USA-IRI Ceasefire Over & FY27 Budget Outlook Murky Into Fall

We've got a war back on.

The Trump administration, President Trump has officially notified Congress that the clock is ticking on the War Powers Act, sent a letter, I believe it was on July 10th, I guess, starting the six-day window on war powers and ceasefires over and the U.S. has begun strikes again.

I guess we'll get into some of the budgetary implications as we get into the weeds on sort of the budget morass on the Hill.

But any thoughts on what we've seen so far just in terms of what CENTCOM is doing post-NATO, what allies may be doing? And certainly we haven't had a Department of War press conference in a while.

So it's not like we've heard much officially other than from CEDCOM's Twitter or X page.

So I'll just open it up with thoughts on where we are on the conflict.

I get asked about it a lot.

So I'm just interested on your take from a D.C. perspective.

From our perch at Inside Defense AI, new publication launched by Inside Defense, one of the more interesting things that CENTCOM has announced when they resumed the strikes is they hit an Iranian port, right, with the Corsair... unmanned service vessel.

That's using a sea drone, basically, a one-way sea drone that they're used for the first time in combat operations to go blow something up, right? Obviously, everybody knows drones are really hot right now, especially one-way attack drones, the future of warfare in a lot of ways, in a lot of different domains, for them to have used it in Iran.

You know, it's sort of showing you that obviously this whole issue has got legs and they mean business when they're talking about they want to procure these things and they want to use them.

And so aside from some of the other considerations, right, sort of looking at Iran as a laboratory, we're seeing that they are trying out new weapons and the weapons appear to be effective.

I think to pile on that, you know, They're still using weapons.

We've heard a ton about the number of munitions that have been expended in this conflict since it began in, I believe, the last day of February.

And they are continuing to expend.

We haven't gotten, I think, a good number on anything in a few months, particularly of how many strikes there have been and whatnot.

We know that there have been these waves of in the past weeks.

I'd love to get better insight into this, uh, because it doesn't seem that they're using bombers really anymore.

You know, Riyadh got canceled because of the bomber presence there.

And we need to get a report from the ground of whether or not there actually are any bombers there anymore.

I don't, I don't think that's happening.

So are they using more standoff weapons from what they have? We know they're just really focused on the straight right now, but, uh, to Tony, to your point about the, um, the Saronic boat being used.

That's interesting to me for a couple of reasons.

One, you really probably could have hit that with a JDAM or something else, but it really just seemed to be...

I'd love to know the difference about hitting it from underneath the dock as opposed to coming in from the top or from the side.

We've got a war back on.

The Trump administration, President Trump has officially notified Congress that the clock is ticking on the War Powers Act, sent a letter, I believe it was on July 10th, I guess, starting the six-day window on war powers and ceasefires over and the U.S. has begun strikes again.

I guess we'll get into some of the budgetary implications as we get into the weeds on sort of the budget morass on the Hill.

But any thoughts on what we've seen so far just in terms of what CENTCOM is doing post-NATO, what allies may be doing? And certainly we haven't had a Department of War press conference in a while.

So it's not like we've heard much officially other than from CEDCOM's Twitter or X page.

So I'll just open it up with thoughts on where we are on the conflict.

I get asked about it a lot.

So I'm just interested on your take from a D.C. perspective.

From our perch at Inside Defense AI, new publication launched by Inside Defense, one of the more interesting things that CENTCOM has announced when they resumed the strikes is they hit an Iranian port, right, with the Corsair... unmanned service vessel.

That's using a sea drone, basically, a one-way sea drone that they're used for the first time in combat operations to go blow something up, right? Obviously, everybody knows drones are really hot right now, especially one-way attack drones, the future of warfare in a lot of ways, in a lot of different domains, for them to have used it in Iran.

You know, it's sort of showing you that obviously this whole issue has got legs and they mean business when they're talking about they want to procure these things and they want to use them.

And so aside from some of the other considerations, right, sort of looking at Iran as a laboratory, we're seeing that they are trying out new weapons and the weapons appear to be effective.

I think to pile on that, you know, They're still using weapons.

We've heard a ton about the number of munitions that have been expended in this conflict since it began in, I believe, the last day of February.

And they are continuing to expend.

We haven't gotten, I think, a good number on anything in a few months, particularly of how many strikes there have been and whatnot.

We know that there have been these waves of in the past weeks.

I'd love to get better insight into this, uh, because it doesn't seem that they're using bombers really anymore.

You know, Riyadh got canceled because of the bomber presence there.

And we need to get a report from the ground of whether or not there actually are any bombers there anymore.

I don't, I don't think that's happening.

So are they using more standoff weapons from what they have? We know they're just really focused on the straight right now, but, uh, to Tony, to your point about the, um, the Saronic boat being used.

That's interesting to me for a couple of reasons.

One, you really probably could have hit that with a JDAM or something else, but it really just seemed to be...

I'd love to know the difference about hitting it from underneath the dock as opposed to coming in from the top or from the side.