The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), who has been deployed already for close to eight months, departed the Caribbean Sea within the last day bound for the Middle East, accompanied by a handful of other surface vessels both part of the Ford Carrier Strike Group and not, including the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers; USS Mahan (DDG-72), USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG-81), USS Bainbridge (DDG-96), USS Stockdale (DDG-106), and USS Thomas Hudner (DDG-116).

“Progress has been achieved in the talks with Iran, but there are still many details that need to be discussed. The Iranians said they will return in the coming two weeks with detailed proposals in order to bridge some of the remaining gaps between our positions,” senior officials with the White House told Axios following today’s talks in Geneva.

F-22 Raptors with the U.S. Air Force’s 1st Fighter Wing landing earlier at RAF Lakenheath, England.

Video credit goes to @FaytuksNetwork on X.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered the removal of the Army Colonel Dave Butler from his roles as the Army's chief public affairs official and senior advisor to Army Secretary Dan Driscoll in a continuing purge of senior military officials from their roles at the Pentagon. Col. Butler formerly served as the chief public affairs officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Former Chairman General Mark Milley.

Additional footage showing the arrival of 6 F-22 Raptors at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, England, with additional Raptors from the 1st Fighter Wing expected to depart soon from Langley Air Force Base, Virginia bound for Lakenheath. Once in Europe, all twelve of the F-22s are expected to continue on later in the week to the Middle East.

Video credit goes to libertywinguk on TikTok.

12 F-16CJs with the “Swamp Foxes” of the the South Carolina Air National Guard’s 169th Fighter Wing arrived at Lajes Field in the Azores earlier today from McEntire Joint National Guard Base, South Carolina, a stopover on the way to Naval Station Rota in Spain.

Video footage credited to andre_spotter_lajes on Instagram.

White House special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner pictured meeting earlier today in Geneva with Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, ahead of nuclear talks with Iran.

Another E-3 “Sentry” Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) Aircraft has appeared just now on flight tracking off the eastern coast of Canada and is preparing to cross the Atlantic towards Europe.

Speaking earlier on Fox News, Vice President JD Vance said that “in some ways” today’s nuclear talks with Iran in Geneva went well, but that the Iranians are not yet willing to acknowledge and work through certain “red lines” set by President Trump, adding that the President would prefer diplomacy but that other options are “on the table” for Iran.

Three additional E-3 “Sentry” Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) Aircraft, for a total of four, SHUCK84/85/86/87, have departed the United States in last few hours heading northeast bound for RAF Mildenhall, placing the total number of U.S. Air Force E-3s in Europe at six, all of which will have arrived since Monday.

U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has published footage of and announced, that at the direction of Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the Commander of SOUTHCOM, military forces under Joint Task Force-Southern Spear (JTF-SS) carried out several strikes yesterday, February 16, against alleged narco-trafficking vessels operating in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. According to SOUTHCOM, intelligence indicated that the vessels were all transiting along known narco-trafficking routes and carrying illicit narcotics, with eleven total suspected narco-terrorists killed in the strikes, 4 on the first vessel in the Eastern Pacific, 4 on the second vessel in the Eastern Pacific, and 3 on the third vessel in the Caribbean, all believed to have been members of a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO).

We are currently witnessing the largest aerial buildup of combat capabilities by the U.S. Air Force in Europe and the Middle East since the Gulf War, though we will still have to wait and see if this is enough to “light the fire under” and pressure a new nuclear deal with Iran.

Despite the ongoing aerial buildup, we have yet to see any significant movement of ground troops or special forces to the region, suggesting that whatever is coming would be purely an air campaign by the United States, which is in no way capable of toppling the current regime or installing a new government in Iran.

YouTube is currently down and experiencing issues worldwide, with no reason for the outage having yet been given by it’s parent company Google.

Five KC-135R/T “Stratotanker” Aerial-Refueling Tankers have departed in the last hour from MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, heading northeast across the United States.

Multiple additional KC-135 Stratotankers and KC-46 Pegasus are currently departing from other bases across the United States heading northeast, many likely preparing to cross the Atlantic towards Europe and the Middle East.