The 25 U.S. companies that were announced Tuesday to take part in the military’s $1 billion Drone Dominance Initiative consist mainly of new entrants to the American defense industry. Defense and National Security Correspondent John T. Seward analyzes how the initiative, designed to rapidly expand domestic small-drone production, will now move approved applicants to an initial testing stage called “Gauntlet I” over the coming month.

A key stipulation that zero parts can be sourced from China has raised challenges for some companies, according to industry sources, who say the DDI has set a stage for competing bids from new industry suppliers to offer small, lethal and expendable drones manufactured through U.S.-based supply chains.

It’s notable that Anduril — widely considered to be a new entrant juggernaut on the U.S. defense industrial landscape — was not among the companies announced on Tuesday. Red Cat’s Teal Drones Inc., as well as Vector Defense and Performance Drone Works, made the cut. Brendan Stewart, the senior vice president of government affairs for Red Cat, tells Mr. Seward he’s seeing more companies develop key production capabilities, specifically the manufacture of brushless motors and lithium batteries made domestically.

“I’m really excited about the way that Drone Dominance was structured for that reason,” Mr. Stewart said. “It’s opening the aperture a little bit, and it’s forcing companies like some of the traditional primes to be a little bit more competitive and frankly a little bit more innovative.”

A U.S. fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone that “aggressively approached” the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea on Tuesday, and American forces later drove off Iranian boats harassing a U.S.-flagged merchant ship, Pentagon officials said.

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran were already high amid a significant buildup of American military assets in the region, including the Abraham Lincoln. The U.S. shot down the drone just hours after Iran signaled that it wanted direct negotiations with the Trump administration, which has demanded that Tehran make major concessions on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

The White House said Mr. Witkoff will meet with an Iranian delegation this week. Mr. Trump has threatened to launch fresh military strikes against Iran, though administration officials stress that his preferred outcome is a diplomatic deal.

The Trump administration’s military strikes against terror groups in Nigeria in December were crucial in the fight for international religious freedom and could boost global security, according to Mark Walker, the principal adviser on global religious freedom at the State Department.

Mr. Walker highlighted the crisis in Nigeria during an appearance this week at the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, asserting that “70% of all Christians who are martyred come out of the continent of Africa, and 90% of that number have come out of the country, specifically in Nigeria.”

He pointed to Mr. Trump’s “bold step” in designating Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, signaling to the Nigerian government and the world that the U.S. is “monitoring these things.” Christian advocates have long called for Western intervention in Nigeria to prevent a “genocide” against Christians, perpetrated by armed terror groups such as Boko Haram and the Islamic State.

Clifford D. May writes that the United States is “in a second cold war,” with China occupying the strategic space formerly held by the Soviet Union, while “U.S. relations with many of its allies are seriously strained.

“European leaders have responded to this major geostrategic development fecklessly, if at all,” Mr. May writes in a Washington Times op-ed. He is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Let me acknowledge one exception: Last week, the European Union designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and moved toward implementing new sanctions. Better late than never.

“To fix what’s broken requires not so much the art of the deal as the art of persuasion,” he writes, adding that U.S. allies in Europe and Asia “need to understand that if an axis led by the most powerful communist party in history prevails, soon there will be no Free World, just satellites and supplicants.”

The Chinese president is “continuing his purge of the military with the removal of Gen. Zhang Youxia, senior vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and China’s most senior general, and Gen. Liu Zhenli, chief of the Central Military Commission’s Joint Staff Department, responsible for planning and operations,” Joseph R. DeTrani writes in a Times op-ed. 

“It’s possible that Mr. Xi removed Gens. Zhang Youxia, He Wei Dong and Liu Zhenli — all on the seven-member Central Military Commission designed for rapid decision-making and China’s highest military command — because of disagreements over Taiwan,” writes Mr. DeTrani, who is a former associate director of national intelligence. “All these men (and Gen. Lin Xiangyang, former commander of the Eastern Theater Command in charge of Taiwan) were responsible for military operations against Taiwan.”

• Feb. 6 — How Moscow Manufactured the Myth of Putin’s Inevitable Victory, Atlantic Council

• Feb. 9 — Defending NATO’s Eastern Flank: How Romania Is Responding to Russian Aggression and European Rearmament, Chatham House

• Feb. 9 — Inside Japan’s High-Stakes Snap Election, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Feb. 10 — Bluff or Death? How to Assess Nuclear ‘Threats,’ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

• Feb. 10 — Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Cadenazzi on Rebooting America’s Defense Industrial Base, Hudson Institute

• Feb. 11 — ‘The Doom Loop’ and the Future of the Global Order, Brookings Institution

• Feb. 11 — Escaping the Cycle of Conflict in Libya, Stimson Center