The United Arab Emirates submitted a formal request to buy high-tech F-35 fighter jets from the United States after its normalization of relations with Israel, Bloomberg Politics reported Friday. 
Germany's defense minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, called for a new measurement standard for the country's contributions to NATO, soon after the Pentagon authorized the transfer of thousands of troops out of Germany, Defense News reported Friday.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) was a no-show at closed-door and public Senate Armed Service Committee hearings delving into a sexual assault charge against the nominee for vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) released a plan last month to crack down on corporate lobbying influence at the Pentagon, but she has worked aggressively on behalf of major defense interests in Massachusetts during her time in the Senate. 
China and Russia have developed an increasingly close security relationship that poses new and difficult challenges to the United States, according to a new report. 
Seventy years ago on Thursday, the United States, Canada, and 10 western European countries created what became, and still remains, the most successful military alliance in history. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization deterred the Soviet Union from overtaking western Europe and, remarkably, won the Cold War without actually fighting the communist empire. Then, after the Berlin Wall fell, the alliance endured, using military force in the Balkans and the broader Middle East to stop Islamist terrorists and brutal, destabilizing authoritarians. All the while, NATO expanded from its original 12 member states to 29.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis spoke to House and Senate Republicans on Thursday at an annual GOP retreat, where he said the military needs to be "more lethal." 