More boats, smarter weapons and deadlier guns. Those are just a few of the wishlist items that Navy officials and defense industry leaders will tackle in Virginia this week at the annual Surface Navy Association Symposium. Threat Status will be on the ground in Arlington and will have exclusive stories, podcasts and other content from the convention.

Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan is set to speak Tuesday, and other top Navy officials will appear over the course of the three-day conference to discuss the state of the Navy and building and maintaining a 21st-century naval force charged with projecting American military power anywhere on Earth.

No topic will be hotter than Mr. Trump’s plan to construct new “Trump class” battleships as part of a new U.S. Golden Fleet. Mr. Phelan is expected to discuss the initiative during his keynote address. Industry leaders will be listening to his words carefully, as little is known about the program so far — and some military analysts doubt those battleships will ever actually be built.

The Trump administration seems willing to get aggressive in its dealings with U.S. defense industry primes. The latest episode of the Threat Status weekly podcast delves into why the Trump administration seems to be picking a fight with those mega-companies as part of its major overhaul to how the Pentagon does business.

Peter Newell, former director of the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force and co-founder of BMNT, argues that the primes play an irreplaceable role in the nation’s defense industry ecosystem and will absolutely survive. But he said they cannot stand in the way of reform.

“When primes are using their capacity and lobbying power to ensure that nothing changes, then we start to have a problem. We need that competitive space out there, but at the same time, it’s still necessary for primes to do what they do,” Mr. Newell said. “There is no place anywhere in this dialogue where it’s all one thing or another. There’s a lot of middle ground.”

In November, Mr. Hegseth warned that primes must change and embrace new acquisition and procurement systems at the Pentagon or they will eventually “fade away.” Last week, Mr. Trump said no “that” he “will not permit” defense companies to issue dividends or purchase their own stocks until they invest more in production and research. He also called on those companies to limit CEO pay to $5 million — though it’s not clear what power the federal government has to force companies to adhere to those new rules.

Direct military strikes are still on the table, but Mr. Trump has another weapon at his disposal to influence Tehran: tariffs.

The president said he will impose a 25% tariff on any country doing business with Iran amid Tehran’s violent crackdown on mass protests. Under the tariff, all of Iran’s trading partners would be required to pay an additional levy on any business conducted with the U.S. Mr. Trump did not provide any further details about how the tariff would be implemented.

China, Brazil, Turkey, India and Russia stand to be most affected. Those nations are Iran’s biggest trading partners and account for more than $10 billion in commerce annually.

It’s taken part in nearly every major U.S. conflict and operation for more than 50 years. Its aircrews provided fighter cover and launched airstrikes during Operation Desert Storm and Southern Watch in the 1990s, and the more recent Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

And now, the USS Nimitz, America’s oldest operational aircraft carrier, is set to be retired.

Military Correspondent Mike Glenn has a deep dive into the Nimitz, its storied history from the Cold War through the War on Terror, and its reputation as a “physical manifestation of America’s global reach and power,” as retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery described it.

During the ship’s final operational deployment, Nimitz sailors completed more than 8,500 sorties and 17,000 flight hours while sailing more than 82,000 combined nautical miles. The nine-month deployment operated in the Indo-Pacific region and in the Persian Gulf, where it launched airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Somalia. It also supported freedom of navigation efforts in the Arabian Sea, completing four transits through the tense Strait of Hormuz.

The goal of America’s daring Jan. 3 Venezuela mission was to capture that country’s then-president, Nicolas Maduro, and bring him back to the U.S. to face federal narco-terrorism charges. But there may have been a major secondary benefit that pays dividends over the long term: Deterring communist China from attacking its neighbors or picking a fight with the U.S. military.

Michael McKenna, president of MWR Strategies, explains in a Washington Times op-ed why the complete failure of the Chinese-made JY-27A system radar system in Venezuela could impact decision-making in Beijing. That system appeared unable to detect the stealth U.S. aircraft that penetrated deep into Venezuela and moved Special Forces to Mr. Maduro’s exact location with relatively little resistance. 

“Communist China’s weapons systems had a real-world test, and it was a disaster,” Mr. McKenna writes. “The simple reality is that the communists in China have not been involved in a legitimate shooting war in 75 years. They have had no real way to test and improve their weapons under battlefield conditions. … Anything that erodes Beijing’s confidence in its own weapons and soldiers and increases its sense of discomfort about invading Taiwan (or anywhere, really) is a good thing.”

• Jan. 13-15 — Surface Navy Association National Symposium, Surface Navy Association

• Jan. 14 — A New Direction for AI and Students: Findings from the Brookings Global Task Force on AI and Education, Brookings Institution

• Jan. 15 — The Future of U.S. Foreign Assistance, Center for a New American Security

• Jan. 15 — 10 Conflicts to Watch in 2026, Chatham House

• Jan. 20 — The Future of Biosafety: Confronting Gain-of-Function Research, The Heritage Foundation

• Jan. 20 — A Conversation with Former METI Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura on the Takaichi Government’s Economic Strategy, Hudson Institute 

• Jan. 21 — Artificial General Intelligence: America’s Next National Security Frontier, Institute of World Politics

• Jan. 21 — What Happens in Geostationary Orbit Doesn’t Stay There, Royal United Services Institute