Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the top general at U.S. Southern Command, had a “brief exchange” about security issues with several senior Cuban military officials, SOUTHCOM said Friday on X.

Despite Pentagon regulations discouraging the practice, Magistrate Judge Shannon Elkins ruled last week that the guidance does not give the court authority to stop it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the withdrawal, which is expected to be completed within six to 12 months.

The command responsible for training and employing the nation’s special operators said it was looking to “accelerate” a new effort aimed at fielding cutting-edge capabilities, especially those for use in maritime operations.

Special Operations Command has been increasingly asked to do more in recent years without meaningful budget increases, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said.

The project demands relatively small fiscal resources for now — just over $5.1 billion of the $1.5 trillion defense budget rolled out this week.

The budget includes $21.5 billion targeted at eliminating all poor and failing barracks, and $4.4 billion to go toward family housing.

The transfer of that title to Ford is the latest development in a whipsaw deployment that has seen the ship and its more than 4,500 embarked personnel on station in the Mediterranean, Caribbean and Red seas.

President Donald Trump agreed on Tuesday night to a proposal by Pakistan calling for a two-week ceasefire with Iran, an 11th-hour decision that comes after he escalated his threats to destroy the country’s infrastructure and talks appeared to stall.

The new rule, mandated by defense policy legislation passed by Congress last year, will register men automatically rather than require them to register themselves within 30 days of their 18th birthdays.