The acting US defense secretary told armed forces personnel that "all wars must end." But he left many scratching their heads by also saying the US should not fail to see through the fight against al-Qaida.

President-elect Joe Biden has chosen Lloyd Austin, who led US troops into Baghdad in 2003 and rose to head the US Central Command, as the first African-American secretary of defense, US media reported Monday.

US President-elect Joe Biden says that Donald Trump's appointees at the Pentagon are stalling on the transition and warns that the United States faces security risks as a result. After he and US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were briefed by their transition teams on national security, Biden said that political appointees at the Pentagon as well as the Office of Management and Budget had put up "roadblocks."

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has warned of emerging cyber and space threats, along with the prospect of much bigger wars. His remarks come amid concerns over China's growing military assertiveness.

Pentagon Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley said 18 warplanes will be sent to Afghanistan to protect US troops.

The Department of Defense is canceling a controversial $10 billion cloud computing contract that had been awarded to Microsoft (MSFT) over Amazon (AMZN) under the Trump administration. The department announced Tuesday that it is canceling the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract that was previously awarded to Microsoft. It will instead seek new solicitations for an updated Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract from Amazon and Microsoft.

US Central Command said seven facilities have been handed over to the Afghan Ministry of Defense.

Around 16,000 people were evacuated over the past 24 hours from Afghanistan through the Kabul airport, US Army Major General William Taylor tells reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon as international airlift operations sped up ahead of an August 31 deadline.

"We apologize and we will endeavor to learn from this horrible mistake," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby says of a drone strike in the Afghan capital Kabul that mistakenly killed 10 civilians, including children, during the chaotic US pullout last month. Kirby was delivering the message on behalf of US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during a press briefing at the Pentagon.

US cyber defense capabilities are at "kindergarten level" in some government departments, the Pentagon's former chief software officer told a British newspaper.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the addition to Moscow's nuclear arsenal will make foes "think twice." The US said it was properly notified of the test and did not consider it a threat.

The Pentagon says the suspected spy balloon downed off the US coast was part of a large surveillance program that China has been conducting for "several years," affecting countries across five continents. China says the craft was just a weather balloon.