WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon grounded six Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets at a California air base due to a problem with the parachutes packed under the pilot’s ejection seat, two sources familiar with the issue told Reuters.
Additional F-35 jets being flown at a U.S. Navy air station in Maryland are not affected because [...]

Sanaa, Yemen (CNN) — Three suspected drone strikes hit militant targets in southern Yemen on Monday night and Tuesday morning, killing at least nine people with suspected links to al Qaeda, Yemeni security officials said.
The missiles struck Abyan province near areas that have been taken over by Ansaar al-Sharia, a militant group with links to [...]

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A media report says the U.S. military plans to send a floating base for commando teams to the Middle East, where relations with Iran are tense and other nations are in the midst of political upheaval.
The Washington Post newspaper on Saturday cited unspecified U.S. Navy documents saying the service plans to convert an aging warship [...]

BBC:
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has said he is “very concerned” about a Pakistani doctor arrested for providing intelligence for the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden last year.
Dr Shikal Afridi is accused of running a CIA-run programme in Abbottabad where Bin Laden was killed. A Pakistan panel says he should be tried for [...]

BBC:
The FBI wants an app to combine information from Twitter, Facebook and Google Maps.
The FBI is seeking to develop an early-warning system based on material “scraped” from social networks.
It says the application should provide information about possible domestic and global threats superimposed onto maps “using mash-up technology”.
The bureau has asked contractors to suggest possible solutions [...]

WIRED DANGER ROOM:
The big loser in the Pentagon’s new budget? Ordinary human beings.
About 80,000 Army soldiers and 20,000 Marines are getting downsized. Half of the Army’s conventional combat presence in Europe is packing up and ending its post-Cold War staycation. Replacing them, according to the 3 billion budget previewed by the Pentagon on Thursday: unconventional [...]

Photos by Steve Douglass
If you were out by Rick Husband/Amarillo International Airport yesterdau - you may have witnessed a strange looking whale of an aircraft landing - Nasa’s “Super Guppy.”
The unique one of a kind aircraft was making it’s last delivery of a V-22 Osprey fuselage to the Amarillo Bell/Textron plant.
This Super Guppy [...]

NPR In a daring raid reminiscent of the kind used to kill Osama bin Laden, U.S. Navy SEALs swooped into Somalia Wednesday morning and rescued two aid workers, who had been held by pirates for months.
The New York Times reports the soldiers came in by helicopter and engaged in a firefight that killed nine pirates. [...]

AVWK: The U.S. Air Force has decided to scrap its Northrop Grumman high-altitude unmanned surveillance plane program and instead extend the life of its U-2 aircraft into the 2020s, according to a government official and a defense analyst.
Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Virginia-based Lexington Institute, said the Air Force decision was based on [...]