell Threat Status that the McClung-class Medium Landing Ships are meant to work as transport for American Marines operating in the Pacific, taking troops from shore to shore in operations that could be essential to countering Chinese military aggression in the region. The off-the-shelf design of the vessels is based on the LST-100 tank landing ship from Dutch shipbuilder Damen.

The McClung-class ships will fill the capability gap between smaller, short-range landing craft and the Navy’s long-duration, multipurpose amphibious warfare ships, according to the Pentagon.

The midterm elections may dictate the U.S. military’s future strategy for the Iran war, according to Rick Berman, who writes that the Trump administration thus far “has failed to properly frame its intentions” while “gas and grocery prices are more important to the public than a nuclear threat.

“Today’s war with Iran must be viewed through a very different lens from the one we have used in the past. It is a foreign war of choice,” Mr. Berman, the president of RBB Strategies, an advocacy and crisis communications firm, writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times.

“There are obviously more questions than answers before us, but Mr. Trump must convince Americans that it is a sucker’s bet to think worst-case outcomes are impossible,” he writes. “The 9/11 Commission observed that flying planes into iconic buildings resulted from an American ‘failure to imagine.’”

• July 16-17 — Aspen Security Forum, Aspen Strategy Group

• July 20 — Takeaways from Ankara, Turkey: Debriefing the 2026 NATO Summit with Rep. Mike Turner, Ohio Republican, Hudson Institute

• July 20-29 — Project Convergence-Capstone 6, U.S. Army

• July 21 — AI+ Discovery Summit, Special Competitive Studies Project

• July 22 — How Ukraine’s Deep-strike Campaign is Causing Cracks in the Kremlin, Atlantic Council

• July 23 — The Path Ahead for U.S.-South Korea Shipbuilding, Stimson Center

• Aug. 4-5 — Air and Space Force Procurement Conference, American Defense Alliance

• Aug. 5-6 — Border Security & Intelligence Summit, Defense Strategies Institute