The President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Budget Request for the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is $58.5 billion, which includes $27.7 billion for USAID fully and partially managed accounts, $2.9 billion (11 percent) above the FY 2021 enacted level. In addition, the American Jobs Plan (AJP) will seek $400 million in mandatory funds over five years (including $80 million in FY 2022) across USAID to develop vibrant clean energy global markets and in turn support job creation in the United States.

A former civilian contractor for the U.S. Army was charged in an indictment unsealed today for his role in a scheme to steer Army contracts for work to be performed at Camp Arifjan, a U.S. Army base in Kuwait.

Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Special Agent Jozette Gillespie, Acting Director, U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command's (CID) Major Procurement Fraud Unit and Special Agent in Charge Robert E. Craig Jr. of the U.S. Defense Criminal Investigative Service’s (DCIS) Mid-Atlantic Field Office made the announcement.

Andrea Martinez, Associate Technical Professional - Civil, traveled to Kandahar, Afghanistan to work on a KBR project based at a NATO airfield. Below is an account of her time on the project through her own eyes.

As a civil engineer, I have faced many challenging situations in my career but this opportunity offered me one of my biggest challenges to date. On my first day back in the office after the Christmas holidays last year, I was offered the opportunity to work on the KBR project based at NATO's Kandahar Airfield (KAF) in Afghanistan in the role of Building & Civil Engineering Technical Officer.

PAE Inc., which offers operational services to the U.S. government and its allies, said Monday it has struck a deal to be acquired by a unit of Amentum Government Services Holdings LLC in an all-cash transaction valued at about $1.9 billion. Under the terms of the deal, Pae shareholders will receive $10.05 per share in cash, or a roughly 70% premium over the closing price on Oct. 22, the last trading day before the deal was announced.

The Pentagon has begun a burst of spending in Africa, expanding its main base on the continent and investing in air facilities, flight services, telecommunications, and electrical upgrades as the U.S. Military deepen its footprint in a region with rising threats.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in expenditures, detailed in unclassified federal documents, demonstrate Africa's increasing importance to U.S. Military and counterterrorism operations like the war in Iraq has ended and American troops withdrew from Afghanistan.

The company will deliver administrative and operational services in support of BHA’s role as USAID’s lead federal coordinator for international disaster assistance by harnessing the expertise and capacities of other U.S. government entities to effectively respond to natural disasters and complex crises around the world.

In August 2021, the United States began construction of a new annex on the existing U.S. Embassy Bangkok compound, which will support the continued expansion of U.S. - Thai diplomatic, security, and commercial relations and strengthen our ties with the Thai people.

Expected to be completed in 2025, the new building will modernize the U.S. Embassy’s platform for providing Consular services and conducting diplomacy and represents the importance of our longstanding alliance with the Kingdom of Thailand.

A San Diego civilian defense contractor is accused of repeatedly meeting with and receiving cash payments from a woman tied to Chinese intelligence services while he worked on several classified and proprietary projects, including unmanned surveillance aircraft used by the U.S. military, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court.

Shapour Moinian, 66, was a U.S. Army helicopter pilot, serving for 23 years in the military, before switching to a career in defense contracting, according to the complaint.

In recent years, U.S. military operations in Africa have greatly expanded. Washington has established forward operating locations (FOL) and drone bases. It has helped various African countries, like Liberia, retrain their militaries. It has tried to track rebel groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army and the East African terrorist group like Al-Shabaab. The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has been involved in wide-ranging activities.

Thanks to the work of a very few journalists—like Nick Turse who has greatly enhanced our understanding of U.S. Special Operations Forces in Africa or Craig Whitlock of The Washington Post who has exposed problems at U.S. drone bases—there’s more information about these expanded operations.

The defendants' Marc Baier, Ryan Adams, and Daniel Gericke are accused of working as senior managers at a UAE-based company that conducted hacking operations on behalf of the government. Prosecutors say the men provided hacking and intelligence-gathering systems that were used to break into computers in the United State and elsewhere in the world.

Thousands of Afghans shell-shocked at the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, brought to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where they await the next leg of their journey, to the United States.

After Kabul fell to the Taliban the United States began flying people out of Kabul at a rate of thousands a day. Many were brought to U.S. military installations in Qatar or Kuwait. But by the end of that week, those bases could not safely support anymore. Ramstein, which has served as a key transit point in Germany for troops and equipment throughout the 20-year war in Afghanistan, was called on for one more mission.

REPORT FOREIGN POLICY — Military analysts trying to understand the stunning collapse of the Afghan military is increasingly pointing to the departure of U.S. government contractors starting a month ago as one of the key turning points.

The Afghans had relied on contractors for everything from training and gear maintenance to preparing them for intelligence gathering and close air support in their battles against Taliban fighters.

At the direction of President Biden, the United States Government rapidly mobilized to assist the Government of Haiti and the Haitian people after the devastating earthquake.

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) coordinated international response efforts, announced the deployment of a Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) to Haiti. The U.S. Government is coordinating efforts across Departments and Agencies and with international partners and organizations to respond quickly to needs in Haiti.