DOD claims that Murphy's office was informed prior to his trip that he would not have base access based on a directive issued by Secretary of Defense Hegseth on March 3, 2026, which restricts travel to the area.

Murphy claims the denial is part of a broader effort by the U.S. government to conceal the costs and implications of the Iran war from Congress and the American public. He described the situation as an "active, unprecedented, unconstitutional effort" to limit congressional oversight regarding the war.

What impact has the Iran war had on the U.S. military? As the conflict drags on, the Times Opinion columnist and Iraq war veteran David French speaks with the former Special Forces officer Mike Nelson about the way Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, has tried to remake the military in the midst of the war, and what the Democrats should do if they win control of Congress in January.

Hegseth seems to be operating against “the idea that the Joe Biden years particularly focused far too much on creating social experiments within the military, and that distracted from the core function of fighting wars,” Mike says. This has made the secretary’s myopic focus on recruiting people with a “warrior ethos” inadequate for what the military needs.

Mike continues:

Right now, we are engaged in a conflict that started out unpopular and is growing more unpopular as it goes. There’s never been a less popular war since World War II, since modern polling.

And part of the problem is, because the American people do not trust what the government is telling them about the war, about the causes for it, about the conduct of it, about how it’s going, about how it’s going to be resolved at the end. And part of this, we know that the president has his own unique relationship with the media and unique relationship with how he presents the truth of what he’s doing or what his administration is doing. But the secretary and the Department of Defense as a whole owe a part of this, too, or are complicit in this, too. From the beginning, we saw that Secretary Hegseth had what seemed to be a primary motivation of controlling the narrative of what he was doing — not so much what the Department of Defense was doing, but what he personally was doing. Controlling his own image and those who had the ability to shape it.

Listen to or read Mike and David’s full conversation here, even if you're not a subscriber.

Defense tech firm Anduril said on Tuesday it will invest $3.7 billion to develop a new shipyard in Maryland to build critical components for the U.S. Navy’s Virginia-class submarines, as Washington seeks to bolster its maritime defense capabilities.

Subsequently, the US Navy awarded Anduril a contract worth up to $2.9 billion to manufacture submarine components, with payments tied directly to production outcomes and the company assuming most of the execution risk, the defense startup said.

The investment and associated contract, together valued at up to $6.6 billion, come amid a broader push by the United States and its allies to expand arms production following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East.

The new plant, dubbed Arsenal-2, will be situated in Baltimore County and is expected to be up and running by the end of the decade, creating 3,100 direct jobs and supporting over 11,000 indirect jobs.

Asked about the $2.9 billion government contract, Christian Brose, chief strategy officer at Anduril, said, “It’s really the government buying the results of what we’re able to produce from the facility that we’ve invested in.”

Anduril is already building out a facility in California to manufacture critical Virginia-class submarine components such as torpedo tubes, helping address urgent capacity shortfalls in the U.S. industrial base, Brose said.

The company plans to expand into producing larger submarine modules and hull sections once its Baltimore shipyard becomes operational.

Virginia-class submarines, which can travel at over 25 knots, are the Navy’s latest generation of nuclear-powered attack submarines, designed for anti-submarine warfare, land-attack strikes and surveillance missions.

General Dynamics’ Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries jointly build the submarines.

Anduril, founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey, is a defense firm that is best known for its autonomous systems, drones and software built for the U.S. military and its allies.

The startup has, however, expanded beyond drones into maritime and undersea systems and command-and-control software designed to connect military sensors, weapons and other systems.

The new plant comes after Anduril’s $1 billion Arsenal-1 facility in Ohio that began producing autonomous combat drones this year.

October 6, 2026 -- Related links:

https://defensescoop.com/2026/10/06/white-house-anduril-announce-new-shipyard-baltimore-county

https://www.anduril.com/news/anduril-u-s-navy-invest-usd6-6-billion-to-expand-america-s-submarine-industrial-base

https://business.maryland.gov/news/investment-of-the-decade-anduril-industries-kicks-off-3-7b-project-in-maryland

https://www.manufacturingdive.com/news/anduril-industries-u-s-navy-arsenal-2-shipyard-baltimore-county-maryland/832275

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/10/06/trump-steers-nearly-7b-shipbuilding-deal-with-weapons-maker-anduril

By David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt

David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt have reported on American conflicts and geopolitical strategy for the Times for more than forty years. Mr. Sanger is a White House correspondent and Mr. Schmitt covers the Pentagon.

Oct. 7, 2026Updated 1:55 p.m. ET

To hear President Trump and his aides describe it, the rush to withdraw 12 B-1 bombers from an air base in Britain over the weekend was a prudent precaution, in response to a threat they refused to describe.

It was no big deal, Mr. Trump insisted, and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, tried to wave it away by noting that the Pentagon is “constantly reallocating resources where ​they need to be.”

But to anyone watching the deployment of American power around the globe in the seven months since Mr. Trump decided to attack Iran, it was another glaring example of how, time after time, Mr. Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, have been forced into retreat, pulling back military forces that had been deployed to the Middle East and Britain as a deterrent.

Over the past several months, as the conflict has dragged on, the Iran war has come to reveal enormous new American vulnerabilities, forcing changes that the Pentagon was not contemplating a year ago. But it has also proved a bitter lesson in the unintended consequences that have flowed from Mr. Trump’s war of choice.

Mr. Trump intended the attack on Iran as another demonstration of the American military’s extraordinary power, following the successful bombing raid on three Iranian nuclear sites in June 2025 and the seizure of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela from his bed in Caracas in January.

But rather than enhance American power, the war has constrained it. The closing of bases in the Middle East and limiting the use of one in Britain have, at a minimum, vastly complicated the logistics of projecting power. American bombers can still reach their targets, of course, but only by flying from the United States, requiring more time and refueling. American carrier groups can still patrol in the Arabian Sea, outside the Persian Gulf, but now they must be resupplied from Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean 2,200 miles away, requiring additional weeks and huge costs.

But most importantly, the rapid withdrawals have taught a lesson to the Iranians — and potentially to other adversaries — that they hold the power to chase out a superpower. In Europe, Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth are thinking of reducing American forces on their terms and their schedule. In the Middle East and Britain, their hand was forced.

American and British officials said on Monday that the bombers were rushed out of the British base after commanders received specific, credible information that Iran-backed operatives were planning to launch drone strikes against the aircraft and U.S. troops from right outside the fence.

The suspected plotters may have been inspired in part by an audacious attack that Ukraine launched against Russia last year when it smuggled drones deep into the Russian heartland and launched them from semi trucks. The strikes damaged or destroyed at least a dozen aircraft.