The U.S. Department of Defense has signed a 10-year F-35 procurement framework agreement with Lockheed Martin, guaranteeing the purchase of at least 850 aircraft over the decade.
On October 14, US Defense Secretary Hegseth said at a military forum in Washington that the United States, facing rivals of comparable strength, is undertaking a military expansion that may be unprecedented; at the same event, Air Force Secretary Meinke stated explicitly that China is carrying out what may be the largest weapons expansion in world history.
On October 3, Taiwan's Liberty Times, citing reports by senior military officials, said that the U.S. Department of Defense's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and the Defense Analysis Center plan to each send one representative to be stationed long-term at the headquarters of Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense, assisting with policy coordination and combat capability assessment. The relevant cooperation project is scheduled to run from 2026 to 2028, with a budget of approximately NT$470 million.
The U.S. Department of War (Department of Defense) has, for the first time, dispatched policy and assessment personnel to be stationed long-term at Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense, marking the open and closer nature of U.S.-Taiwan military cooperation.
The U.S. Department of Defense announced the formal end of its military mission in Iraq to counter ISIS and an orderly withdrawal, as Iraq welcomes its Day of Sovereignty.
According to a Nature report on September 4, the NIH and the Department of Defense have signed an agreement to transfer NIAID biodefense and other projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the management of the Department of Defense, with completion planned by the end of September, a ten-year term, as part of the larger "Advancing the Frontier" biodefense program.
US Federal Judge James Boasberg issued a preliminary injunction, temporarily halting the Department of Defense's decision to designate Wuxi AppTec as a company associated with the Chinese military.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Alvaro Smith stated while attending the Army Day event at the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. that current U.S.-China military relations are at their most stable period in recent years.
On June 13, 2026, China's Ministry of Commerce issued a statement in response to the US Defense Department's addition of Chinese companies such as Alibaba, Baidu and BYD to its military-related list, urging the US side to immediately revoke the relevant unilateral sanctions.
On the same day Xi Jinping returned to Beijing, the US Department of Defense released the revised 1260H blacklist, adding multiple leading Chinese companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, and BYD to the roster.
Alibaba has officially sued the US Department of Defense, demanding to be removed from the so-called "1260H list", stating that the US side provided insufficient evidence or reasonable explanation for designating it as military-linked.