North Korea’s leader oversaw suicide military drone tests over the weekend, a key emerging weapon in Pyongyang’s arms development. Analysts tell Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon that the Kim regime’s drones represent a near-perfect weapons solution in Pyongyang’s war of nerves with South Korea.

Drones are an economical means to counter expensive manned fighting platforms, have proven ability to penetrate air-defense nets, and take advantage of Seoul’s innate geographical vulnerability.

North Korea state media reported that Mr. Kim has ordered military scientists to integrate AI with drones. Reports quoted him as saying it’s “necessary to develop and produce more suicide drones of various types to be used in tactical infantry and special operation units, as well as strategic reconnaissance and multi-purpose attack drones.”

Israel’s airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Sunday sparked fresh fears of an escalating war with Iran-backed Hezbollah across the border. Israel claimed the “preemptive” attack was necessary to counter what officials said was an impending Hezbollah assault.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israel Defense Forces destroyed thousands of rockets aimed at Galilee and intercepted drones launched by the Lebanese Shiite movement. There were signs Sunday night that both sides were attempting to tamp down the prospect of a further escalation.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin held a “joint security situation assessment” with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, via telephone. The Jewish Chronicle reported that the two reviewed “the successful activities conducted to thwart an extensive Hezbollah attack on Israel,” according to an Israeli readout. It said Mr. Gallant “expressed his appreciation to the secretary for the close cooperation and coordination … including intelligence-sharing.”

The U.S. Navy had been conducting regular Taiwan Strait passages in an effort to challenge expansive Chinese claims that the waterway is Beijing’s sovereign maritime territory. The most recent mission saw the guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson sail through the increasingly militarized strait last week after Chinese forces stepped up their own warplane and warship activities around the island.

The Navy destroyer made a “routine transit” through the strait, which is 100 miles wide, in accordance with international law, the Navy’s 7th Fleet said in an online statement. The warship transit was the first by an American naval vessel in three months and the fourth operation of its kind this year.

The Coast Guard announcement that Juneau, Alaska, will be the homeport for the Alviq Arctic oil exploration support ship was a rare piece of good news in the service’s long struggle to beef up its inadequate polar fleet, which pales in comparison to the fleet of more than 40 icebreakers fielded by Russia.

The $125 million Alviq — the only U.S.-built commercial vessel that meets icebreaking standards — still won’t be ready for two years. The Coast Guard has been the sole provider of America’s polar icebreaking capability since 1965. A 2023 analysis by the service said at least four heavy icebreakers and a similar number of medium icebreakers are needed to carry out its Arctic and Antarctic mission in the future.

Military Affairs Correspondent Mike Glenn reports that today, the service operates only two polar icebreakers: the medium-class U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy and the USCGC Polar Star, the sole heavy icebreaker in the fleet.

The Homeland Security Department’s citizenship agency has put out a call for volunteers to help process applications for a fraud-plagued program that allows unauthorized migrants from some Latin American nations to skip the border and fly directly into the U.S.

The program has welcomed more than a half-million migrants who lack legal visas to enter the U.S. It was abruptly paused several weeks ago after an internal review found massive fraud, but the call for volunteers suggests U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is looking for a quick restart.

In the email call for volunteers, Donna Campagnolo, USCIS chief human capital officer, said the agency wants volunteers by the end of this week. “This will be a full-time, remote detail for 180 days. No prior experience is necessary,” Ms. Campagnolo wrote. The email didn’t say when the program would be revived. USCIS declined to comment, saying the email “speaks for itself.”

A war without civilian casualties is impossible, even for those who try hard to avoid them, according to columnist Don Feder. “The United Nations says the average civilian-to-combatant ratio of deaths in all of the wars fought since 1945 is 9-to-1,” he writes. “For Israel’s war in Gaza, it’s 4-to-1.”

The Palestinians brought the war into Israel on Oct. 7, writes Mr. Feder. “Like Germany in 1939 and Japan at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war in Gaza started with an act of naked aggression, resulting in 1,200 deaths, many in the most savage fashion, including rape and torture, as well as more than 240 hostages taken,” he writes. “During World War II, between 350,000 and 635,000 Germans died in Allied strategic bombing. Germany’s cities were reduced to rubble.”

“The German people brought Hitler to power and were his willing accomplices in a war of subjugation and annihilation. In the end, Germany had to be bombed into submission,” he added. “Japanese civilian casualties from U.S. bombing in World War II are estimated as high as 50,000, including the death toll from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

Winning wars with algorithms and AI is not a futuristic concept but a present capability already determining outcomes in various real-world conflicts and military domains, according to former senior CIA analyst Mike Cinnamon, who writes in The Cipher Brief about the Defense Department’s February announcement that U.S. forces used AI to identify military targets hit by airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, marking a “seminal moment” in DoD’s targeting methodology.

“Project Maven – which leverages research on large language models and data labeling – is an AI intelligence tool designed to process imagery and full-motion video from unmanned aerial vehicles to automatically detect or identify potential targets,” Mr. Cinnamon writes. “It was created in 2017 by the DoD and is a program of record at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.”

• Aug. 27 — U.S.-Mexico Relations: Addressing Challenges at the Border, Brookings Institution

• Aug. 28 — Weapons in Space: A Book Talk with Dr. Aaron Bateman, Center for Strategic and International Studies

• Aug. 28 — Military Expenditure in MENA: Implications for Human Rights, Governance, and Socio-Economic Development, Arab Center Washington DC

• Sept. 3-6 — Billington CyberSecurity Summit

• Sept. 4 — The American Dream Lecture Series: Walter Russell Mead on American Foreign Policy in the Next Presidency, American Enterprise Institute

• Sept. 9 — The Role of China in Africa’s Just Energy Transition, Wilson Center